“Sometimes things change so much you feel like you’ve come full circle and back to a place you’ve been before,” Lucas said.
So. That’s what this was about. Claire was a little surprised. Even a little disappointed in Lucas. “Full circle back to a beach a long time ago?” Claire asked, knowing the answer.
He nodded. “Our first kiss.”
She should put an end to this. She really should. But the memories were strong for her, too. There had been a time when she would have done anything for Lucas Cabral. And it would be a down payment on paying Jake back. “Are you going to ask me as politely as you did then, Lucas, with your voice all squeaky and trembling?” she said, half-mocking, half-trembling with anticipation.
Lucas slid across the car seat toward her, closer, close enough that the slightest movement would bring them together. “Do I have to ask?”
“No,” Claire said. “You don’t.”
“Look man, look man, no, look, don’t man. Don’t shoot me, man.”
He was begging. Praying to Christopher like he was some kind of a god. And with his gun, with his finger on the trigger, with the slightest pressure now the difference between life and death, wasn’t he like a god?
From far away the sound of a siren floated through the trees. The dog had started barking, jerking frantically at its chain. The skinhead had sunk to his knees, crying.
And the gun felt so powerful in Christopher’s hand.
Zoey saw her mother’s eyes were full of tears. She realized her own were, too. This was it—the destruction of her family. The end. Even worse, the destruction of her parents, all their tawdry, humiliating secrets now laid out to sicken their children. Zoey wished she could just disappear. If she’d still had even an ounce of energy or will, she might have grabbed Benjamin’s hand and run. But all she could do was watch and listen, helpless to change anything.
“You might as well tell them the rest,” Zoey’s mother said flatly.
Mr. Passmore nodded. “Yes. The rest. It seems while I was with this woman in Europe, well, it seems she became pregnant.”
Zoey felt the world spinning around her.
“See, you both, Zoey, Benjamin, you have . . . a sister.”
Zoey Passmore
If I believed in astrology, I would have guessed that some terrible alignment of the planets occurred on that Thursday when so many futures stood teetering between happiness and destruction. Sometimes I wish I did believe in something supernatural, because then you’d have a way of making sense out of things, you know? Blame it on the stars or whatever, rather than having to blame people. Or yourself. But I was left feeling that life was just unpredictable, that it might suddenly, without warning, blow up in your face. Which isn’t a very reassuring thing to believe, even though it may be true.
For me that Thursday meant the end of my family as I had known it. In the blink of an eye my parents, who I had been sure loved each other absolutely, became enemies.
And each of them, my father and mother, came away seeming smaller, more petty, weaker than I had believed. Not that I had ever thought of either of them as perfect parents, but I guess I’d always thought of them as very good people doing their best to be perfect parents, and that was more than enough for me. No longer.
It was like someone had declared the end of illusions. Illusions about my boyfriend, Lucas, and about Jake, my previous boyfriend. And now my parents. It made me wonder what other people I had misjudged. Nina had been my best friend for years, but if I could be so wrong about my parents, was I wrong about her, too? And Aisha? And even Benjamin, my brother, the one person I told myself was absolutely real?
And myself? Was I just a lie, too?
I sat in that room while my father told me the depressing truth and I had the strangest feeling. We were all still alive, my parents and my brother and me, tired, sad, but alive. And yet something had died.
Just an idea, really. The idea of a family. An abstraction. And it really shouldn’t hurt when an idea dies, should it?