Page 59 of His Toy

CHAPTER 15

Heather

We drove through Las Vegas, the cityscape rising on the sides of the highway, reminding us that we were in the adult playground. I had no urge to gamble, but the prospect of seeing the sights was amusing, even if only once. A fake volcano. A spectacular fountain show. Maybe even witness a pirate ship being invaded. It wouldn’t be so bad to play tourists on the Strip. I might even enjoy it. Especially if I was with Zaid.

But he drove through the center of the city, focused on the road beyond us.

When Zaid said he had a surprise, I had hoped it was another trip to a national park. But when I asked, his eyes flicked down as he said, “Something else,” a melancholy smile painted on his lips. This was different. A surprise didn’t mean a happy one.

Ever since last night, Zaid had been different. The night before had been feverish, pent up frustration, the desire to make everything right. Our bodies desperate to hold on, to make it through, to tell each other that everything would be okay. He held my body like a delicate flower, and yet I still felt his dominance. Zaid needed me. It wasn’t just about sex. It was about trust. Opening himself to me. And I was grateful.

With tan rocks and sand in every direction, dusty cacti broke the scenery. Everything looked familiar, but it looked the same too. The desert could be funny that way. But as the giant roller coaster, stretching over a parking lot and around a manufactured desert canyon, came into view, a tight ball wound in my stomach, making me feel like I might lurch. I knew that canyon. I knew this place. I had seen it in my nightmares.

I never expected to be back here.

The cartoonish castle resort made me shake my head. I bit my nails. I didn’t remember much about my childhood, the early years with my parents, but somehow I had this one memory that only surfaced every once in a while.See that castle?I could hear a tinny woman’s voice in my ear,A princess lives there, just like you. Just like your sister.

We turned down a side road. The casinos disappeared in the background, making room for suburbia. The houses were cookie-cutter, only a few shades lighter than the desert. When you passed through the main roads of tourist cities like Las Vegas, it was easy to forget that people lived here. But they did.

I had lived here once.

I held my breath, practically gnawing my nails to stubs. I didn’t know this place was here. Had we passed through this place while I was asleep on the bus ride into Vegas?

Why did I have this feeling like I couldn’t relax here?

My eyes wandered over a park, eerily green in a desert oasis. Zaid reached over and held my thigh.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

I exhaled slowly, then cupped his hands, trying to keep still. Between a small shopping mall and a factory, was a plot of grass, this time natural-looking, weathered from the sun, with a few spots of dry blades. Tombstones appeared in the grass, like meerkats peeking out of a tall prairie, watching predators in the distance. Zaid parked the car.

He had taken me to a cemetery.

Zaid took my hand, leading me to their plot, as if he knew it had been there this whole time. And I knew, even without Zaid confirming it aloud, that that’s who we were here for. My parents. People I hadn’t seen in decades. They were here.

Jackson Maben and Charlene Hicks.

I used to wonder if they were really alive somewhere, if there had been an awful mistake. But as time passed, it turned into a daydream. Maybe they were the young kind of parents who thought we’d be better off with family and friends, not with them. That they wanted to do right by us by giving us away. It was easy to make-believe when you knew nothing. When you didn’t even know if they had been married. Each aunt and uncle made up different stories to save us from the truth. So I came to resent lies. To hate secrets.

I kneeled down beside the grave, stroking their names, as if to make sure they were actually there. My fingertips were covered in a thin film of dirt.

“How did you find them?” I asked.

Seeing their names, I had a vague memory of their faces: a dark-haired man with a thick mustache, a woman with sandy brown hair and eyes the color of a lake. The nicknames Jack and Charley suddenly popped into my head, and that felt right, even if I didn’t know why. Mom and Dad. Jack and Charley. One thing that I gathered from the lies was that the two of them had been excommunicated long ago, had birthed us without a hospital. Our extended family was resistant of us, unsure if we were actually kin, which made it hard to keep us close.

By the time we were in high school, Great Uncle Walter gave us a place to stay for good. His belief was that his only obligation was to provide food, water, and shelter. I was grateful for everything he did, but he never gave us a home.

And this didn’t feel like home here either, kneeling next to the people I had longed for, for so long.

“This is all Kiley found,” Zaid said. His head hung low, gazing at me sitting beside my parents’ graves. Knowing my parents’ names and that they died here, there had to be more information about their deaths. And if Kiley couldn’t figure it out, maybe I could. Was Zaid keeping something from me?

No. Zaid was a guarded man, but he wasn’t a liar. Not to me. Not when he had just let me into his heart. I was overreacting.

An emptiness filled me, like my skin was a husk of nothingness. Most of the other tombstones and gravesites were decorated with flowers. My parents’ plot laid bare. Had their graves been left abandoned for years? Did they have a proper funeral?

Even when I looked around, seeing their names, this town I had impressions of, buried deep in my subconsciousness, I was lost.

Zaid sat down next to me, and I rested my head on his shoulder.