“Different. Like…different.” She stares at me. “You know how you can watch TV, and they’re trying to say the show is happening in one place, but youknowit was filmed somewhere different because youknowthe plants don’t look like that there, because you’vebeenthere? I mean, does that make sense?”
I nod.
“That’swhat it felt like.” Her gaze goes unfocused. “That’s something else I haven’t thought about in years.”
“You were homeschooled, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. When Mom had to leave for work, when I was really little, I remember if Dad had to go to work, he’d take me with him to Zuzu’s. Or, sometimes, Zuzu would come stay with me.” She frowns. “But that can’t be right. Dad said he worked where Mom did, but we’d sometimes go to Zuzu’s when Dad was working.” Confusion fills her expression, and I realize this literally is something she hasn’t thought about in years.
I can imagine there are many reasons why that would be, and most of them are not pleasant.
I’m trying not to get a bad feeling about someone I’ve never met before, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask. “Did Zuzu ever molest you?” Maybe that’s why she doesn’t remember him.
“No!” She hesitates. “I mean, I don’t think so.” Another long pause, then she firmly shakes her head. “No. Zuzu never hurt me. I loved him, and he loved me like I was his daughter.” She blinks back tears. “Why didn’t I think about him before now? I remember when we had to leave his house after visits, I would cry because I didn’t want to leave. Sometimes, I’d try to run off and hide in the woods so they couldn’t find me and I could stay, but they always found me. Or if Zuzu visited us, I never wanted him to leave. When me and Mom left Cardiff, after Dad died, I cried because we couldn’t see Zuzu again or talk to him. I could never call him on the phone. Dad said our phones wouldn’t call him, even though I remember he had something like a phone at his house. It looked weird, too.”
“Weird, how?”
“I…’ She sniffles. “Weird. It was a phone, but it looked different. Sounded different, too. The tone was different. Not like an American phone, either, it was just different. I would sometimes pick up our phone and pretend like I was talking to Zuzu because we couldn’t just call him.”
She wipes away tears. “I guess I must have blanked all that out. Mom was so scared when we left Cardiff when Dad died. I asked if we were running from Zuzu, and Mom said no, but we had to leave. I asked why we couldn’t go to Zuzu’s, but she said we needed Dad for that. And that Zuzu couldn’t follow us because Dad was gone.”
“Are you certain Zuzu was real and not an imaginary playmate?”
“He was real.” She stares into space again for a moment. “Iknowhe was real.”
“Do you have any pictures of him?”
She sadly shakes her head. “I don’t even have any of my dad,” she whispers.
I grab my cell phone and text both Kylie and John with what little I just learned, to see if they can locate anyone who might have gone by “Zuzu.” Kylie and my people have been trying to retrace Sorcha Connover’s history in Wales with patchy luck thus far, outside her tenure working for the BBC as a stuntwoman. They’ve confirmed Eilidh’s birth certificate is real, but have yet to track down any trace of her father’s existence beyond that slip of paper. Parxon Smith must be a pseudonym, but we’ve yet to track him down, either. His birth, or his supposed death.
All this traveling is playing hell with my body, too. Exhaustion not quite as strong as my daily stupor is creeping in, so I cuddle Eilidh in my arms. “Rest, love,” I murmur. “We can talk later.”
“I love you, Sir.”
I kiss her one last time. “Love you, too, girl.”
* * *
Eilidh
Long after Dexter falls asleep,I lie there wide awake and feeling like a shitty human being.
Zuzu.
How onearthcould I ever have forgottenhim?
You wereeight, dipshit.
I mean, I didn’tforget-forget him, but I haven’tactivelythought about him in years. Now, I silently cry and remember the man I loved like a second father for a good chunk of my childhood. He was nevernotin my life, just like Dad and Mom. I remember how I loved exploring his home, how he had pictures of him and of Dad all over the place.
Pictures of my…
Grandsire?
Grandfather, right?
No…
