She searched his face. “He‟s really all right?”
“He is fine.” Gau‟s threat beat in his brain. “I will take them from you. The woman and the child both.” His jaw set. “I
swear it.”
Elizabeth exhaled, her shoulders relaxing. “The clinic closes at two. Say, sometime after that?”
He would have another day with her, he thought. The relief he felt was new and troubling. “Tomorrow afternoon,” he
agreed. “We will go to the beach.”
Her brows drew together. “The beach? But . . .”
“To talk about Zack,” he added.
“All right,” she said slowly. “If that‟s what you want.”
It was not what he wanted at all. But he owed her the truth.
He could not rob her of their son without offering her even an explanation in return.
The next afternoon, Zack loaded groceries into the back of an SUV while its owner watched him closely. Like he was
going to steal her beer or break her eggs or something.
“Thank you for shopping at Wiley‟s,” he said before he closed the hatch.
Which was stupid, they were on a fricking island, where else was she going to shop? But Wiley said to say it, and Wiley
was paying him, so he did.
He pushed her empty cart out of the way while the SUV backed up. The overcast parking lot was still half-full of cars from
the two o‟clock ferry. He jammed carts together, feeling the impact in his shoulders. He was stiff and sore from the night
before, from hauling boxes and from the other thing.
The shark thing.
His throat closed. The parking lot blurred like the world underwater. Blinking fiercely, he grabbed at another cart. What
was he going to do? He couldn‟t escape what he was anymore. Couldn‟t hide. Not with Morgan here, watching him. Knowing.
Sweat broke out on his face. What if Mom found out? Or Em. He felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it, guilty and
excited and miserable. He‟d always known he was different from the rest of his family, but at least when his dad . . . when Ben
was alive, he‟d felt like he belonged.
Where did he belong now?
He should never have left them alone last night, his mother and Morgan. The words ran together in his head,
hismotherandmorgan , making him uneasy in a different way.
Had he told her yet? Maybe not. Probably not. She hadn‟t said anything this morning. Just drank her coffee and packed
Emily‟s lunch and asked him the usual mom sort of questions. But it was getting harder and harder for both of them to pretend
that everything was normal. That he was normal.
Morgan‟s deep voice rolled in his head. “You are not a freak. You are finfolk.”
Whatever.
At least while he was at work he could forget for a little while. He rolled the carts toward the store entrance, letting their
rattle jar his arms and fill his head.
He wasn‟t going to think about it. Any of it.
He dumped the carts at the front of the store. While he was outside loading groceries, Wiley had taken his place bagging
for the older cashier, Dot. Which meant . . .
Gritting his teeth, Zack walked to the station at the end of Stephanie‟s checkout line.
She tossed her red-black hair without looking at him. “Where were you?”
“I had to take some woman‟s groceries out to her car. Paper or plastic?” he asked the customer.
“Oh, plastic.”
Stephanie‟s hands never missed a beat, pushing, weighing, ringing up the items sliding past her register. Her nails today
were painted dark purple. “I meant last night.”
His mind slid away from the memory of the orb and the cold, terrifying rush through the water.
“I was here.” He piled cold cuts into a plastic bag, topped off with napkins. “Working.”
“After work.”