Page 36

36

CALIFORNIA, 2011

The doorbell rings, but I make no attempt to move. My mind is too worn out from the conspiracy theories that have been railroading through it for the past day, desperately trying to separate fact from fiction. Despite everything pointing toward Brad being complicit in what’s been going on, I still can’t believe that the man I’ve loved for the past twenty years could be capable of something so hateful. But if the woman he met in the bar is the woman who took our daughter, is as much of a stranger to him as she is to me, then I have to face the very real possibility that it was Cassie who called and spoke to him. And that he’s just as much a pawn in this game as I am.

The bell rings again and I suddenly think of Hannah, a myriad of possibilities flooding my mind as to why I shouldn’t leave it unanswered. What if she’s gone missing again? What if she’s been hurt? What if she’s walked out of school because other kids are being mean to her?

Of the thousand scenarios I dare to imagine, finding Zoe on the doorstep isn’t one of them.

“No, absolutely not,” I say, shaking my head.

“Please,” she says. “Just one minute.”

With her blond hair and impish face, she suddenly looks younger than I remembered, more naive than the savage Rottweiler I’d thrown out of my house and more innocent than the calculated journalist who’d accosted Brad and me in Tino’s last week. God, that felt like another lifetime ago—when I was oblivious to the damage that could be done in just a few days.

“I don’t know what you’re looking to gain, or who you’re working with, but I’m done with it.”

“I understand how you must feel to have this brought to your door after all this time,” she says.

“You have no idea.” I seethe.

She looks awkward, no part of her seeming as if she’d be involved in a sick ploy to destroy my life. But until I’m convinced that this isn’t what’s happening here, I’ll not be giving her the benefit of the doubt.

“I just have one question,” says Zoe. “And then I promise you’ll never see me again.”

I want to tell her to go to hell and slam the door in her face. But there’s something holding me back—a need to know what the question is. Because knowledge is power, and I’ve got a horrible feeling that I need all the power I can get.

“What is it?” I ask tersely.

“I don’t want to take up any more of your time than is absolutely necessary,” she says, rooting around in her bag. “So, I’ll get to the point.”

She takes out an old Sony Walkman, the kind I had when I was a struggling singer-songwriter. The kind I’d listen to my mixtapes on.

She presses the rewind button and I hold my breath as the shrill of the tape backtracking sends every sense into high alert. I used to find the sound exciting—a clean slate for new possibilities—but now, as I wait to see what’s coming next, it just sounds like the scrambling of my brain.

The opening chords of a guitar filter through the muffled speaker, and my knuckles turn white as I grip hold of the doorframe. I want to snatch it from her and turn it off. I want to cry out loud to silence it. But instead, I grit my teeth and keep my eyes fixed firmly ahead as a voice from a bygone era fills the room.

“ I would go to the ends of the earth if it meant I could keep you safe,

I would die for you if it meant I could keep you here with me…”

“Is that…” Zoe begins. “Is that you?”

“You need to tell me where you got this from.” My voice is hoarse, strangled by regret.

“ And I would do anything for your love, ” cuts in Ben’s dulcet tones, singing in perfect harmony. “ Because your love is all I need .”

I can’t breathe, my lungs closed off to air, as a voice I haven’t heard in twenty-five years wraps itself around my vital organs, making them feel as if they’re being systematically shut down.

The grief that I naively thought had been laid to rest rips through me, shredding the layers of resilience it has taken me years to construct. It’s as if I’m being sucked back into the vortex of 1986, and despite gripping on to the here and now with all my strength, my fingers are being pried away, one by one, as I’m finally forced to face the past I thought I’d left behind.

“Excuse me…” I manage, fearing that if I don’t remove myself from this situation, I’ll not be able to mask the guilt that is running roughshod through my nervous system, about to tip me into territories unknown.

She watches me as I run to the bathroom, my behavior only courting more suspicion, but there’s nothing I can do. Of all the pieces of evidence I imagined she might have, that song is the only one I couldn’t possibly have prepared for.

I lean back against the locked door, willing the incessant noise in my head to stop. Most days, I’m able to convince myself that I deserve to be happy, that I’m as worthy of a loving family as the next person. But on days like this, when the drums reverberate so loudly that I can’t think straight, I’m reminded that nobody who’s done something as unforgivable as I have is ever forgiven.

The tears threaten to fall, but I swallow them back down and force long, deep breaths in and out of my lungs. I need to focus, stay levelheaded.

My ashen complexion reflects back to me in the mirror, my eyes spooked and panic-stricken. If my world hasn’t already imploded, then this is the detonator that will blow everything to smithereens.

I splash cold water onto my face, hoping it will kick-start my brain. But all it manages to achieve is to make me realize that perhaps Zoe knows even more than I do.

She offers a watery smile, giving nothing away, as I walk back into the hall on unsteady feet.

“So…” she starts, eager to continue, despite my obvious discomfort. “Is that you on the tape?”

“You need to leave.”

She sidesteps my unease and pushes her shoulders back, as if the action will reassert her standing in what is essentially the hollowed husk of my life.

“Just tell me if it’s you on that tape, and I promise I’ll never darken your door again.”

I suck in a breath, wondering what difference it would make if I told the truth, but then I stop myself. Why change the habit of a lifetime?

“Who are you?” I ask.

She shrugs, but her eyes widen, making her look like a deer caught in headlights. “I told you, I’m writing a book on the demise of Secret Oktober.”

I shake my head in an effort to dislodge the doubt in my mind, but I can’t shift the feeling that she wants more from me than just a story. I clasp my hands together to stop them from shaking.

“Where did you get that tape from?”

“I found it,” she says, all too blithely.

“Where?”

She bites down on her lip, as tears spring to her eyes.

“Where?”

“My mother gave it to me,” she says quietly.

I suck in a breath, the squeeze on my chest making me feel as if my heart is being stamped on. As much as I’ve dreamed that one day this song would somehow find me again, I’ve gone out of my way to make sure it wouldn’t.

“I-I don’t understand…” I start. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this.”

“I’m sorry,” says Zoe. “I didn’t know how else to do it.”

“B-but how… How did you know it was me?”

“I didn’t,” says Zoe, looking at me with an expression I can’t read. “But I was always aware of the tape because it used to be in a box in the attic. I’d have great adventures going up there as a kid and looking through everything.” She ejects the cassette and runs her thumb across my scrawled handwriting on the label. “The idea of something being on here, hidden from the naked eye, was something of a fascination for me. It held a secret promise, an unknown entity that you couldn’t open unless you had the right tool.”

I dare to allow myself a smile as I listen to the musings of the post-Walkman generation, unable to imagine what it must have felt like to be presented with a reel of magnetic ribbon and be told that it had revolutionized the music industry.

“But when I was about ten years old, my mum gave me this machine to play it on,” Zoe goes on, clutching what is now considered a piece of history.

“What did she tell you about it?” I ask, unsure of how much I want to know.

She shrugs. “She just said that one day it might be really important and that I was to take great care of it.”

I stifle the urge to sob, my throat closing in on itself. “So that’s why you’re here?”

She nods self-consciously. “I guess. I don’t want anything from it. I just wanted you to know that I had it. You know, if you ever wanted to…”

I shake my head aimlessly, because I honestly don’t know what I want anymore.