“Mr. Zig, we really have to go!” Roddy shouted from the main sanctuary.
At the sound of her brother’s voice, Nola turned, her wrist bone smashing into the sink. A shock of pain ran up her arm. She cursed herself, hoping Zig didn’t see it.
“Be right there! Getting out right now!” Zig called to Roddy as the Spin Doctors gave way to a radio ad where someone was trying to sell cars by talking at light speed. Staying focused on Nola, he whispered, “You’re worried it’s him, aren’t you? That Roddy . . . that your brother has a hand in this?”
Nola stood there, waiting for Zig to say something else, or ask the same question in a different way, which he always did when faced with silence. But for once, he just sat there on the toilet, elbows on his knees, waiting for her answer.
“Mr. Zigarowski, you ever had your past come back and surprise you in the exact moment when you wished it wouldn’t?”
Zig took a deep breath through his nose, elbows still on his knees. “Every damn day.”
For a few seconds, the two of them stared down at the cracks in the tile floor, one of them a zigzagging hairline that ran from below the sink, across the floor, all the way toward the window. Nola knew, when cracks were that long, there was no slip sheet installed on the concrete. Evidence of a deeper problem.
“Nola, what you just said about your past coming back . . . Were you talking about Roddy or Colonel Mint?”
Nola thought about that, remembering what an Army therapist wrote in her psych profile after she was reprimanded in Afghanistan for hitting her captain in the jaw with a plastic cafeteria tray. Suffers from RAD—reactive attachment disorder—seen in children who go through early neglect. Incapable of forming attachments or loving relationships.
“Nola, you were close with Colonel Mint, weren’t you?”
Mongol . . . Faber . . . Staedtler . . . Ticonderoga . . .
“I didn’t sleep with Mint,” Nola blurted.
“Whoa. No. That’s not what I was—”
Thump thump thump.
“Mr. Zig, we really need to go!” Roddy called out, pounding on the door.
Nola closed her eyes. It’d been two decades since she’d heard her brother’s voice. It sounded so different—and perfectly the same.
“Seriously, Mr. Zig—Elijah said he’s only around for another hour or so!” Roddy added, referring to Elijah King, the last name from the back of Nola’s painting. And the only person not accounted for from that night at Grandma’s Pantry.
“You should come with us. To meet Elijah,” Zig whispered to Nola, getting up from his seat on the toilet.
“Mr. Zig, who’re you talking to?” Roddy asked, fighting with the doorknob. He banged harder, the door now starting to shake.
Nola darted for the slightly open window. Time to go.
“Roddy, give me a damn minute! I’m on a call with my wife! My ex!” Zig insisted.
As Nola reached for the window, Zig put a hand on her shoulder.
In a blur, Nola spun, slapping his hand out of the way. Pure instinct. But what caught her off guard . . . She felt bad, which pissed her off even more.
Undeterred, she pried her hands into the crack of the open window and gave it a sharp tug. There was a shriek. The window opened a bit more, then got stuck. Shit. She couldn’t leave.
“Mr. Zig!” Roddy shouted, banging harder, the door about to burst.
Zig slid next to her, both of them grabbing the window’s lower sash. On three, Zig said with a glance. Later tonight, when the bodies were being carted away, Nola would think back to this moment and wish she’d said thank you to Zig. But right now, with Roddy pounding on the door, she had only one thought. Get out, get out, get out.