“Are you sure? Z?”
But Zoe was already leaving, throwing the motel room door shut behind her as she descended into the night and toward the rental car.
***
Uncle Mike’s house was the same as she remembered it. It was a little more weather-worn, maybe, and there were signs of a fresh paint job that had been done long enough ago to be peeling already. The car in the drive was a newer model. Still, it was recognizable, in that way that houses have of staying the same under the same ownership. Five familiar windows looked out at her like eyes, around the mouth of a door of the same width and diameter as the one in her memory.
It had crossed Zoe’s mind that Uncle Mike might have moved away. He and Aunt Julie had been very settled in Capten, as far as she remembered, but that didn’t necessarily mean the intervening fifteen years hadn’t changed that. But somehow, standing here and looking up at the house, she knew they were still here.
This had been a poor idea. What was she thinking, going to see a family she had been estranged from for so long? It was a fishing expedition, really: to ask about her mother, because even if she never wanted to see her again, there was still curiosity there. Somewhere, buried down deep, she still cared at least a little bit about whether her mother was doing well.
No; it wasn’t worth it. She shouldn’t be here. Zoe turned and opened the door of her car—only to hear another door opening close by.
“Zoe? That’s you, isn’t it?”
Zoe turned again, looking up at her Uncle Mike, framed by yellow light spilling out from his open doorway. He was older than she had expected. Her memories had been distorted by the passage of time, and maybe that same time had not been kind to Mike. His hair was almost all gone, the tufts that remained thin and gray, and he had developed a paunch that stuck out in front of him like a ball. She wondered if he had not lost an inch in height.
“It is me,” she said, drawing in a deep breath of the cool night air. She had been ready to make her escape, but it seemed that that was no longer an option.
“What are you doing, standing outside in the heat?” Mike asked, though Zoe couldn’t help feel it was a mechanical question, one of rote rather than of feeling. “Come on inside.”
As Zoe approached and stepped over the threshold, Mike disappeared in front of her down the thin hallway she remembered; dimly, somewhere in the family room, she heard him saying, “It is her, Jules. I told you.”
Zoe followed him, automatically kicking her shoes off by the rack full of others and pulling the door closed behind her. She padded in her socks through to the cramped family room, full of sagging couches and armchairs that had seen better days. Aunt Julie was there, also a victim of middle-aged spread—at least thirty pounds since the last visit—and with graying hair. Under two expectant pairs of eyes, Zoe chose the seat that appeared to have the least number of stains on it.
“It’s been a long while since you were in these parts,” Aunt Julie said. “What, twenty years?”
“Fifteen,” Zoe corrected her. She had been sixteen years old when she emancipated herself from her mother and left. She hadn’t ever intended to look back. The uncomfortable sensation of being back here, a place that ostensibly had no bad memories but was linked to so many others, made her feel like the walls were crushing in on her. She could barely breathe, let alone figure out how she was supposed to act.
“Fifteen years, and not even a call,” Aunt Julie tutted. “Your mama always did say you were ungrateful.”
Zoe’s blood ran cold. If she had expected a warm welcome, this was certainly not it. She didn’t even know what she had expected, come to think of it, but this was no happy reunion. And something about that past tense, too…
“I have been making my way in the world,” she said, by way of an excuse, she supposed, although it didn’t sound strong to even her own ears. She shifted the front of her jacket slightly, letting it fall open to show the badge at her hip. “I am an FBI agent.”
“You one of those FBI working the killings that happened here?” Aunt Julie asked. When Zoe nodded, she tsked in return, shifting one weighty hip against her seat. “Took a killing to bring you back here. Huh. Some family visit.”
“Kept you busy for fifteen years, bein’ FBI, did it?” Uncle Mike grunted from his battered armchair. He looked as though he were sinking into the fabric, like it might just end up swallowing him whole. Zoe was about to agree, until she realized the statement was a judgmental one, not one of sympathy.
She looked at the floor for a moment, twining her hands together, trying to think of what to say. “I put everything into my work,” she said. Then, realizing that it made her sound like a friendless old maid who had wasted her life, she added: “And I am seeing someone.”
That had not improved things; she felt it as her words faded into the air. Everything she said seemed to be the wrong thing. Julie and Mike were staring at her from under furrowed brows, their eyes beetle-black and hard, examining her for any sign of defect. She was sure that they saw many.
“It’s a shame you couldn’t find your way back here before your mama died,” Julie sighed. “Leaving her all alone at the end like that.”
A jolt ran through Zoe’s heart, a squeeze of pain that was entirely unexpected. Her mother was dead?
“When?” she gasped out, the only thing that came to her mind. If she had been more in control she might have tried to appear unaffected and unsurprised, then looked into the death records herself. She didn’t have that presence, not in the moment.
“A few years back.” Julie shook her head and took a sip of some kind of brown liquid from a cheap, picnic-style glass, the happy design on the outside chipping off. “No one even knew how to reach you. She would have been mortified to know you didn’t even come to her funeral.”
“I did not know.” Zoe’s voice came out as a whisper, and she tried to gather more strength. “No one called.”
“You never called anyone here, honey,” Julie told her, the “honey” coming out like a sneer instead of a term of endearment. “How was we supposed to know where to get you?”
“The phonebook,” Zoe said, before she could stop herself. “Social media.”
“Don’t get smart with us,” Uncle Mike grunted. “You wasn’t here, and that’s the long and short of it. Running off like that after your mama spent so much time raising you. Without a backward glance. Some gratitude, hm!”
Zoe wet her lips, trying to think her way through this. Everything they were saying crowded in on her, like waves one after the other, threatening to drown her. None of them had seen what it was like for her, just a child, forced to believe that she was a product of the devil. Persecuted for an ability she had no control over.
She thought about the spare room in her childhood home. How whenever someone was in it, the punishments stopped. Walking on eggshells and knowing she would mess up anyway. Trying not to let on that she was different. Dreading the day the guests left and she would kneel all night on the cold floor, whispering her prayers over and over until her mouth was dry and her lips cracked and bleeding.
“How did it happen?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. She could not see Julie and Mike, not anymore. She was looking down at their carpet, an interlocking woven pattern formed into heraldry and foliage, an imitation of a historic pattern. She knew that carpet. She remembered there were sixteen deer between the sides of the room, at least that you could see. Under the furniture, she had once calculated, there were seven more.