Page 45

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CALIFORNIA, 2011

Neither of us says a word for the first twenty minutes, but with another hundred miles to go, one of us has to break the deadlock.

“So, is your mother …” The word gets stuck in my throat. “Is she still alive?”

There’s a deafening silence and I don’t know what I want the answer to be.

“No,” says Zoe, quietly. “She died about six months ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I offer.

“She was too young, but cancer doesn’t discriminate.” I can feel her turn to look at me. “But then, you’d know that.”

The image of my own mother, smiling in happier times, makes my throat tighten.

“So, that’s why you’re doing this now?”

“I guess,” she says. “The tape became sort of folklore in our house. She always imparted its importance to me, telling me that I should follow wherever it takes me, whenever I was ready.”

“And it brought you here?” I ask, the pair of us daring to look at each other for a fleeting second.

“It felt like the right time,” she says. “Everything seemed to conspire toward us coming together.”

“Why weren’t you honest about who you were when you first came to see me?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I suppose I was scared of how you might react. I didn’t want to dredge up all the bad memories of a time I assumed you’d rather forget.”

I can’t help but be touched by how considerate she is, even though her undeserved empathy feels like shards of glass in my throat whenever I swallow.

I reach across the center console, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “Your father would be proud,” I choke, unnerved by the feeling of her skin against mine. His skin against mine.

“When did you know?” she asks in a small voice.

I wipe away the errant tear that I can’t stop from falling onto my cheek. “If I’m honest with myself, I think I probably knew the very first moment I saw you. Something about your eyes, the shape of your jaw, burrowed its way into my subconscious, although I was too scared to give it air to breathe.”

“What are you frightened of?”

I snatch back my trembling hand. If only she knew.

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” she says.

I refrain from asking why it seems that trouble has followed me around ever since she arrived.

“So, what do you want?”

There’s a lengthy pause. “Answers, I guess. I want to know what really happened to my father. What happened to you. Why you ran away.”

“I didn’t run away,” I say, far too sharply.

“It seems like you did, from where I’m sitting.”

Is that honestly what she thinks of me? But then I pull myself up short. Why would she think any differently? All she’s undoubtedly been told was that I left the very first moment I could, taking my version of events with me. Is it any wonder then that she wants to know more, needs to know more, about the event that has shaped her life and so many others’ since?

“After the trial, I just…” My voice wavers as I remember taking the stand, knowing what I knew and waiting for it to be revealed. “I just needed to get away. I was still getting over what had happened, trying to hide myself away, but the trial meant that my entire world erupted all over again. It was day upon day, week after week, of questioning and speculating, both in court and in the media. They were desperate to tarnish your father’s character, needing to prove that he deserved what happened to him, but I refused to give them what they wanted.” I look to her. “Do you know why?”

She shakes her head.

“Because he wasn’t entirely the man they made him out to be. Your father was a lot of things, but know this: had he lived to see you, to know you, he would have loved you unreservedly. He didn’t deserve to die, and all of us who were there that day were accountable in some way or another. Every one of us played a part in what happened: me, Michael, Ben, my father, my sister… We were all to blame in some way or another, and it haunts me every day to know that it would have taken only one tiny variable to stop it.”

“That’s what I’ve always been told, too,” says Zoe sadly. “That but for a particular sequence of events, none of it would ever have happened…”

I nod regretfully, ruing the sacrifices we’ve all had to make since that day, not least Zoe, who has missed out on so much since being born among the ruins of a shattered dream.

“I’m so very sorry,” I manage. “If I could go back and change it, please know that I’d do so in a heartbeat.”

“Funny—my mother used to say the same…” says Zoe, half smiling at the memory. “She always wished that things had been different. That she could have given me the real family she thought I deserved.”

“So, she was honest from the outset?” I ask.

“As soon as I was old enough,” says Zoe, nodding. “It was little things at first, like your tape in the attic. I don’t think she was expecting me to find it—it was pretty well hidden—so when I started asking questions about it, I think she was taken aback. I was still young, and I don’t think she was ready. But bit by bit, year after year, she opened up a little more, slowly revealing my history and telling me who I really was.”

“She sounds like an incredible woman,” I offer, though I can’t help but admit that it pains me. “And to be so generous as to help you find me…”

“Oh, she didn’t help me find you,” says Zoe. “Aunt Cassie did.”