Page 91 of Cruel Dreams

My heart sinks. Zarah and I won’t celebrate our birthdays together. I won’t be spending Thanksgiving or Christmas with her and Zane, Lucille, and Douglas. It’s supposed to be a gift, having my parents back, but I’m homesick and I don’t know what to do. “I will. Tell Zarah I miss her. Zane—”

I stop because I’m not sure if he wants to hear it—that I love him, that I miss him. That sometimes pain jabs me so sharply I can barely breathe. Not when he’s working so hard to clean up the mess Clayton and Ash left behind, and not when he’s not sure if or when I’m ever coming back. Not when I don’t even know that for myself.

Zane grins. “Back at ya, sweetheart. Bye.”

He disconnects and my screen blanks out. I know he didn’t want a long, drawn-out goodbye, but the abruptness leaves an ache in my chest that won’t go away, no matter how hard I rub at my heart.

We celebrate my birthday at a seafood place, and the waitress serves me a chocolate cupcake, a single pink candle flickering in the middle of the mountain of frosting. Everyone tells me to close my eyes and make a wish, but I don’t know what to wish for. I have everything I ever wanted, but somehow it’s not enough and panic claws at my chest. My mom adds to it, saying both sets of grandparents want to meet me when I’m ready.

I swallow back the anxiety attack, and she sees it. She pats my hand and says, “It’s okay, Stella. We’ll go day by day. They understand this is tough for you, but it was hard on them, too. Remember, your abduction didn’t affect only you, it affected our entire family. We were all devastated, and they want to get to know you just as much as we do.”

I nod, my heart easing back into a slower rhythm as we step out of the restaurant. I’m grateful they won’t force me to do anything, but I understand they aren’t going to give me all the time in the world. I have grandparents who missed me. Who probably looked at every woman my age, looked into her face, studied her features, and wondered if I belonged to them.

In the weeks following Thanksgiving, Mom and I spend a lot of time together. We talk about all the years we missed, our likes and dislikes. I tell her about Quinn, but I don’t mention Zane, and she doesn’t ask. She muses that after the dust settles, they’ll sue the Blacks for damages. She says it will give me a good financial foundation to help me plan the rest of my life. I could have told her then, if I marry Zane money won’t be an issue, but I want her to sue anyway, for all the pain and suffering. I hope every parent of every child, every woman forced to serve Ash on her back, sues for restitution. I hope the Blacks don’t have a penny left after everyone is given their due.

I don’t spend all my time with Mom. My dad teaches me how to play golf. He’s a man of few words, and we play a fewagonizing games before I realize this is how he’s comfortable getting to know me.

We chat between him teaching me the rules, how to grip a club properly, and how to swing. He asks about how I grew up, my experiences in the various foster homes, where they were located in the city. The Christiansons were always well off, and Zane had a better chance of running into them than my foster families did. I know why my dad is wondering, though. Did they ever pass me or my foster parents at the store? At the mall? Had they ever passed a woman pushing a blonde-haired baby in a stroller downtown and not known it was me?

While he teases me if my ball plops into a pond or is wedged into a sand trap, he asks my favorite color, my favorite food. We talk about politics and the state of the world, and his eyes gleam with pride when I tell him about my job at Maddox Industries and renting my own apartment after I aged out of Maryanne’s house. He’s proud of my accomplishments, and he parades me around the country club, showing me off to his friends.

Those golf games turn into one of my favorite activities. A close second to the time I spend with my mom, walking on the beach, having similar conversations. She likes to ask about my foster moms, if they were kind to me—I always skim over the ones who weren’t—the boys I dated, how I lost my virginity. She’s soaking up the “mom’s stuff” and it’s a perfect complement to the time I spend with my dad. In the evenings, we hang out together, playing board games after dinner, sipping wine or coffee while the ocean waves kiss the shore.

We go shopping, and my mom and I favor similar styles and colors. She loves to buy me clothes, and jewelry too, always eyeing the ring on my left hand, but never asking. We swim and go biking along the paths near the beach. I’ve never had such carefree days.

Or such lonely nights.

I want to call Zane every day, but even if I let myself call just a fraction of the times I want, it would still be too much, and I don’t call at all.

Every once in a while he’ll text, a line here and there, hoping I’m still having fun or that he misses me, but I’m waiting for something that’s not going to happen. He won’t ask when I’m going back to the city, and he won’t ask if I’m staying here. Every choice is mine, and he’s determined not to influence them.

He messaged me a few weeks into the New Year and asked if I got my period. Before I left, we made love so many times without condoms it was almost a surprise I didn’t turn up pregnant, but I called to tell him that I wasn’t and the silence on the other end while I waited for his reply weighed me down. I don’t know if he was happy or not, he only thanked me for calling and wished me a Happy New Year.

I’d been gone three months by then, and it felt like three years.

And I’m beginning to think he doesn’t want me to go back.

Summer is around the corner, and I’ve been with Mom and Dad in St. Pete for seven months.

I try to enjoy my time with them, and I do, but missing Zane is always in the back of my mind, like a chronic pain a doctor says will never go away. Some days I can tolerate it, others I cry myself to sleep because I miss him so much and I have no idea what I should do.

My cast came off, and there isn’t one speck of evidence on my body to give away all that happened to me the previous year. It’s not lost on me I’d be preparing to have our baby if Zane and I had made one during our lovemaking. Maybe I’d be in King’s Crossing shopping for strollers and baby clothes instead of walking the beach like I started doing trying to find peace in the distant horizon.

One late afternoon, my mom finds me a good distance away from their condo sitting on the sand. If Mom and I aren’t hanging out or if Dad and I aren’t playing golf, I spend most, if not all, of my free time on the beach or sitting at the edge of the pool, my feet in the water, the way Zarah had taken to at the Crowne. My parents are careful not to crowd me and I appreciate that, but Monica is still my mother. It doesn’t matter if she didn’t raise me—her mother’s intuition knows something’s off.

We sit near the water, close enough the waves brush over our toes. The sky is a brilliant blue and there isn’t one cloud to mar the perfection. Seagulls squawk, begging for food, and families who have chosen St. Pete as their vacation getaway swarm the beach. I don’t mind the people or the kids running around clutching their buckets full of shells.

They help me feel not so alone.

And I do feel alone. It doesn’t matter how often my mom, dad, and my sister, who has visited quite a few times since I met her last fall, say they love me. I miss Zane and Zarah, I miss the life I could have had with them had I stayed in King’s Crossing.

“Are you ready to talk?” Monica asks. She’s wearing a swimsuit, but she also has on a sheer black coverup that won’t take long to dry if it gets wet. Her blonde hair flutters in the breeze, the grey streaks catching in the sunlight. They turn her hair an ashy blonde, and it suits her. She’s beautiful, and I hope I age half as gracefully as she is.

I feel selfish and horrible, looking into her eyes that are so much like mine, that finding her and Dad isn’t enough to make me happy. I dreamed about having a family for so long, or more accurately, living with the pain of knowing I’d never have a mom and dad, that now that I do, it should be enough.

Mom twists the engagement ring on my finger, encouraging me to talk. “Maybe it has something to do with this?”

Miserable, I nod, tears clogging my throat.

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