6
ZANE
“S o you like your new place?” Jesse asks.
I sit at my desk, Zoom on one of my two computer monitors, chatting with my therapist.
“It’s fine. I like the area,” I say, which is true enough.
“That’s good. Have you made any new friends?”
Does the guy I’m stalking count?
Of course, I haven’t mentioned anything about Leif to her or my psych.
For obvious reasons.
Jesse doesn’t know why I moved here. Or what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks. Or that I’ve got surveillance footage up on my second monitor, watching Leif’s house. If she did, that’d be a different conversation, involving the cops, upping our therapy sessions, and getting Dr. Byce to reassess my current doses.
“No new friends, but I’m still keeping in touch with Alex and René.”
Friends I met during my 10-13.
“And work? Are you keeping busy there?”
“Yup. Enough to get by, at least.”
I used to work in IT at a company in Macon, but since I started watching Leif, I’ve been living off my savings and online tech gigs that allow me to make my own weird-ass schedule.
“And how are you managing with your meds?”
“Still taking them, if that’s what you’re asking.” She knows all about my fiasco with the Wyachet PD. And even a few of the times before that, when I foolishly convinced myself I could just drop the meds altogether. Needless to say, I’ve learned my lesson. “Dr. Byce changed my antipsychotic dosage, and the new mood stabilizer is working better than the last one.”
“So the mood swings are better?”
“Yes, that’s what I meant by better,” I snap before catching myself. “Sorry. I’m stressed. And annoyed that I had to get up early.”
I schedule these sessions at six a.m., knowing Leif won’t be up yet. To make this lifestyle functional, I try to build my schedule around watching him. But it’s been more than that. The past few days, since he’s visited with Detective Roth, I’ve been even more on edge than usual.
What did she tell him? What does he know about me?
“You can’t trust that guy,” I imagine her saying. “He had a horrible manic episode that led to him trying to get an innocent man implicated in a crime he didn’t commit.”
Shitty that if she told him that, he might never want to speak to me again. Even shittier that it’s the truth.
“Do you feel you’re having issues with your sleep cycle?” Jesse asks.
Oh, you have no idea. The only thing that’s made it all tolerable is that the security cameras have AI monitoring, so I can create a notification alarm in my app to know when Leif’s on the move or someone’s outside the house. Unfortunately, there’s also a squirrel who really enjoys hanging around his place, who’ll sometimes set off the same alarm, and fuck, that’s annoying.
“Eh, I’ll live.”
I interpret her head tilt as disapproval, and I intercept her comment. “It’s fine. I’m doing all the right things, and I’ve been eating better recently.”
“That’s good to hear.”
The chili he brought over is likely the last meal I’ll ever get from Leif Anderson, but it was sweet of him while he didn’t think I was going to murder him in his sleep. At least I got a few days of leftovers out of it.
We chat about other everyday stuff, and I keep evading what I’ve really been up to before she asks, “So is there anything you wanted to discuss today? Maybe your brother?”
“What’s there to talk about? The cops are done with him. Now he’s fucking gone, and I’ll never know why.”
“I hear a lot of anger and resentment.”
“Those seem like tame words for what I’m feeling. Hard to get over the loss of the only guy in this world who’s ever really understood what I’ve been through.”
“Is that what you expect? To get over it?”
“I just wish I had answers. It’s the uncertainty. Thinking that he could walk through the door tomorrow, or I might never see him again. It’s a fucked-up world. And a lot of times it felt like it was the two of us versus it, and now he’s gone.”
At least there are some things I can still be transparent about.
“Especially with your childhood together, I can understand why you would feel that way. It was only the two of you with your father.”
I flash back to a moment with Dad, his eyes wide in that way that made me uncomfortable as he adjusted a gun in my hand. “You did better that time. Now again. Come on. Only two kinds of men in the world: those who know guns and those who don’t.”
“Dad, you’re scaring me.”
“You need to be scared, Zane. It’s the only thing that’ll keep you alive in this messed-up world. I might not always be around to protect you guys, so I need you to be my strong one.”
But I don’t want to be strong.
I tense up.
“Can we not talk about that?”
“We’ve discussed this before. Is there a reason you’re uncomfortable with it today?”
“I just don’t want to go there.”
Jesse never pushes. I’ve seen enough therapists to know it’s her job to only talk about shit I feel like talking about, but damn, she sure knows how to pick at a tender wound.
After we finish our session, I get some shut-eye.
I’m in and out through Leif’s morning routine. I’m lucky he’s mostly a homebody—aside from trips to the store, the gym, or around the neighborhood or the park for a jog. Today he doesn’t get out of the house until four in the afternoon, when I tail him to Kroger. I keep at the far end of the parking lot, and I have no doubt he’s seen me already. I’m sure he’s noticed me whenever he’s run an errand after I told him what I was up to, but he hasn’t called the cops on me, so maybe it’s ridiculous to assume that Detective Roth disclosed all my dirty secrets.
Or maybe she’s got people tailing me right now?
Am I being paranoid?
Maybe these meds aren’t working.
No, stop it! It’s not my fault. It’s how Dad trained Mike and me—that’s what Jesse’d say.
When he’s finished shopping, I tail him back to his place, but when we get to his house, he pulls into my driveway, parking by the garage doors.
The hell?
I pull in beside him, and as we get out of our cars, he heads to his trunk. “Will you give me a hand with these?”
I stand there, watching him as he pops the trunk and collects his recyclable bags from the back.
“Or are you gonna make me do it myself?” he asks.
I join him, grabbing a few bags, noticing a rather eclectic combination of meats, veggies, and cheeses.
“What is all this for?”
“Oh, some of it is stuff I picked up while I was at the store. We only need some of it.”
“For?”
“You said you liked pizza, so I was gonna make one for dinner.”
My jaw drops, and a sound escapes like I meant to say something, but I’m speechless, so I obey his orders and help him get the groceries inside.
Like the first time he came over, he makes himself at home, storing some bags in the fridge and others on the counter. While he’s searching through my drawers, I ask, “What do you need me to do?”
He pulls a cheese grater from the drawer. “Here we go. Grate the mozzarella. I already made the dough, sauce, and some chicken earlier. I’ll get the spinach ready and then swing by my place and grab those.”
I grab the mozzarella, the grater, and a plate and start my work at the table while Leif rinses the spinach.
Despite everything that’s happened, he’s got this laid-back attitude as he makes his way around the kitchen, but I’m still on edge.
“So how did that chat with Detective Roth go?” I can’t wait in suspense any longer.
What did she tell you?
The truth?
Surely, she hadn’t told him the worst of it if he’s in my kitchen making me fucking pizza.
“It went about as you expected.” He holds the spinach in one hand and finds a cutting board under the sink with the other. “She was pretty direct about everything. Said she didn’t have any reason to believe the break-in at my place had anything to do with the disappearances. Told me we probably shouldn’t be talking anymore.” As he chats, he takes the spinach and the cutting board to the kitchen island and takes a knife from the knife block.
“That sounds about right.”
He chops the spinach as I grate, and when he’s finished, he says, “Okay, when you’re done, I’ve laid out the other cheeses. I’ll be back in a flash.”
He takes the grocery bags we brought in back to his place as I continue my work. He returns with some kind of pan or cookie sheet covered in a towel and a container of cooked chicken. He’s brought another grater, and he helps me with the cheese, sitting in the chair adjacent to mine at the table.
“I’m guessing you made the crust and sauce from scratch.”
“Is there another way?”
“Shut up. You’re just showing off. You could have easily picked up a crust and sauce from the store.”
“It’s no beef Wellington.”
“I’m gonna assume I understand the context of that statement.”
He chuckles before he turns to me. A tuft of his curly brown hair slips out from under his beanie as he flashes that beautiful, cocked smile. My gaze travels around his face, inspecting his features. It’s nice seeing him up close like this. Unlike the first times we were around each other, he doesn’t even seem to be thinking about his safety when he’s next to me. I like that he doesn’t consider me a threat anymore—at least, I can’t imagine why he’d be over here if he did.
It contrasts sharply with seeing him under far more strenuous circumstances, when I was dragging his half-naked body into the closet.
His hot breath hits my lips, and I study his mouth. What would it feel like?
He winces as he seems to catch on to what I’m doing, and I look away. I wonder what he feels, having some creeper this close to him, watching him, studying him.
“So you really do enjoy cooking,” I say. “Like, more than most people.”
“My grammy used to cook and bake with me a lot when I was younger and I’d go visit her.”
“Is that the one your parents are with now?”
He huffs. “No. That’s Grandma Linda. She’s an asshole. Grammy was wonderful. Loving. Kind. Passed away a few years ago from a heart attack. Her cooking puts me to shame.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
My words seem to catch him by surprise. “It’s okay. It’s been five years now. And we had some great times together—including finally getting her approval for my pecan pie—so that was nice.” He smirks, but I can see there’s sadness there too. That mixture of joy and pain that comes from losing those we love.
It quiets him for a bit as we finish grating. Then he places the toppings on his crust.
“Now we’ll leave it to rise,” he says, setting the oven timer. We wash our hands in the kitchen sink, and I grab us bottles of water from the fridge and join him at the table, where he’s made himself comfortable.
“So…” he says, “I have some new questions for you, now that I’ve had time to reflect on everything.”
“Yeah?” I sit in the chair adjacent to him, watching, waiting for him to get uneasy about how close we’re sitting together, but he seems unfazed.
Nice as that is, I’m tense again, wondering what questions he has for me.