Chance Harbor (30 page)

“When’s the baby due, Cat?” Zoe asked.

Zoe was the only one who’d ever called her by that nickname. As a child, Catherine had liked it because “Cat” matched “Zoe” in its snappy size; “Catherine” sounded like the name of a spinster in long taffeta skirts.

“January,” Catherine said, “and no, I don’t want to talk about it.” She glanced at her mother, whose eyes were still closed, and wondered if they should wake her to make sure she wasn’t slipping into a coma. No, that was ridiculous. Her mother was probably just exhausted after that long drive alone back from Canada.

“Fine by me,” Zoe was saying. “But for the record? I never liked your husband. He always had a stick up his ass.”

Instantly, Catherine was infuriated. It was fine for her to criticize Russell—she’d earned that right as the jilted wife—but not for her sister. “How dare you? Russell has always been kind to you! Even when you got drunk and nearly ruined our wedding because you thought it would be so, so funny to take over from the DJ. Even when you couldn’t bother to show up at Willow’s christening because you were too high. He’s worth ten of you!”

“Probably. But he’s dull as lint, Cat. No offense, girlie girl,” Zoe said, glancing at Willow.

“It’s fine,” Willow said.

Catherine was about to light into Willow, too, ready to say,
Shame on you, after all Russell has done for you
. But by the way the girl was staring at her slender hands like she’d never seen them before, Catherine could tell Willow was hurt by Zoe’s words. Russell had been her dad for five years.

“Willow, honey,” Catherine said. “It’s getting late. You should finish your homework and get ready for bed. School tomorrow.”

Willow didn’t move. “I’ve already done my homework. Can’t I stay up a little longer?”

“At least go upstairs and pack your backpack,” Catherine said, trying to muster up the energy to inject a little parental authority into her voice, despite feeling weird about doing this in front of Zoe.

“If I do that, then can I stay up? Please?”

Catherine nodded. She couldn’t stand another confrontation with anybody. Not tonight.

Zoe didn’t glance up as Willow slid off the couch. After she’d gone upstairs, though, she turned back around, her lips curving into a smile. “Willow looks good.”

“No thanks to you.”

Eve’s eyes flew open, startling Catherine into wondering if her mother had only been pretending to be asleep. “Girls. Be nice,” she said, before her lids fluttered shut again.

“
Yeah
, Cat,” Zoe said. “Play nice.
God
. This is just like all those friggin’ car rides up to Chance Harbor, right? Remember how Mom and Dad used to roll up a blanket to shove between us on the backseat, just to keep us from tearing each other’s hair out?”

“Of course I do.” Catherine massaged her scalp with both hands, trying to ease the tension. Her scalp was so tight, it felt as though it might crack open like an egg.

“I miss that place,” Zoe said. “So beautiful up there. How’s the house?”

“It’s for sale,” Catherine said.

“What? It can’t be!”

Zoe looked upset, but she was a drama queen, Catherine reminded herself. A chameleon. “Yes. Mom feels like it’s too much to keep up without Dad, and I’m in no position to take it on.”

Neither are you
, she wanted to add, but stopped herself. Instead, she said, “Where have you been, Zoe? What’s kept you so damn busy that you couldn’t at least let us know you were alive?”

Zoe shrugged, a movement so fluid that Catherine imagined muscles rippling beneath the black leather jacket. “I was busy surviving.”

“Tell me,” Catherine said, not nicely.

Zoe sighed. “Look, it’s the truth. I was surviving. Struggling just to get by, you know.”

Catherine willed herself not to lose her temper. “No. I don’t know. Start at the beginning.”

“Fine. After I left the bus station in Boston—”

“—after you
abandoned your daughter
, alone and terrified, you mean,” Catherine interrupted.

“I did
not
abandon her!” Zoe insisted. “I’ve explained this to Willow. I paid one of my friends to stay in the bus station with her until you came.”

“You
paid
her? Some friend. Why didn’t you just leave Willow at your friend’s house? I could have picked her up there.”

“Her house wasn’t safe at the time,” Zoe said, then surprised her by adding, “Mine wasn’t, either.”

“Why not?”

“Trust me. You don’t need to hear all the sorry details.” Zoe tugged at the zipper of her jacket, yanking it down and then up again with a ripping sound. “Anyway. I knew Willow would be okay until you came.”

“What if I hadn’t come, though?” Catherine demanded. “What if I’d been away? Or too busy?”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t be too busy. Not for Willow.”

“All right. Go on. I still don’t understand why you had to disappear.”

“I couldn’t get clean if I stayed here.”

“But you had every opportunity,” Catherine said. “Mom and Dad must have paid for rehab three times.”

“More like six, over the years,” Zoe said. “But every time I got out, I had the same friends. And I was weak.”

“What made you think you could go away and be strong?”

“I didn’t
think
,” Zoe said. “I just hoped.”

“Okay. But none of this explains why you let us think you were
dead
.”

“I was afraid that if Mom found me, she could convince me to come back and I’d do it all over again. Also, I knew I couldn’t leave Willow unless I left completely, you know? That was the hardest part.” Zoe looked like she might cry; her cheeks had pink blotches beneath the delicate freckles.

Catherine looked away. She refused to feel sorry for her thoughtless, selfish little sister. “Did you have a plan?”

Zoe snorted. “Me? A plan? No. I just kept heading south. Not for any reason, except I was friggin’ sick of being cold.”

“Where? Virginia? Florida? Texas?”

“Florida,” Zoe said. “I knew I couldn’t waitress or do any job where I had to have papers. So I picked fruit and cleaned hotels. Sometimes I pretended I only spoke Spanish. That made it easier, if people thought I was illegal. Other times it was cool to speak English where nobody else did. I never had trouble finding work. And it’s amazing how cheap life is if you don’t have a car or rent, and if you’re not supporting a habit.”

Despite herself, Catherine was impressed by her sister’s survival skills. “Where did you live?”

“Homeless shelters at first, when I could get a bed. Or I couch surfed with people I met. Everybody’s got a couch, you know? After I found steady work, though, I got sick of putting up with other people’s crazy shit, so I rented rooms by the week. Most people didn’t ask questions as long as I had cash and looked like I washed my hair.”

“Have you been in Florida this whole time?” Catherine couldn’t believe it. If this were true, how was it possible that nobody had been able to find Zoe? Not the cops, not the private investigators. Not even their dogged mother, who had driven up and down the entire East Coast looking for Zoe.

She had felt sorry for her mother then, so strung out on sorrow, yet determined not to give up, even after Dad announced Zoe was a lost cause. Catherine had agreed with him. It must have torn her mother apart, being alone like that in her search.

Eve’s lips were slightly parted in sleep, her face as relaxed and innocent as Willow’s. Maybe this deep resting state wasn’t due to her mother’s head injury or the long drive back from Canada. Perhaps it was more to do with knowing that her youngest child was safe.

“Yeah, Florida was pretty good,” Zoe was saying. “It’s a place filled with people running away from something. Fit me like a friggin’ glove. I hung out in the Keys for a while. Loved having water all around. People with planes instead of cars in their garages for a quick getaway. Lots of friends like that. Very useful. But I got spooked when some dick came around to the hotel I’d been working for and started asking questions. I knew the manager wouldn’t out me—we were tight—but I figured it was time to move on. So I went to Miami, found jobs picking fruit on the farms, cleaned rooms in a hotel. Eventually I hooked up with some gypsies.”

“Gypsies? You can’t be serious.” Even as she said this, though, Catherine could imagine it: Zoe in a turban, dancing with a tambourine. Not much of a stretch, considering how Zoe had looked in those dreadlocks and shawl when she first saw her with Willow.

“Totally serious. They were actually from Massachusetts, originally. That’s how I made it back. I was working with this one girl at a hotel, Sadie. She and her brother had an extra room in their house in Homestead and let me crash. Perfect place, smack in the middle of an orchard, all the mangoes you could eat, nobody around to ask questions. They’re gypsies. Well, half. I think their dad’s actually Cuban. Anyway, when Grey—that’s Sadie’s brother—said he was coming back to Massachusetts, I hitched a ride.”

A shadow crossed her face, and Zoe abruptly stopped talking in a way that made Catherine wonder whether something had chased her out of Florida, too, just like something—or someone—had made her decide to disappear from home. “What made you come back? What’s your intent and purpose?”

Zoe laughed. “What are you, a cop?”

“I want to know what you’re doing here.” Catherine glanced at their mother and lowered her voice. “What you’re after.”

“I’m not after anything!”

“You must be. I
know
you.”

“No, you don’t,” Zoe said. “You know who I
was
. You don’t know who I
am.
”

“People don’t change.”

“Oh, really? Are you saying you haven’t changed?” Zoe demanded. “Or Russell, either? That’s rich. What about Mom, huh? Is she the same since Dad died?”

“Don’t you dare bring Dad into this.”

“Why not? What makes him so special? He was your hero, not mine. He never loved me the way he loved you.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“No. It’s not. You were his princess.” Zoe laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “You were ‘everything a girl should be,’ he used to say, ‘and better than any son, too.’ But Dad looked at me and saw nothing but trouble.”

“Because you
were
nothing but trouble. You brought that on yourself! You made it very, very hard to love you, Zoe. You have to take some responsibility for that.”

“Oh, I do. But you have to ask yourself why I did the things I did. Have you ever bothered to think about that?”

Catherine shrugged, uncomfortable now. This should be her domain—she had worked with children for more than twenty years—not Zoe’s. “I believe kids are who they are at birth,” she said. “I’ve seen some of my patients for their entire lives. And you know what? Their personalities are hardwired.”

Zoe shook her head, the curls uncoiling like little yellow ribbons. “You can’t discount environment.”

“Fine. But you can’t use your environment as an excuse for how you acted out. You and I had exactly the same one.”

Now Zoe had the nerve to look smug. “Oh, really?”

Catherine was growing impatient. The last thing she needed was to hear Zoe rationalizing the foolish choices she’d made. “Get to the point.”

“The point is that our parents never treated us the same.”

“Of course not. You can’t discount chemistry, even in families,” Catherine said carefully. She knew she was treading on dangerous ground and really didn’t want to be there. “That goes back to my argument, right? Personalities are hardwired from the start.”

“But if a kid is rejected over and over, if a child is told so many times that she’s bad or useless or even silly, what do you think happens?”

Catherine didn’t think she’d ever seen Zoe looking so sad. She didn’t like it. Or trust it. “Whatever,” she said. “What happened to us in childhood is something we’re all supposed to learn from and move on. Which brings me to the same question: Why are you here?”

“To see Willow, of course. And to let you and Mom know I’m okay. I felt bad about the way I vanished.”

“And it only took you five years,” Catherine said. “Golly.”

“Don’t be sarcastic. This is hard enough for me as it is.”

“Hard enough for
you
?” Catherine asked in astonishment. “What about us? Did you ever think, even for one moment, about what kind of effect your little disappearing act had on us? Did you really believe you could just waltz back home and take over as Willow’s mom? Or as the favorite daughter?”

Zoe smirked. “So you do admit our parents loved us differently.”

“I never said otherwise,” Catherine said, humiliated to know that her sister could bring her so easily to this same boiling point:
Mom loved you best
. Jesus. They were pitiful, both of them. “Go on. Tell me what you want. Money?”

“No, I don’t want money.” Zoe put her hands up as if Catherine were threatening her with a weapon. “Christ. You really are something. I told you. I came back for Willow.”

“Well, you can’t have her. You can’t wreck her life again. I will fight you tooth and nail before that happens.”

Zoe unwound her legs and stood up to stretch, revealing a flat, tanned stomach over her jeans. Catherine had to look away. There had always been something magnetic, even feral, about her sister. That hadn’t changed. Zoe was graceful, but aggressive in her movements. Her eyes, a shade darker than Catherine’s own blue, were watchful but commanding. It was unfair that she should possess so much power and abuse it.

She was like Nola that way, Catherine realized. Maybe that was another reason why she found it so hard to accept that Nola was now in her life.

Zoe wasn’t much taller than Catherine, maybe five foot six. But in her black boots and leather jacket, and with her narrow features sharply defined by that short, tousled hair, she looked like a video-game street fighter. “I did not wreck my daughter’s life.” Zoe’s voice was calm, but her lips were pressed into an angry line.

“Oh, no?” Catherine folded her arms tightly against her body, feeling her heart bump against her chest. “What do you call it, then, when a mother’s lifestyle is so risky that her fifteen-year-old child is
still
anxious about being left home alone after dark?”