I COULD ONLY STARE at Zora, trying to comprehend the story she’d told me. It had been her on the beach that night in August 2016. The one from the very first story Jasper told me. Not Barbara Yost. Not Miracle Jones. All along, as we searched for the answer to that mystery, she had stood right beside me.
When I didn’t say anything for a time, Miracle approached me. I can’t say I understood. Maybe I never would. I had questions. A million. Before I could ask, however, she reached out, her phone in her hand.
“That’s my son,” she said.
I took it and looked at the screen. A chubby, healthy, glowing young boy smiled up at me.
“I know. He’s beautiful,” I said.
“He is,” she agreed, taking the phone back. “Sometimes, when I look at him, I wonder. When they found me, I weighed under three pounds. He weighed over nine when he was born. I saw a picture of me when I was in the hospital. My body had eaten away what little muscle I had been born with. I looked so frail. So unlike him. He means everything to me. And I will do anything to keep him safe.”
My eyes shifted. I looked at Zora, how she stood in front of the door. How one hand was in the pocket of her jacket. For the first time, maybe ever, I was scared. Not that I would die. Not really. No, I feared that I would never get to finish this story. As I felt that, everything became clear to me.
“You’re protecting her,” I said.
Zora smirked. “You are something else, Theo Snyder. I’ve never met anyone like you. A pit bull with no teeth.”
I laughed. “If I didn’t have teeth, would you be here?”
She blinked slowly. Miracle moved back to her side. Lightly, she touched the exposed wrist of Zora’s left arm.
“Let me tell him the rest,” she said.
Zora nodded.
ACT THREE/SCENE 15—ALTERNATE ENDING
INT. MOTEL ROOM—NIGHT
They come together for the first time—Miracle and the Halo Killer. Between them, the detective, ZORA MONROE, stands, pointing a handgun at her prey.
Miracle sat in the motel room, beside her mother’s killer, her stomach in knots, her entire body covered in a cold sheen. She wanted more than anything to run away. To get as far away as she could. She couldn’t even remember what had brought her to this moment. How she’d ended up face-to-face with the Halo Killer.
After meeting Bunny, she’d made the appointment at the clinic. How could she be a mother? How could she be expected to take care of a child? What choice did she have? The genetic test only made it worse. Meeting Bunny, the same. It proved that at the most basic level, she was simply a copy of who had come before her. Her mother was inside her. Her mother made up at least half of her. And her mother had left her in a filthy sink, alone, to die.
On the morning of the procedure, she drove there. She parked her car. She even walked up to the door. The test hadn’t told her anything, really. Nor had Bunny. She knew her mother had disappeared after that day. That was it. What she still didn’t know was who her mother was. And without that, she couldn’t know who she was. Not really.
Maybe there was a reason. One she could not imagine on her own, but something that could fill the hole that had bored so deeply into her soul. She had thought to talk to Meg. Tell her the fears that had crushed every moment of every day since she’d found out that she was with child. It was one thing to survive alone; it was another to bring someone else into her damaged existence. Her mother could never understand, though. She thought of her daughter as a whole person, not as the remnants left in a bathroom.
Miracle wished she’d had an epiphany before entering the clinic. Some great self-realization, some spout of strength that would turn her away. Instead, as kismet would have it, her phone rang. When she answered, it was Zora Monroe.
“Hi, Miracle, do you remember me?”
“Of course,” she said. “How are you?”
“Great. Look, I was … just … thinking about you.” She laughed nervously. “Not in a crazy way, I mean. I just wonder … if you might want to meet up for—”
A tear ran down Miracle’s cheek as the words tore free without her permission.
“Will you help me find my mother?” she asked.
Zora’s voice cracked when she said, “Yes, I would … really like that.”
Miracle sent her the genetic test results. Zora said she would not see Miracle in person until she found her birth mother. Not two days later, the call came. Miracle knew when she saw the number on the screen.
“Hello,” she answered.
“I’m outside,” Zora said.
Normally, that might have troubled her. She’d never given Zora her address. But this was the woman who had found her mother in forty-eight hours.
“I’m coming down.”
They drove into town and got a table at the same café at which Miracle and her mother had sat weeks before. Zora looked pained as she pulled a yellow envelope out of her biker bag. She placed it on the table between them.
“She’s dead,” Miracle said, before touching the file.
Zora nodded. Miracle’s head throbbed. The discomfort under her ribs, one that grew with each day, screamed out, threatening to break her will. She had to know. But her questions would be left forever unanswered.
“There’s more,” Zora said, as if immediately regretting her own words.
She pulled a copy of an old news article out of the envelope, cautiously sliding it across to Miracle. Miracle’s eyes lowered. She saw the words:
LONG UNSOLVED MURDER MAY HAVE BEEN HALO KILLER’S FIRST
“What is this?” she asked, tears running down both cheeks.
“Do you know about the Halo Killer?”
“Everyone does. It scares the shit out of all of us. But what does this have to do with …”
“A few years ago, a detective made a connection. A body was found near the ocean. Six months before that monster’s first victim. She was a young woman … only nineteen. She had been strangled. But they didn’t find her for over three months. The autopsy.… maybe this is too much.”
Fighting back the tears, Miracle shook her head adamantly. “No. Tell me.”
“The autopsy showed signs that she had recently given birth. There were whispers, I guess. Even then. That this woman might have been the Mir … your mother. But there was no way of knowing then. So it got shelved.”
“But … why didn’t they …”
“They couldn’t prove anything. It was just a theory. The body—there was just no way of knowing for sure.”
“What does this have to do with that serial killer? You said this was before he …”
“It was. But about three years ago, a detective reopened the file. There was a picture, I guess. Of the body. She had one of those old Sony Walkmans, the neon-yellow ones, over her head. It looked like a halo.”
“But he leaves flowers.”
“The detective looked at all the evidence they had. And he put out another theory. That your … mother was the first. It makes sense. The first time for men like that tends to be raw and unpracticed. They learn. And, as bad as it sounds, they get better. More careful.”
“You believe this? You think the Halo Killer murdered my mother?”
“Yes, I do.”
“But there’s no proof. You said it yourself. They’re just guessing that she’s my …”
“There is proof. Now.”
“What?”
“I gave the detective your DNA test results. He ran them against the Jane Doe. It was a match. He was able to positively identify her. Her name wa … is Abbie Henshaw.”
“Honey,” Miracle whispered.
“What?”
“That’s what they called her,” Miracle said, her lip quivering.
Zora nodded sadly. “If I had known it would be so … sensational, I would have never given my contact with the police your results. The information is going to be public. The press will pick up on it quickly. I tried to stop it, but I can’t. I can only delay the inevitable. He said he’d do what he can, but at most, it will come out in a month.”
Miracle stared off at nothing. “I have to find him.”
“The Halo Killer? Why?”
Without realizing it, Miracle touched her stomach for the first time since they’d sat.
“He was the last person to see my mother.”
Somehow, Zora used her magic and found him. The man who had murdered her mother. Miracle found herself sitting closer to him on the bed. She could not take her eyes off the man. He was so small. So broken. Yet so confident. It dripped from him, telling both her and Zora that he was better, stronger, smarter. Regardless of the fact he had just been manipulated and that he might not leave that room alive.
The more they spoke, the more he entered her thoughts. He probed her soul. Then he said it, even before she could.
“You need to know why she did it.”
Need? Was that it? Or was it something else?
“I need to know I won’t,” she said.
Miracle let out a slow, agonizing breath. That’s when the true pain hit. When the last of her tattered heart broke. For she realized that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t why she was there. Why she’d done what she had to get there. It was so easy to say it was about her child, but so untrue as well. Though admitting that hurt almost as much.
“Did she love me?”
The question burst from her like a blood clot breaking free and storming through the synapses of her brain, burning them out, erasing everything else. Her childhood. Her unborn baby. His father. Her mother. Everything.
“Did she love me?” she repeated.
And somehow, Miracle felt emptier than she ever had before. Jasper just stared at her, an even stranger look in his piercing eyes.
“Amazing,” he whispered.
“Why?” she asked.
“The hunger. It’s in us all. We’re all trying to find it. To devour it. In the hope that it will help. That it will make a difference.”
Miracle nodded. “When I was young, my … mother would take me to the ocean. After playing in the water, for hours sometimes, I would leave Meg in her old beach chair, reading some novel she’d bought on discount at Browseabout. And I’d cross the sand. I’d feel the warmth from the day’s sun against the soles of my feet. It would grow hotter and hotter the closer I got to the dune. But I would keep going until I couldn’t take it. Then I’d sit in that hot sand, utterly alone. And dig.
“Despite the beauty around me. The soft sound of the ocean singing. The gulls crying out above. I only saw my fingers scooping sand out. Faster and faster. And with each swipe, the sides caved in, refilling the space, undoing my best effort. But I kept going, kept fighting, like I could win, like the sand was some challenger. Some enemy that cared as much as I did. But it didn’t. It just did what it does. Erases what I did.
“Eventually, I won. At least I thought I did. I dug deep enough, fast enough, that I reached the damper sand below. The hole became a deep, dark eye staring back at me. I leaned back; I looked at what I’d done as sweat dripped down and burned my eyes. And you know what I saw? A hole. Nothing more. And I was left wondering why I’d tried so hard to begin with.”
“Because what would you do if you didn’t,” Jasper Ross-Johnson said.
“What would we do if we didn’t,” she agreed. “Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe the big questions don’t matter. Because you can never truly fill the holes inside. Because they’re not holes. They’re just a part of us. Pieces that make us who we are. Maybe we’ll keep trying. Maybe we don’t have a choice. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter, because they’ll always be there. No matter how much you are loved. Or how much you are feared.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Zora moved closer. She looked to Miracle, who subtly shook her head. With a nod, Zora left them on the bed, walking into the bathroom.
Jasper watched her leave. Then he turned back to Miracle, the smile on his face strangely human.
“She left you alone with me,” he said.
“I’m pregnant,” Miracle replied calmly.
“Yes, I know.” His head shook. “Is she going to kill me now?”
“I don’t think so,” Miracle said.
“I think … I wish she would.”
His eyes never left Miracle’s as Zora reentered the room. She held a damp washcloth in her hand. Without pause, she slapped it across the bottom half of his face. In three seconds, the homemade ether dropped him into a sound sleep.