I hold my breath for a moment as I try to process this information.
Cinde Bennett is Zenn’s mom. She was in the car that hit my parents. She was pregnant with Zenn at the time.
And the driver … Oh, my God.
The driver was Zenn’s dad.
Michael Franklin.
I’ve known the name of the guy who killed my parents for ages — how could I not? I learned it as soon as I was old enough to ask, since the first time I Googled my parents’ accident. If Zenn’s last name had been Franklin, that would have set off all kinds of alarm bells for me. But his last name is not Franklin. It’s Bennett, from his mom. I had no way of knowing.
And I realize that, just like I know the name of the guy who killed my parents, Zenn must know the names of the people his father killed. He’s likely quite familiar with the whole story, knows they were from Port Dalton, suspects they are buried here. And I know, now, that the ninth stone on his windowsill is mine and the rocks I’ve been picking up are his. Not my mom’s.
I don’t know who he thinks he’s exchanging rocks with, but I bet he doesn’t suspect it is me. My name was kept out of the papers after the accident and unless he really looked, I don’t think he’d be able to connect me to Thomas and Lynn Scheurich. I don’t know why he’d think to try.
I feel something smoldering in my chest, hot and tight. I can’t breathe right and I wonder if I could be having a panic attack. I take a few deep breaths to calm down, to try to figure out what I’m feeling. After a moment I realize it’s not anger. It’s not even sadness. It’s … fear, I think. Fear of what this discovery means and how it will change things.
No, he doesn’t know. He couldn’t know. He couldn’t know and act like everything is normal. He couldn’t look me in the eyes, kiss me like he kissed me, and have that big a secret.
He visits my parents’ grave because he’s a good guy. A kind, sweet guy who has no idea he’s getting involved with that dead couple’s daughter.
Oh, my God. This is nuts.
I stare at the computer screen, at a fuzzy mug shot of Zenn’s father from 1997. I study the grainy photo and see once again the resemblance to Zenn. Michael Franklin’s hair is longer and he has a thin, scruffy beard, but he looks enough like the Mike I met the other day for me to be sure that it is him.
I Google the correct name this time — Michael Franklin — and find other articles about the accident. One confirms that Michael was — or is — a Gulf War veteran, honorably discharged in 1994. I don’t remember that from when I looked him up before. I might not have even known what the Gulf War was when I read about him for the first time. I think of Zenn’s jacket, the spot where the name patch would be. I can guess the reasons why Zenn or his mom may have removed it. Our story was big local news back in 1997. I guess it’s the same reason Zenn has her last name and not his dad’s.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to twenty years. I wonder if he would’ve gotten such a strict sentence if I hadn’t been in the car. I mean, he was a veteran with a clean record until that point. But you drive drunk and orphan a baby, they’re going to throw the book at you. He didn’t fight the charges. He didn’t plea bargain. I check my Google search but there is no article about him getting out of jail. I guess that’s how it goes these days. Unless you’re famous, people lose interest. Plenty of new tragedies to focus on.
I’m grateful for people’s short attention spans now. I’m grateful that my mom isn’t reading that he’s out of jail, then studying that eighteen-year-old photo and thinking how much the guy looks like Zenn.
I have to be grateful for the small things at the moment. Because the big things suck big-time.
Chapter 26
Eventually I leave the library. I have to go home at some point. I’m sure I look normal on the outside. No one knows that a bomb just dropped on me and my fledgling love life. I certainly don’t know what to do with the knowledge that Zenn’s father killed my parents. It was an accident, an accident that he’s paid for as best he can. Zenn had nothing to do with it.
But still. His father killed my parents.
It doesn’t make me weepy or emotional. Stunned, yes. A little freaked-out, sure. But not weepy. I was only four months old when they died and I couldn’t tell you one single thing about them that I haven’t learned secondhand. But the idea of it? The idea that Zenn and I have had this connection since day one and had no clue? Yeah … it’s messed up.
I spend the day in a daze, going through the motions of making the kids hexagon-shaped peanut butter sandwiches and doing some homework, pretending everything is just peachy. I talk to my mom, though later I can’t remember one thing we talked about. The whole time I’m with her, I’m just trying to figure out ways for her not to know what I know, yet I’m also shoving food in my mouth to keep myself from telling her. It’s that weird battle between self-preservation and self-destruction: tempted to jump off a cliff while simultaneously clinging to the railing.
When Zenn texts me late Saturday afternoon — a text that I wanted so badly just this morning — my stomach lurches and my mouth dries up. I toss out a quick reply that I have a headache, heading off a get-together. Not because I don’t want to see him because, God help me, there is a shamefully big part of me that really wants to see him. But there is another part of me that knows I need to think this through. I need to come up with some kind of plan because I’m convinced that Zenn does not know our connection. And I have a pretty good idea how he will take it. How anyone would take it.
Not well.
I spend Saturday night playing with the kids, and then struggling once again with the biographical section on my college applications. If my family history seemed complicated before, now it seems like an episode of One Life to Live. I go to bed late, hoping that exhaustion will help me sleep.
It doesn’t.
Charlotte stops by on Sunday, anxious to hear details of my date with Zenn. I find that my giddiness is diminished by the discovery of our shared past. How do I gush about the soft lips of the son of the guy who killed my parents? But I do my best acting because I’m not ready to tell anyone the whole story just yet.
“So …” she says, folding her long legs under her like a graceful insect.
“So …” I say back.
“First of all, who is this Zenn guy? Do I know him?”
I shake my head. “Probably not. He’s new.” I find it strange that Charlotte and Zenn haven’t crossed paths, but that’s how the social structure of our high school is. Everyone travels in their own lane.
“What’s he look like?”
“He’s pretty tall. Taller than you. Short, dark hair. Eyelashes that make you want to bear his children.”
She thinks about my description but appears to be coming up blank.