AN SUV THE COLOR OF FADED PENNIES was parked near the fountain. They stood uncertainly in the doorway of the house at first, Zo? swimming one hand into the air behind her, until Madison stepped forward and caught her. Zo? draped her body over Madison’s like a scarf, her heels dragging on the cobblestones. A woman had already jumped down from the driver’s seat, pausing only to clutch Zo?’s chin in her hand and roughly shake her.
“She’s fine. Just a mess. Get in,” the woman said to Madison, her voice quieter than seemed to match her brusque, angry treatment of Zo?’s unfolded body. “I’ll drive you, too.”
She had a thick Jamaican accent and her eyes in the rearview mirror tracked Madison’s every movement. When Zo? had finally agreed to buckle her seat belt, they left.
Madison wondered if Wyatt could see them from his bedroom. If that’s even where he’d taken Zo?, or if they’d stopped at some more accessible spot. It was so easy for them to shut themselves up in a room, like they owed you nothing at all. Her mother, Lily, even poor Mina Dawes—each one of them was running on the fumes of her own fear these past weeks, that Madison might ask a question with no acceptable answer. But men didn’t feel that fear. They just took themselves out of the running, so that you felt foolish, grasping, if you wanted to ask them anything at all. Madison could never have wandered upstairs to knock on Wyatt’s door, ask him to help her carry Zo? to the car. She knew this without question.
Zo? crumpled against her window and jammed her head at an angle, gazing up at the night outside as it streamed past. Madison’s stomach sloshed, the edges of her vision both slurred and sharp. She tried to parcel out the memories of Chip, knowing that if she thought of all of them right now they’d begin to lose their luster, become imagined. They’d cross into the past, and she’d have to fight for her version of what had happened, defend these images to an invisible jury. This was real, the soft, fuzzy patch at the edge of his chin. Or the callus on his thumb; I felt it.
The car had pulled up at her parents’ gate before she even realized that the woman driving hadn’t asked her for directions. She wondered if this woman knew Lily, and then wondered if that was an offensive thing to wonder. She thanked her, and as she grabbed the door handle, Zo?, suddenly reanimated, grabbed at her wrist.
“Wait,” she said, “you need this.” She reached into her purse and slid out three sticks of gum. “Don’t worry, it’s sugarless, but you need it. They smell it on you.”
Madison looked down at the gaping purse, at the pack of gum.
“These are your last three,” she said. “You smell more than I do, you’ll need them.”
Zo? let her head loll back onto the seat, her job done, and closed her eyes.
“No,” she said, “I don’t. Just take them.”
MADISON UNWRAPPED EACH PIECE of gum, one at a time, and then began to chew, letting the false sweetness spread across her tongue. As the car disappeared into the darkness she stood, alone, listening to the night around her. She could not see her house, of course; it was protected from view by the oak trees, set too far back on the property to be seen from the road. And yet she could feel it there, floating in the darkness up above her, waiting.
She turned to her left and looked at the black sedan parked about two hundred feet down the road, its right wheels sunk into the muddy grass beside the tarmac. She started to walk down the road toward the car. It was getting harder, as she got tired, to walk in her mother’s shoes, and of course she was also drunk. No one was watching; there was no harm in admitting this here, on the dark road, to herself. No one was awake up above her. Whatever the house was waiting for, it wasn’t her.
“I’m drunk,” she said into the night.
The black sedan, though, was a different story. Someone was in there because he’d been told to sit there all night long. He was surely watching her now. He was waiting, she knew, to swoop in just before any potential danger made its presence felt. And wasn’t this dangerous, right now? She was drunk, wandering down a poorly lit road, practically begging for some loaded suburban teenager to run her down. And wouldn’t that be perfect, she thought, wouldn’t everyone eat that up. In most of the things she’d read about her father online, she and the boys had been, at most, impersonal footnotes included in the final paragraphs. In part, probably, because she was pretty dull, as teenage girls went. This was like the most exciting night she’d ever had, and she hadn’t even done any of the available drugs.
But this, she thought, this could definitely be its own headline. Disgraced financier’s daughter wanders dark suburb alone, unsupervised, jumps in front of reckless driver. Isn’t that just what everyone expected of her, why Zo? watched her so closely, why Chip took pity on her? She was even better, at this point, than something truly volatile; she was something that, at any moment, might become volatile. Wasn’t that why Lily hated her lately?
Even alone, even when she didn’t say it out loud, the word, disgraced, settled in the back of her throat, threatened to keep her from breathing.
The point was that this man should already be out, walking toward her, hands up in a gesture equal parts defensive and soothing. He should be asking why she was out there, if she needed help. She was close enough, now, that he must be able to see her in the rearview. This man wasn’t doing his job.
But no, because her father wouldn’t have hired someone like that. Whatever had happened in the city, it hadn’t been because her father didn’t know how to keep her safe. She knew this even when she herself was angry, even when her mother had bitten her bottom lip while they talked about him that night, in the bathtub. They still knew this.
She stopped in the middle of the road. Another five or six steps would have brought her close enough to touch the trunk of the car. It sat there, untroubled, its lights dark, its engine off. How much nearer would they let her get before they admitted to themselves, to her, that she was trying to get their attention? It seemed strange to her, now that she was considering this, that this one car was enough to do the job. But then, didn’t everyone think her father was still in the city? She thought again of the men in the car, of the information they had that she did not, of everything they might be able to tell her.
She stood there for so long she was convinced she could hear the men, because now she was sure there must be two of them. But of course their windows wouldn’t be open. It was a chilly night for Halloween, unseasonably crisp. The car sat there still, unapologetic, giving up nothing. She closed her eyes, and waited.