Zoe was glad Rufus was there. Her mother refused to admit that he had a debilitating crush on her, and wouldn’t tell Zoe whether she had feelings for him, too. Still, Rufus was an addition to her family, which felt good and healing—they’d gotten too used to subtraction.
The rain picked up. Zoe could feel it land softly in her hair. Her mom read a Buddhist poem about how the end isn’t really the end (“I don’t get it,” said Jonah), and put the first handful of the Wallaces’ remains into the water. She had Jonah drop rose and gladiolus petals along with it, so they’d know where the ashes were as the current carried them away. The petals were a nice touch, Zoe thought. Her mom had a way with nice touches. Watching the flowers made Zoe feel peaceful for the first time since she’d woken up. They were like a fleet of red and blue ships.
Afterward, Jonah carried Uhura to the car, whispering to her as he walked. Rufus tried to distract Spock, to get him to play, but Spock wouldn’t leave Uhura’s side.
Zoe and her mom washed the ash off their hands in the river, which was so cold that it stung.
“I told Val and Dallas everything,” said Zoe.
“Wow,” said her mother. “That was maybe a decision you and I could have talked about beforehand. It has repercussions for all of us.”
“I know, I’m sorry, but it kind of had to happen right then,” said Zoe. “Because of … stuff.”
“Okay, I trust you, Zo,” said her mom. “How’d they take it?”
“They were shocked,” said Zoe. “Obviously. Val was pissed. They’re still trying to understand it. I mean, I’m still trying to understand it. Are you ever going to tell Rufus?”
“I’m not sure,” said her mother. “It’s a lot to put on the poor guy.”
“Yeah, but if you don’t say something, the wind or the river might tell him,” said Zoe.
Her mom smiled.
“Be nice,” she said. “My number one concern is that Jonah never finds out that your dad just took off on us. I hate that you know it.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. You deserved someone better than him.”
Zoe saw how tired her mother was. How depleted.
“We got someone better than him, Mom,” Zoe said. “We got you.”
Her mother surprised her by tearing up. Zoe thought of Ripper, and how badly Ripper wanted to say good-bye to Belinda, how ashamed she was for leaving her children motherless when she murdered her servant with the teakettle and was damned.
“Sorry,” said Zoe’s mom, wiping her eyes with her fingertips. “Emotional day. All I ever wanted to do was protect you guys from—from everything. I wanted to raise you like little lambs.”
Zoe hugged her hard.
“You did good,” she said. “Baaaa.”
four
Zoe sat by the river when the others had gone. Not even two minutes went by before Ripper came up quietly behind her in the Booty Hunter hat. She must have been nervous—it was such an undramatic entrance.
“You will come?” said Ripper. “You will help me?”
“Yes,” said Zoe. “But I have to be back by midnight.”
Ripper smiled gratefully.
“And so you shall, Cinderella,” she said.
Zoe got on her feet.
“Do you think the lords will really send X for you?” she said.
“Yes,” said Ripper. “I believe I have demonstrated what a nuisance I can be if they don’t. Dervish, in particular, loathes the idea of us dead people running around up here. He fears we will leave evidence that the Lowlands exist. Now, you have flown with X before, have you not? You know what is involved?”
“Yes,” said Zoe. “We call it ‘zooming.’ I throw up sometimes.”
“Lovely,” said Ripper. “Please bear in mind that this is my only dress.”
Ripper lifted her, and they shot into the sky.
The sunlight made Zoe’s eyes ache, and the air screamed past her ears. But nothing was as overwhelming as the memory of lying draped, just like this, in X’s arms. She fell asleep as they flew, her senses shutting down. Her last thought was that Ripper was carrying her toward him.
Zoe woke hours later to the buzzing of her phone.
Ripper had laid her down beneath a tree in a meadow. She’d even folded her hands on her stomach, which was sweet, though it made Zoe feel like a corpse. Zoe sat up in the grass, so woozy she felt as if she’d been drugged. The afternoon was nearly gone. Ripper stood nearby watching for threats. Zoe couldn’t see her face.
Texts from Val and Dallas had been multiplying for hours. Dallas had sent five variations on Are you SAFE? Val had sent eight in a row saying, Are you INSANE? Zoe texted them back hurriedly (Safe! Sane!), put the phone away, and rubbed her face.
The air was warmish and humid, and the meadow showed signs of spring—little flecks of green, like a drawing being colored in. Zoe could see a white church steeple in the distance. A stripe of blue-gray ocean. A handful of sails, tiny as commas.
“Where are we?” she said.
“Massachusetts,” Ripper answered, without turning. Her voice sounded troubled. “Near the sea.”
“You didn’t have to let me sleep,” she said.
Ripper turned her head a few degrees.
“I myself can never sleep and I like to watch others at it,” she said. “I am always looking for clues as to how it is done.”
Zoe walked toward her warily. The dry grass rose nearly to her knees.
“Why Massachusetts?” she said.
“Why indeed,” said Ripper. “Twenty-three days after my death, my husband married a horrific American and brought my children to this … this colony.”
Ripper took the Booty Hunter cap off finally, and flung it away.
“Did you love your husband?” said Zoe.
“X asked me the selfsame question once,” said Ripper. “Why is it that people in love need everyone else to be in love—or to at least aspire to the condition?”
Zoe said nothing, afraid that she’d annoyed her.
“I most certainly did not love my husband,” Ripper continued. “The fact that I murdered a serving girl with a teakettle speaks to my mood at the time.”
Ripper stared off at the trees that separated the meadow from the town and the ocean beyond it. Zoe didn’t know whether she should ask another question, whether talking more would help Ripper or hurt her.
“How do you know what happened to your children,” she said carefully, “if you were already …”
“Deceased?” said Ripper. “I asked a bounty hunter to investigate the matter. When he returned, he assured me that I did not want to know.” She paused. “Has anyone ever—in the whole history of mankind—been told they didn’t want to know something and not immediately wanted to know it all the more?”
“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” said Zoe.
“My son, Alfie, died in a fire,” said Ripper. “In a stable.”
She explained that the boy had rushed in to save his horse, which was named Equinox. Ripper had obviously told the story many times, but it seemed as though every word was still a thorn in her throat. Alfie managed to rescue Equinox—the horse bolted free—but he himself got trapped under a beam. Belinda ran into the flames to rescue her big brother.
Zoe could see the muscles in Ripper’s neck tighten.
“Belinda failed because she was very, very small,” Ripper said. “I suppose X never told you any of this because you were so busy smothering each other with your bodies?”
Zoe wanted to make Ripper smile, if she could.
“There might have been some smothering, yes,” she said.
“My husband’s new wife apparently grew bored of hearing Belinda wail about Alfie,” Ripper went on. “She shipped her off to a place with the ponderous name of The Cropsey Asylum for the Criminally Insane and Others Needful of Rest and Restraint. I know we are close, for there is an unbearable knot in my head. It is nothing supernatural, just a mother’s ache, yet it tells me that …”
Zoe took out her phone to search for the asylum. Ripper saw what she was doing. She reached out to stop her.
“It tells me that I do not have the fortitude I imagined,” she said. “You can lie in the grass a while longer, or I can spirit you home. But you need not find Belinda’s grave, for I am too weak to face it.”
Ripper clenched her jaw to keep from crying. Zoe went to hug her, and felt Ripper’s lean frame tremble in her arms. When they stepped apart, Ripper tugged at her dress to straighten it.