The last he’d seen of her, she’d been running away from him in the moonlight, hair bannering behind, fists clenched as though she was ready to fight if he tried to follow.

49.

EMMA

Zeb didn’t speak as she ushered him inside. He looked dazed by the transformed atmosphere of the street, the police and press, everything he’d been cut off from at his dad’s rural house. Even inside their flat, he offered one-word responses to Emma’s questions and her garbled updates about their missing neighbor. She chose not to notice that he had no luggage. Surely her boy was back and everything was going to be all right.

She began making him a cup of tea, hoping he still liked it strong with half a sugar: It felt too awful to have to check.

“How could you, Mum?”

The spoon wavered in her hand. “What?”

“The last text you sent me. Accusing Dad of all sorts.”

She dropped the spoon into the mug with a sinking feeling. At the height of her panic, tipped over the edge by the latest revolting delivery, she’d tapped out a desperate text to Zeb, a stream of reasons he had to come home. And she’d still left out the things she needed to ask him about Freya. Now he was in front of her and she couldn’t put them off any longer.

“You seriously think he put raw egg through the door? And dog shit?”

“I—”

“Why the hell would he do that?”

Because clearly he’s angry that I never told him about you. And he knows how to rattle me. He observed it firsthand for a long time.

“Is this another attempt to make me stop seeing him?”

“No—”

“I want him in my life, Mum! He’s my dad! The last few weeks have been so great, getting to know him at last. I honestly can’t believe you never let me have this before.”

He looked so sincere, it crushed her heart. She’d never realized, or never wanted to acknowledge, how much he’d lacked a dad. She’d believed she was enough, and the realization that she wasn’t had seemed to carve cracks into every part of her life. Alien Girl couldn’t raise a son, run a business, wear peacock-feather earrings, and stick up two fingers to her schooldays. How stupid to think she could.

“Has he been nice to you?” she couldn’t help asking.

Zeb stared at her as if she was mad. “Of course he has. I don’t know why you hate him so much. He only says good things about you.”

Emma turned cold. “He’s talked about me?”

“You think we act like you don’t exist? He says he wishes you and him could be mates.”

Emma recoiled from the idea, and Zeb must have seen it in her face.

“Seriously, Mum, what’s your problem with him?”