The quiet, p.30
The Quiet, page 30
I turned to send Lita an accusing glance, wondering how she’d been able to keep Zac out of so much of the story she’d told me on the way home.
Lita looked put out and moody over my glower but not very apologetic. I spun back to Grace and motioned my arm toward her car, then tried to pull her that way.
She laughed briefly. “I take that to mean you’d like to go with me to visit him.”
When I nodded happily, she fumbled. “Uh, well... It’s fine with me if…”
She cast another glance toward Lita, to which my grandmother growled, “She’s not allowed anywhere near your boy.”
I lifted my hand to block her from my peripheral vision and kept steady eye contact with Zac’s mamá as I motioned toward her car once more.
She smiled back softly. “I see why he likes you so much.” She inclined her head in consent. “Alright, dear. You can come with me.”
“Mariana,” Lita called after me, almost sounding sorry and pathetic.
I glanced over and let out a sigh of impatience because I loved her, no matter how wrong she’d been for deceiving me the way she had. Hurrying toward her, I opened my arms, and she sobbed out her relief before hugging me back.
“Thank goodness, you decided to see reason.” When she pulled away and cupped my face in her hands to smile at me, I smiled back through fresh tears before shaking my head at her. Then I cupped her face with my gauzy hands and kissed her forehead before taking a measured step back, separating myself from her.
Her expression filled with shock. “Mari…?” she started, but I turned away and slid into the passenger seat of Grace’s car when she opened the door for me.
My home was with Zac now.
Grace hurried around and climbed behind the wheel next to me before starting the engine.
“I found a lawyer in North Platte willing to come and defend Zac’s case,” she explained as she backed the car from the driveway. “She should be over before the end of the week.”
I nodded, glad to hear that at least, though I wasn’t happy about him being behind bars in the first place. And because of me, too. That was just plain ridiculous.
“Want to know when I realized just how important you were to him?” his mother murmured as we started up the street.
When I glanced over at her, she nodded, more to herself than to me. “It was the night you went missing. After years and years of him begging me to leave Peril with him, I finally decided that wasn’t such a bad idea. Except when he got home that night, and I told him to start helping me pack, he told me he wouldn’t be coming along.” She sent me a small smile before adding, “Not unless you came too.”
I swallowed and brought my hands up to my chest when it started to ache from missing him.
“It shocked the socks straight off me,” Grace went on. “Nothing had ever made him want to stay here before. And that’s when I knew… You weren’t just some idle distraction for him, and my boy was no longer a boy.”
I sniffed and wiped at my eyes with my forearm, more than ready to see him.
When she parked in front of the courthouse, next to Lita’s car, I cringed, feeling a moment of guilt for making my grandmother walk all the way back through town before she could return to her vehicle, but then I leaped from my seat as soon as Grace opened the door for me, and I raced up the front walk.
Zac was here, inside this very building.
Grace caught up with me at the door and pulled it open for me. Once I stepped inside, however, I realized I had no idea where to go, so I let Zac’s mamá take the lead, and she marched forward and around different corners before we found the sheriff’s office.
When he saw the two of us knocking on his open door, he did a double take, then surged to his feet.
“Grace! Miss Ruiz? This is…well, this is quite a surprise.” Glancing at me, he asked, “Did you think of some way to tell us more since our meeting earlier?”
“Meeting?” Grace repeated in surprise, her eyebrows lifting before she pointed between the two of us. “You mean to tell me that you’ve already seen her since she got back, and it never once occurred to you to let her know where Zac was?”
The sheriff pulled back in surprise. “Well now…” He glanced at me questioningly before returning his attention to Grace. “I guess I just assumed she already knew.”
“Well, she didn’t,” Grace told him bluntly. “And now she’d like to see him. We both would like to see him, if you’d please.”
“Uh…” The man seemed momentarily discombobulated before he checked his wrist and said, “Sure… I guess. I mean, you’re well within visiting hours. I can take you down now, if you’d like.”
“Yes, we would. Thank you,” Grace told him astutely.
The sheriff led us to an elevator, where he took a key card from his belt and shoved it in a slot in the wall before pushing a button for the basement. After the doors shut and we creaked down to a lower level, the doors reopened into a dark, dingy, dungeon-looking place where one older woman was manning the book-in station.
“Gladys,” the sheriff told her shortly. “Topper has a couple of visitors. Can you take these two ladies back to see him?”
“Well, lookie who’s back from the dead,” the woman who must be Gladys greeted with a big smile as she stood from her stool and came around her counter to greet us. “Top’s gonna be real surprised to see you, I’m sure. He begs for news every time I go back there.”
“So no one’s told him she was found?” Grace asked in surprise.
Gladys only shrugged. “Wasn’t my place.”
“Oh, geez,” Grace muttered. “You people, I swear.”
Gladys didn’t seem to care what Zac’s mamá thought, though. She walked on ahead of us, whistling merrily to herself.
Grace and I shared an incredulous glance, and if I were a cartoon character, she would’ve seen smoke rising from my ears. I just couldn’t believe no one had told him that I was alive and okay.
My poor, poor Zac.
I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he saw me.
In front of us, Gladys led the way to him, pausing at doors that needed to be unlocked until finally, we entered a room that had three metal-lined cages in it.
“Yo, Top,” she called, moving to the only one that was occupied.
I had to step inside after her and squint toward the far left and then into the darkened corner before I could make out the pitiful excuse for a cot with a figure lying on it with his back to us.
“I told you,” he grumbled half-heartedly from a rusted voice. “I don’t want lunch.”
“Well, good. Because I didn’t bring any,” Gladys shot back. “But I do have a couple of visitors here for you. You want those?”
“What?”
He sat up and turned toward us, only to gasp with a jaw that dropped nearly to the floor.
“Mari?” he rasped, twisting himself into such a pretzel in his rush to hurry from the bed that he tripped and sprawled face-first onto the floor before popping up and standing with wide eyes locked on me.
“What’re you…? Oh my God. You’re here.” Then he paused, unsure of himself. “Are you really here?”
Tears filled my eyes as I nodded and hurried toward the bars so I could poke my arms through them and wave him forward.
“You’re…” He zipped toward me, reaching back, only to slow to a stop when he saw my bandaged hands. “Jesus. Are you okay? What did she…?”
He cradled my gauzed hands gently as he looked them over, then he lifted his attention to my face. “Fuck, I can’t believe you’re here. I mean, I’m not just imagining this, am I?”
I shook my head, laughing and crying at the same time. Then, I waved my arms, encouraging him to bring the rest of himself in for a hug.
He continued to stare blankly at me for a moment—his eyes sunken and red as if he hadn’t slept in decades—then his face went tomato bright before he burst into tears. “God… Mari…” he sobbed and rushed into me, curling his arms through the bars so he could hug me back. “Are you okay?”
When I nodded, he heaved out a pained sound. “I don’t see how. Your face is all black and blue. Your hands—your only way of talking—are out of commission for God knows how long. And you were just kidnapped by a freaking maniac. I don’t see how you could ever be okay again.”
I shook my head to reassure him that I was fine now—I was in his arms, so I knew everything was going to be better now because I was finally home again—only to get distracted by how truly thick and long his beard had gotten.
I patted it with my gauze balls, intrigued.
Zac chuckled lightly through his tears and ran a hand over the beard too. “Yeah,” he admitted huskily. “I need another haircut, huh? But on my face this time.”
I shook my head immediately, and he lifted his brows in question before saying, “What? You like this?”
When I nodded, he let out another watery laugh, only to lean his face against the bars and exhale before closing his eyes. “Then I’ll never shave again.”
I leaned my face in too, and our brows were barely able to touch.
“She got back yesterday,” Grace spoke up as we continued to hug.
Zac glanced over to furrow his brow in question at his mother.
“But she couldn’t ask about you, and no one told her where you were. She didn’t learn until just a few minutes ago, when she defied her grandmother and came to the house, looking for you. Then, she immediately demanded to come see you with very insistent arm motions. Her grandmother was against the idea, but… You’ve got a stubborn girl here, Zacchaeus.”
Tearing his gaze from his mom, he looked into my eyes and swore, “She’s perfect in every way,” only for his expression to fall as he added, “But your family’s right to hate me and blame me for this. It was my fault. I just left you down there in the dark, alone. I left you, and she got you. And it’s all my fault.”
Shaking my head, I reached for him, but he pulled back and hugged himself.
“I’m sorry, Mari. I’m so sorry. I never, ever, meant for you to get hurt.”
I shook my head harder to disagree with his apology—because there was nothing to apologize for—but he nodded right back.
“Yes. She never would’ve gone after you in the first place if it weren’t for me. She hurt you because of me. No matter how you look at it, it’s my fault. You even tried to warn me about her, and I didn’t listen. God… I thought you were dead. I thought you were gone forever, and it was all my—”
I pressed gauze against his lips to muffle him.
But he only looked at me over my bandaged hands and started crying harder. “Christ, Mari. I love you so much,” he admitted as he gently took my wrist and freed his mouth so he could keep talking. “And I’m so glad you made it back. You have no idea. I was sick with worry for you. But…” Shaking his head sadly, he rasped, “I think you need to turn around and go. Leave and never look back. You need to get as far away from me as you can.”
“Zac,” his mother scolded softly. “Don’t say that to her.”
“Why not?” he demanded. “I’m bad luck, and I bring it down on everyone close to me. I mean, look at you. Your life has been shit ever since I came into it.”
His mother shook her head insistently. “No. That’s not why—”
But he didn’t want to listen. “I got her hurt,” he cut in harshly. “I got her kidnapped. She was taken away from her family because of me. And I…” Spreading his arms wide, he took a step back and let out a bitter, self-degrading laugh. “All I know how to do is get myself arrested.” His gaze sought mine beseechingly. “You don’t deserve that in your life. You should have only the best of everything, and that is not me.”
I stamped my foot, growing impatient. But he seemed so stubborn and unmovable about this.
Fear skated up my spine, worrying me into thinking I just might lose him after all.
When I whimpered, he stepped forward and reached up to barely dust the bruise on my face with the tips of his fingers before he lovingly whispered, “What do I have to say to get you to listen to me?”
Say? Looking into his eyes, I realized there was nothing he could say to change my mind. I had to be the one to say it to change his.
“Zaa…” I started slowly, wincing over how awful my voice sounded. “Ah…” I started, already slaughtering such a short, one-letter word. But I kept going anyway. “Luff…ye.”
A thick tear raced down his cheek. “I love you, too,” he started. “But this is bigger than that. This is about keeping you happy and safe and out of harm’s way.”
Pfft. If he really wanted to keep me happy, then he better pull his head from his butt and listen to me now.
“You…prom…praw…permissed,” I told him, surprised by how well I was doing this. When my life had depended on it in Dodge City, I hadn’t even talked this well.
But the idiot didn’t appreciate my miraculous abilities like he should. He only shook his head, not understanding. “I promised what?”
“Keep me…in…any…way.”
“Fuck,” he breathed before his face went red, and his eyes filled with more tears. “I did promise to keep you anyway, didn’t I? No matter how much I didn’t deserve you.”
I nodded my head.
And he shook his. “But I got you hurt.”
I sighed, frustrated.
“You were right in that poem you wrote,” he insisted. “This place is going to ruin us. So it really doesn’t matter. Even if we do try to stay together, Peril is going to do everything in its power to keep us apart. We don’t stand a chance here.”
“Then…” I started in again, breathing out and trying to relax my mouth between each word because I had only one or two viable syllables left in me before my brain overloaded. “We…go.”
“Go?” Eyebrows lifting, he straightened before glancing at his mother to see if she’d heard the same thing he had. Then he looked back at me. “You want to go?” he asked. “As in…leave town?”
“That’s what it sounded like she said to me,” his mother chimed in.
He glanced at her briefly, then turned back to me.
When I nodded, he leaned closer. “You want to leave Peril…with me? Just…start over fresh. Somewhere else?”
I nodded again, and he let out a hoarse sob as if he were too afraid to hope that this was real. “Are you sure? Your entire family is here.”
My brain was too tired to try to form any more words, so I merely placed my bandaged hand over his heart, and thankfully Grace translated this one for me.
“Not her entire family,” she said softly. “You’d still be with her.”
His face filled with emotion as I nodded to confirm what she’d said.
Besides, it wasn’t like I was going to cut my relatives out of my life completely. I was sure I’d come back and visit…after I forgave them for being liars who tried to keep me away from the love of my life.
Most children moved out and away from home when they reached a certain age, anyway. I guess my age was now.
“So…” Zac must’ve been having trouble understanding the concept because he had to reword it about a dozen different ways. “When I get out of jail, you just want to go away with me?”
I smiled and grabbed his face with gauze through the bars before pulling him in for a kiss. “Yesh,” I told him against his mouth. “Yes!”
When he kissed me back, I knew I’d won. And everything was going to be okay.
EPILOGUE
ZAC
There I was, trying to take a nice, quiet nap on the beach, under a nice, warm sun, stretched out on my nice, fluffy towel, shirtless and only wearing a pair of board shorts, when a shadow moved over my closed eyelids, stirring me from my half slumber.
I would’ve passed it off for mere cloud coverage if I hadn’t heard the soft pitter-patter of footsteps in the sand nearby followed by a muffled giggle and then a whispered, “Shh…” But realizing who the culprits were, and that they most likely planned to attack, I pretended to sleep on until I heard one of them hiss, “Now!”
And that’s when I sprang upright, roaring in intimidation and sweeping out my bare arms to catch the two little rug rats who’d dropped the buckets of ocean water that they’d been about to dump on me, as they screamed in surprise and tried to scamper away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked, hooking my hands around their waists and tugging them back to me until both girls piled onto my lap in a tangle of flailing arms and legs.
“Daddy!” they screeched, trying to escape as I held them prisoner and tickled them into submission, screaming and giggling out their pleas for me to stop.
“Think you could pull one over on me, did you? Well, think again, ladies. No one bests the dad.”
“Stop, stop,” Sophie begged. “Come on, Dad, please. I’m going to pee my pants.”
“Me too,” her little sister piped in, and I finally had mercy, letting them both go. Except neither girl scrambled off me, seeking freedom.
Instead, they glanced at each other before silently agreeing to gang back up against me once more, and they attacked, trying to tickle me. It didn’t work so well; I had them right back under my control and loving every minute of our game.
When our tickling session turned into hug time and the three of us were simply lying in a heap together, our arms wound around one another, as we panted to get our breaths back, I kissed both of their brows and finally asked, “Did you catch any crabs with Grandma?”
They’d left with my mom over an hour before, declaring they were going to bring in enough for supper, but I’d had my doubts.
Until Ana sat up grinning and showing off the gap where she’d just lost her first tooth. “We got two buckets full,” she announced proudly.
My eyebrows shot sky high. “What? No way.”
“Yes way,” Sophie countered. “Grandma said she’d never caught that many before in her whole life. She called us her good luck pennies.”
