Chance Harbor (42 page)

Zoe was wolfing down her sandwich. Afterward, she wiped her mouth on her hand and went to the sink, where she drank noisily from the faucet.

“God,”
Catherine said. “It’s like having a wild dog in here, watching you eat.”

Zoe belched and grinned, then sat down again, her face suddenly serious. “I came here today because Grey says I owe it to you, and to Mom, to tell you some things. I don’t know if Mom can handle it. I thought I’d test out what I have to say on you first.”

“Lucky me,” Catherine said, feeling the color drain from her face. What if this was the moment when Zoe announced her plan to take Willow back? What would she do then?

She couldn’t afford a custody fight. Not only financially, but emotionally. She didn’t know how she’d keep putting one foot in front of the other without Willow in her life, not after five years of committing her whole heart, body, and soul to the girl. But what if the court declared Zoe a fit mother because she seemed clean and had a reasonable place to live?

And—the most frightening thought of all—what if living with Zoe was the one thing that Willow wanted more than anything else in the world? Could she actually deny Willow that?

Catherine didn’t know the answer to that. Or to anything. “I need to sit down for this,” she said, and put the plate, with the remains of her sandwich, in the trash.

“You’re throwing away the plate, too?” Zoe asked.

“I can’t deal with one more thing.” Catherine drifted back to the couch, cinching the belt of her bathrobe tighter.

In the kitchen, she could hear Zoe opening the drawer with the trash can, removing the plate, scraping it, and rinsing it. So odd to have her sister be the functional one. But Catherine really did feel helpless at this moment. If only she’d brought the wine bottle into the living room with her. Anything to knock her unconscious.

Was that how Zoe had felt about drugs, all of those years? Like she couldn’t wait for that next fix so she could leave her life, and even parts of her thinking, feeling self behind?

When Zoe returned to the living room, she sat on the opposite end of the couch again. Catherine turned to face her, forcing herself to fold one leg under the other. The pain would help keep her upright.

“Okay,” she said. “What is it?”

Zoe’s Florida tan was fading, Catherine noticed, and her face looked both younger, even childlike, and more worn, with her lips pressed tightly together and her blue eyes rimmed in black. “I need to tell you why I left,” she said.

“You already did that,” Catherine said, surprised. “You said you had to leave the people you were hanging out with if you were going to stay clean. I don’t necessarily appreciate how you cut off all contact, but I’m willing to forgive you.”

“I didn’t come here asking for your forgiveness.”

“Oh.” Catherine pressed her back against the nubby fabric of the tweed couch. “Fine. I won’t forgive you, then.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” Zoe said automatically, without rancor. “This isn’t easy for me.”

Like it was so easy for us, everything you did,
Catherine thought, but waited.

“It’s true that I left Massachusetts because I had to jettison certain people from my life,” Zoe said. “One guy in particular. But the main reason I left was to protect Willow.”

“Oh, come on. We’ve been through that. Don’t waste my time with that delusional horseshit rationalization again, Zoe. You left your ten-year-old daughter
in a city bus station
!” Catherine erupted. “In the middle of the night, all alone! You let her think you were dead. How was that
protecting
her?”

Zoe put a hand up. “Stop. I know I should have done things differently, okay? I made mistakes, and believe me, I’m sorry. But I wasn’t thinking clearly at the time. I was too panicked.”

Catherine wanted to slap her, to say,
If you were panicked, what do you think Willow was? And me? Or our parents?
“What where you protecting her from?”

“That same guy who was after me was after Willow.” Zoe’s trembling had increased; her teeth were chattering.

Catherine unfolded the blanket on the back of the couch and tossed it over Zoe’s lap. “Why was he after you?”

“I owed him money. He wasn’t a nice guy, but I could have handled him,” Zoe said. “I had ways to get money when I needed it.”

Catherine didn’t ask what those were. She didn’t want to know. “Okay. So why did you have to protect Willow from him, then? Was he threatening to hurt her to get money from you?”

“No.”

“I’m still not getting the picture here.” Catherine stretched her feet out, tucking them under the other end of the blanket, wishing she didn’t have a sister whose every story made her hair stand on end.

“This guy—his name was Tom—he was my boyfriend,” Zoe said. “I’d started to get my life together when I met him at this place where I was a bartender.” Zoe ran a hand across her face, then left it pressed to her throat, swallowing noisily enough that Catherine could hear it. “I thought he was the real deal, you know? The guy had a job—he was an accountant—a car, a decent family. Tom even took Willow and me to meet his parents one Christmas. They were good people. Married fifty years. I didn’t love him, but I liked him. A lot. It had been a long time since a guy had treated me like I wasn’t garbage, you know?”

“Did I ever meet him?”

“Yes. Once.”

Catherine frowned, thinking. She’d met so many of Zoe’s so-called boyfriends that she’d eventually stopped trying to keep track. But now she did remember Tom: an ordinary dark-haired man with a slight build. The only thing that stood out about him was his car. “He had a red Corvette, right? A convertible?”

“Yes. I brought him to Newburyport once. It was a birthday party for Dad. I wanted you all to meet Tom, to see that I’d finally started digging myself out of that black hole I’d been in for so long. What a laugh.”

“Why?”

“You have to understand. I had no idea it was happening, not until it was too late.” Zoe’s voice was so soft that Catherine had to lean forward a little to hear her. “Tom was after Willow. That’s why he was with me, I think. Because of her.”

Catherine reared back against the arm of the couch as if Zoe had struck her. “You mean he
molested
Willow?” Her stomach twisted.

Zoe’s nod was barely perceptible.

Catherine put a hand to her mouth, feeling like she might retch. “How did you find out?”

“Willow told me. He didn’t rape her, but he did touch her.”

“You left him alone with her?”

“Only a few times, because
I
trusted him, but Willow didn’t like him. She begged me not to let him babysit, but I didn’t figure out why. All she’d tell me was that he annoyed her and she was old enough to stay alone in the apartment. I usually told Tom not to come over while I was working. But this one time he dropped by while I was at work. After that, Willow told me.”

Catherine didn’t want to hear any more. “You let a pedophile take care of her,” she said. “Instead of calling Mom or me, you left Willow with a strange man!”

“I thought he was good!” Zoe said, huddling her knees up to her chin, her face miserable. “I was trying to be independent, like everyone said I should be. I had no idea he’d hurt her!”

“Because you didn’t deserve to be a mother!” Catherine threw the blanket off her legs and got up so fast that she knocked the empty wineglass off the coffee table in front of her. She paced the room. “You still don’t. You have no judgment at all! Your mind is too addled from drugs, and you’ve always been selfish besides! Willow never should have been left alone. And she certainly shouldn’t have been left with a pedophile.”

“I didn’t know Tom was like that!” Zoe shouted back. “I tried to do my best. It’s not easy, being a single mom with no education.”

Catherine stopped in front of her sister and pointed at the door. “Get out! I don’t want to hear how hard things were. You had the same start in life I did, and better than most people. Our parents gave us everything we needed. We all tried to help you, but you just threw your life away, and Willow’s, too.”

“I did not!” Zoe’s face was blotchy, her voice sharp-edged with desperation. “I tried to save Willow’s life by leaving her with you!”

“No,” Catherine said, jabbing a finger at her. “You ran away to duck out on your debts, maybe, and to leave the past behind, but only after putting your daughter in danger over and over. I’m ashamed to be your sister.” She went to the front door and held it open until Zoe walked through it, her shoulders hunched and narrow, then slammed it shut behind her.

F
rom the crash outside, Eve thought raccoons must have gotten into the garbage and tipped over one of the metal trash cans. She’d been watching television, nearly asleep in her chair. Now she sat bolt upright and muted the sound.

Her heartbeat drummed in her ears as she waited, listening. She hated dealing with raccoons. They terrified her, with their black masks and humanoid hands. Plus, they always looked like they were laughing at some secret joke. A joke at your expense. She didn’t want to go outside and chase them away from the trash, make sure the lids were securely locked in place. That had always been Andrew’s job.

Andrew. She closed her eyes and pictured him as he’d looked greeting Marta in their home, Marta towering and magnificent in her heels and red sheath. Then she remembered Marta’s grief-ravaged face as it had looked in the coffee shop.

Marta and Andrew had had a son. Had her husband offered Marta child support? She hoped so. Andrew had insisted on handling the family’s finances. Their investments. Retirement plans. Eve never would have suspected a thing. Idiot.

She should be angry at Andrew. Monumentally angry. Instead, she felt a creeping sorrow, a helpless compassion for both Andrew and Marta.

Oh, what fools they’d all been. Andrew had loved Marta. He would certainly have adored their child, his only son. And then he had lost his child in the end.

With so much pain in the world, Eve thought, it was a wonder that human beings had the courage to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

A series of loud thumps from outside startled her into action. She jumped off the couch and grabbed the broom in the kitchen. Slowly, she opened the back door and peered outside. The trash cans were still upright. What, then, was making all that racket?

Then she saw the body lying on the ground. Eve gasped and slammed the door shut, locked it, and went to grab her cell phone. Just as she was about to dial 911, though, the contours of the prone figure re-formed in her mind: a narrow waist encased in leather, a gentle curve of hip, a small white hand.

Zoe?

Eve raced back to the door, unlocked it, and yanked it open. She approached the figure tentatively as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then she squatted down next to the blond head and said her daughter’s name.

Zoe was lying facedown on the cement sidewalk that led to the side door of the house. She was breathing, thank God, her hands curled into fists on either side of her head the way Eve remembered her doing in her crib as a baby. Zoe was angry even as an infant, protesting every nap and bedtime, raging with her howls and fists. Of course, that was the age of letting your babies cry themselves to sleep; Eve used to stand in the shower until the crying stopped to keep herself from picking Zoe up.

How differently she would do things now.

“Zoe? Sweetie, are you okay?” Eve said, feeling for the cell phone in her pocket.

Just as she was again about to call 911, Zoe lifted her head, turned to blink slowly at Eve, and smiled. A sloppy grin. Drool on the pavement beneath her face. Or was that vomit? Eve sniffed and moved back a little. Definitely vomit. Was she sick? Drunk?

“Come on! Talk to me, Zoe,” Eve said more sharply now.

“Mommy,” Zoe said, and dropped her head again. “Nice Mommy.”

Eve swore under her breath, grabbed beneath Zoe’s arms, and managed to turn her and hoist her to a sitting position. “Can you stand up?”

“Stand up?” Zoe said happily, her head bobbing like a rag doll’s. “Stand up, no way!”

“Yes way,” Eve muttered. She used her legs—thank God for all that running—and managed to get Zoe to her feet, then half dragged her daughter into the kitchen. She propped Zoe up on one of the chairs by pushing it all the way in to the table, until Zoe was half lying with her head on her arms the way she used to fall asleep if anyone tried to make her do homework.

“I need another drink.” Zoe picked her head up again and looked dazedly around the kitchen.

“No. You need coffee,” Eve said.

She kept checking Zoe as she made the coffee. Her daughter seemed stable, even peaceful. Her face was damp; Eve wiped it off with a paper towel before tipping a glass of water toward Zoe’s lips. It didn’t work. Zoe just grinned, and the water ran down the side of her mouth. “Funny,” she said.

“Not really,” Eve said.

The coffee was ready. She put an ice cube in a mug and poured coffee over it, adding two teaspoons of sugar. She fed the coffee to Zoe by the spoonful, until her daughter was sitting straighter in the chair and looked shell-shocked rather than comatose. Finally Zoe picked up the mug at Eve’s prodding and drank the rest of it down. She did the same with a second mug, and even nibbled at a piece of dry toast with cinnamon sugar.

“Yummy,” Zoe said. Then her eyes filled with tears. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Mommy.”

“I know,” Eve said, and patted Zoe’s hand. “What happened? Why are you here?”

“To see you, because Catherine, she hates me.” Tears were sliding down Zoe’s cheeks, rinsing the rest of the mascara out of her eyelashes. Her face looked like she’d crawled out of a coal mine, streaked black with angry red patches, a nasty bruise on one cheek.

“Oh, honey, your sister doesn’t hate you,” Eve said.

“Yes. She does.”

“Why are you saying this? Did you see her?”

Zoe nodded in slow motion. “I told Cat what happened with Willow, why I really left. That guy, the bastard who hurt her. He’s why I left, you know? I told Catherine that, and now she says she’s ashamed to be my sister. She says I shouldn’t have Willow and I don’t think she’s right—is she? I’m her real mom! I took her baby blanket from when she was born everywhere, to Florida, even, to the shelters where I told everybody they couldn’t steal it or I’d cut them. But Cat says I don’t deserve Willow, because I keep putting her in danger. She doesn’t get that I’m not like that anymore.”

“Hush, now. Everything is going to be all right.” Eve put a hand on Zoe’s cheek to break into her dizzying monologue, remembering all of the times that Zoe had come to her like this, high or drunk or just in despair. Rambling. “Standing at the brink,” as she and Andrew said to each other: “Zoe’s standing at the brink again.”

“You need a shower and some pajamas,” Eve said. “Things will look better in the morning.”

Zoe did that slow blink at her again, processing this. “Morning is the fun time,” she pronounced, and giggled, though one fat teardrop still clung to her long lashes.

Eve sighed. “Let’s hope so, honey.”

She stayed in the bathroom while Zoe showered, finally turning off the hot water when she realized Zoe had fallen asleep standing up and was leaning in one corner of the glass enclosure. She noted two new tattoos—an owl on her lower back, Chinese letters scrawled down one arm—as she helped her into a clean T-shirt and sweatpants. Zoe’s head was heavy on her shoulder as Eve walked her into the bedroom and tucked her in, sitting on the chair next to the bed for a while to make sure Zoe wouldn’t vomit again.

Downstairs, Eve fished in her handbag for the business card Grey had given her with his number on it. She hesitated; it was late, after ten o’clock. But then she dialed with trembling fingers. Grey was close by and seemed like the only real friend Zoe had right now. She reached him on the second ring and explained the situation.

“I want us to talk to her together,” Eve said, pressing the phone hard enough against her cheek that she could feel her molars beneath her skin. “Can you come here tomorrow morning?”

“For an intervention, you mean?” he asked.

“Let’s call it a conversation. We need to help Zoe stay straight. She’s come this far. I can’t let her go again.”

“Agreed. I’ll be there,” Grey said.

“Thank you.”

Next, Eve dialed Catherine. She sounded groggy and irritable and was far less amenable to Eve’s suggestion that she come to Newburyport in the morning. “Mom, it’s almost eleven o’clock and I’m in bed,” she said. “Couldn’t this have waited until morning? I can’t think straight. And it’s not like this is an emergency.”

“You don’t know what kind of state your sister was in.”

Eve could practically hear Catherine’s eyes rolling as she said, “Oh, I think I can imagine it. Hardly a news flash if she’s drunk.”

“Catherine, that’s unfair. She’s been sober for months. Something must have happened to make her relapse.”

“Not necessarily.”

Eve heard it in Catherine’s voice, though: a note of guilt. “What happened between you two?”

“You don’t want to know, Mom. And I don’t want to talk about it. You’re on her side. I get that. It’s always been that way: you and Zoe, Dad and me.”

“No,” Eve said, though of course Catherine was right.

“Yes,” Catherine insisted. “And now you’re asking me to come over and help fix Zoe like I always have. To be her second mother. Well, I’m sick to death of that. I am beyond done with being her caretaker. Nobody has ever held Zoe accountable for her actions. That’s why she’s the way she is.”

“Are you implying that your father and I are responsible for your sister’s behavior?”

Catherine sighed. “Go to bed, Mom. I’m not playing the blame game now.”

Eve swallowed what was left of her pride and said, “I need you to be here tomorrow morning to talk to Zoe with me. Please. Do it for me, if not for your sister.”

“I don’t know if I can stomach that. I really don’t.”

“Catherine, please. Grey is coming, too. We need to work this out together. I’m not letting Zoe slip away again. I want Willow to be here, too.”

“Absolutely not,” Catherine said fiercely. “Willow’s at Russell’s for the weekend. She texted me to say she’s going straight to school from there on Monday. Anyway, I refuse to subject her to one more second of her mother’s irresponsible behavior. You have no idea how much danger Zoe has already put her in.”

Eve shivered, feeling the icy floor through the soles of her slippers. “What do you mean? What kind of danger?”

“Ask Zoe,” Catherine said, and hung up.

•   •   •

Catherine didn’t sleep well. How dare her mother ask her—no,
expect
her—to give up her Sunday to drive all the way the hell up to Newburyport, for some family intervention with Zoe that would be just as useless as anything else they’d ever tried?

She felt hot beneath the covers. She was so irritated with Zoe and with her mother, too, that the sheets might as well have been woven out of fiberglass. Her skin was on fire.

She got up and took a shower, then finished the book she was reading as the darkness finally started to lift and the sun stained the gray sky a watered-down pink. She made scrambled eggs and read the newspaper, waiting until midmorning to get dressed. She refused to kowtow to Zoe’s needs, not ever again. Especially not after her sister’s horrible revelations about Willow’s abuse.

Now she and Russell would have to deal with that, too, on top of everything else. They’d have to take Willow to see another therapist. Someone who specialized in sexual abuse. Her stomach turned at the thought. What, exactly, had the poor kid been subjected to?

It didn’t bear thinking about. Yet Catherine knew it had to be dealt with and that she was the one who would have to do it. Otherwise, Willow could end up with bigger trust issues than she already had.

Meanwhile, what good was Zoe? None whatsoever. She’d followed her usual pattern: obliterated herself with alcohol or drugs, then gone to their mother for absolution.
Oops! So sorry, Mommy! I was bad!

Fine. Let Zoe live her miserable life. Catherine wanted no part of it. She was an adult. An adult in charge of a girl, now a teenager, who was more troubled, even, than Catherine had suspected when Willow had first come to live with her. No matter how much it cost, she vowed to fight Zoe for custody if things came down to that.

Her phone rang as Catherine was leaving to meet Bethany for a walk. She was relieved to be walking outside and breathing in the cold air. “Hello?”

It was Russell. “We need to talk about Willow.” His voice was grim.

Catherine had forgotten her Bluetooth; she pressed the cell phone to her ear as she navigated the crowded sidewalk and tried to hear Russell over the steady throbbing noise of traffic. “Why? What’s going on?”

“That’s what I want to know. Willow gave Nola some lame excuse about needing to leave our place early yesterday so she could study instead of spending the day. She took off while I was at the grocery store yesterday morning. I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of this, but after thinking about it more last night, I decided that was a mistake. I need you and Willow to understand that when it’s my weekend, I call the shots.”

“What are you talking about? What are you accusing me of, exactly?” Catherine stopped walking so suddenly that a man behind her bumped her shoulder. He muttered something and kept moving past her while she stood there.

“You let her come home yesterday, and it was my weekend,” Russell said angrily. “That’s not playing fair, Catherine. You always accuse me of bringing Willow home too soon when it’s my night for dinner, but when it suits you, when you’re lonely on the weekend, you let her come home whenever she pleases.”