She gawked at him in surprise. Then she put her own hand on his. Her skin was warm and dry, and its touch made the trembling subside. “You should eat the artichokes. They’re really good.”
Tatum blinked and stared at the plate. One single artichoke piece lay on the plate, the rest already eaten by Zoe, apparently. “I’m not really hungry, thanks.”
“You should try them,” Zoe said, her voice tense. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“Okay.” He picked up his fork and stuck it in the remaining artichoke.
“With the tzatziki. It’s the best with the tzatziki.” She pointed at the bowl, as if she doubted his ability to discern what she was talking about. “Just dip it.”
He dipped the artichoke in the tzatziki and put it in his mouth obediently. “It’s good.”
She seemed to relax as he chewed. He had to smile. He swallowed the artichoke, which really was very nice.
“I used to say horrible things to my mom when I was a teenager,” Zoe said after a moment. She speared a roasted eggplant. “Never to my dad. Just my mom. We used to get into these long screaming arguments. My dad would work, and Andrea would hide in her room, and we would just . . .” She shook her head.
“What did you argue about?” Tatum asked. He dipped a piece of bread in the tzatziki distractedly. Zoe almost never talked about her parents.
“Oh, everything. My choices of clothes, the books I read, the shows I watched, why I didn’t go out more . . . she’d start every discussion in this really delicate tone of voice.” Zoe clutched her fork hard, eyes narrowing. “Ugh, just thinking of it now . . . ‘Zoe, why won’t you put that book down and go meet a friend?’” She said the last sentence in a sweet, high, tilted tone.
“Most parents like it when kids read books.”
“I think it was my taste that she wasn’t happy with. Serial killer biographies, books about forensics . . .” Zoe had a distant look in her eyes. “Some steamy romance books too.”
“Really?”
She ate the eggplant. “I was still a teenager, you know. Then I’d say something nasty, just to get her to stop talking to me as if I was a moron. And she’d get angry and scream . . .” She twirled the fork in the air. “It all went downhill from there. She made me so furious.”
“I guess most teenagers get pissed at their parents.”
“It was more than that. I blamed them. For Glover. For not believing me. For leaving Andrea and me alone that night.”
When Glover had been Zoe’s neighbor, she’d figured out he was the Maynard serial killer. She told the cops and her parents, and no one believed her. And then, soon after, he came for her. She locked herself with her sister in her room while Glover ranted and screamed through the door, trying to break in. Finally, another neighbor had called the cops, and he’d fled. Tatum couldn’t even guess how that trauma had affected Zoe as she’d grown up.
Zoe’s voice became silent, almost a whisper, and Tatum leaned in to hear her over the music. “And I blamed them for later.”
“What happened later?”
She smiled ruefully. “Nothing. Glover disappeared. And despite what I’d told the cops, no one thought he was the murderer. They had a solid suspect. They figured I just spooked Glover, and he ran. Word got around. It was a small town. I was the crazy girl who chased her neighbor away. Kids started avoiding me at school. I mean, I still had one good friend. But I think her parents told her to stay away from me or something.”
She bit her lip, her eyes far away. Tatum’s heart squeezed.
“So anyway, I blamed my parents for all that,” Zoe said, her voice much louder. She shook her head. “Teenagers, right?”
“Yeah,” Tatum said softly. “Teenagers.”
“You know what I think?” Zoe said.
“What?”
“I think I could go for dessert.”
CHAPTER 10
The problem with maintaining control was that the pressure kept rising. He’d always known that. The term out of control was misleading. You didn’t run out of control as if it were milk or fuel. Instead, the control you maintained so carefully might shatter under the immense pressure building inside you. People were just walking pressure cookers, and if they didn’t let out some steam occasionally, they exploded.
Ordinarily, the man in control vented steam while sleeping. But that didn’t happen lately. And he had to admit that some of the pressure