This is not what Jennifer expected to hear, and maybe that’s why she proceeds as if she didn’t hear it. “Happy?” she asks. She goes far enough up the stairs to see Milo, engrossed in a violent cartoon. Then she heads for the kitchen to pour herself a bourbon from a bottle Erica brought over. Just last week, that was. When it was still possible for Jennifer to call Megan and Megan’s friends and invite them over for a drink. After a second’s thought she pours a bourbon for Zoe, too. Back in the living room, Zoe’s where she left her. Jennifer hands her the drink, then slides open the glass door. She goes outside and sits in one of the wooden chairs. She braces her feet against the railing. She stares at the woods. She stares at the pond. The deck across the way is empty. The bourbon burns her throat.
Zoe will never understand. There is no point in trying to make her. There’s no point in telling her any of the stories. Even if she did, who knows what Zoe would think they proved? That’s why she never tried. To fight with her would be like fighting with Tommy again, the endless tussle over who was to blame. “You’re never kind to me,” Tommy would say. “You never laugh at my jokes.”
“I don’t feel kind,” Jennifer would say. “I don’t feel like laughing.”
“How can I live like that?” Tommy would ask, and the look on his face would be so desolate that sometimes kind was exactly what she’d feel. Her poor baby. He didn’t want to hurt her. His sorrow and his guilt.
Zoe comes outside, but she doesn’t sit in the other chair. She leans on the railing and looks at Jennifer. Jennifer can feel her gaze. She keeps her own trained on the trees. “How did you find me?” she asks.
“You called me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes you did, Mom! You called from Margaret’s house, and hung up, like I wouldn’t see a strange area code and immediately assume it was you. Like I haven’t been wondering.”
“Margaret’s house? Margaret?”
“Yes, Margaret.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Jesus,” Zoe says. “You can’t even admit you called me. Tell the truth for once in your life.”
Jennifer can feel a tingling in her palm, as though she’s already slapped the girl. She takes a breath. “If I wanted to have conversations like this,” she says, “I would’ve been in touch.”
“You were in touch!”
“I wasn’t!” She’d like to take a swig but her hand is shaking. “If someone called you from Margaret’s house, then it was Margaret. Of course. Of course it was Margaret.”
“Why would she do that?”
Jennifer shakes her head.
“It doesn’t matter,” Zoe says. “You called, you didn’t call. Now I’m here.”
“Because of Margaret,” Jennifer says bitterly, as if that were the worst of it.
“She wants to help me. She’s letting me stay with her.”
“You’re staying with her? You’re staying in her house?”
“I came here looking for you, and I ran into her at the Smoke House.”
“She just took you in, a total stranger?”
“She overheard me asking about you. She knew I was your daughter, as soon as she saw me,” Zoe says. “She says I look exactly like you.”
Above the tree line a tiny plane, a prop, climbs into the sky. “There’s something wrong with that woman.”
“She said you’d want to see me,” Zoe says in a small voice.
“Did she?” Jennifer watches the plane. She imagines that wherever it’s going is the next place she and Milo will live.
“But obviously you don’t. I didn’t know you changed your name. You didn’t even tell me where you lived.”
Now Jennifer looks at her daughter again. “You called the cops on me, Zoe. For murdering my husband. You don’t trust a person after that. You can’t trust a person after that. I can’t trust you not to fuck up my life. You’re proving that right now. Do you not understand why I moved away? Why I changed my name? Did it never cross your mind I’m trying to make a good life for your brother? What do you think it would have been like for him—” She shakes her head. “Now thanks to you we’ll have to move again.”
“But what about me?” Zoe says. “Don’t you care about me?”
“Zoe,” Jennifer says. She presses her mouth together against tears. “It never seemed to matter if I cared.”
The woods are at first just silent, and then that silence resolves itself into its component parts: the sound of air, the sound of water.
“All right,” Zoe says finally. She pushes herself off the railing, carefully sets her glass on it. “I don’t actually drink,” she says, conversationally, and then she moves past Jennifer. Into the house, then through it and out the other side. Jennifer can hear her. She moves slowly, as if to give Jennifer time to come after her, to tell her not to go. Jennifer listens until she’s sure the car is gone. Then she waits, watching the house across the pond, but minutes tick by in empty silence. Where are you, Margaret? Don’t you want to see what you’ve done?
Back inside, the house has an air of aftermath, though little is disarranged. The cars the boys were playing with are still out on the floor. The dishes are still on the table. The tiger Zoe brought sits propped against the teapot. Jennifer picks it up. Squeezing its little tummy, she swallows and swallows again. Then she throws it in the bin with the rest of the toys.