After Life Read online

  Again the pole splashed into the ripples, and the boat propelled further away, noiselessly. Zoe ran toward them and skidded to a stop at the edge of the river, arms flailing as she fought to keep her balance. “Wait!” she screamed.

  “Phyllis will be judged fairly,” he said, voice free of emotion. Then, in a deeper tone, almost a warning, he added, “Don’t wait so long to come back. Not everything is flesh and bone like you are led to believe.”

  ◆◆◆

  Zoe woke on her bedroom floor, gasping for air.

  Chapter 14

  Zoe barely slept. All night, she thought about that place and questioned if it were real or illusory.

  On the one hand, she wanted it to be a figment of her imagination because it was too frightening to accept it as an actuality.

  But, on the other hand, she didn’t want it to be because that would mean she was crazy like the doctors had been trying to tell her for years.

  There was no winning outcome in this scenario.

  Also spinning around in her brain was what Nan had hinted at yesterday, that there was a secret Zoe’s parents were keeping from her.

  This morning, she was going to uncover the truth, no matter the cost, because her reality was difficult enough to navigate without secrets.

  As she stepped down the staircase, she was so wrought with nerves she almost ran back up to the bathroom to vomit. But she breathed through it, talked herself down to a calmer state.

  Surely, the secret wouldn’t be too monumental? Surely, her life wouldn’t be made more difficult than it already felt by what was soon to be revealed?

  She could hear her parents in the kitchen and the clicking of game console controllers in the living room where her brothers were playing the latest offering in virtual reality. That was the best place for her brothers to be. She assumed they weren’t aware of this secret, and it was better to speak to her parents privately.

  When in the kitchen, she smiled, but it was strained.

  Her Mum made her a glass of orange juice and some toast. Zoe sat at the table across from her parents, anticipating what they were hiding from her, and her appetite dwindled.

  Too nervous to eat, she pushed her plate away.

  Fighting to control her voice, she blurted. “Are you my real parents?”

  Both her mum and dad stilled. They looked at each other for a few deep breaths; Mum's eyes watered. “Who told you such a thing?”

  Zoe didn’t attempt to hide it. She had had enough of hiding; it only added to the complication and the web of falsehoods. “Nan told me. She said you’re not my real parents…” Her bottom lip trembled, and the waver in her voice betrayed her lack of composure. “And that I should ask you about the secret you’ve been keeping from me.”

  “Oh, Zoe,” said Mum breathlessly. Her shoulders slumped as she sat in her chair.

  Dad sighed. “You deserve to know the truth.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  I think. Do I honestly want to know, though?

  It took an unbearably long amount of time before her Dad spoke again. “No, we’re not your real parents.” His voice was steady, though there was visible strain around his eyes and lips.

  “I’m adopted?”

  They turned to face each other for a few silent moments. Mum looked away while Dad met Zoe’s gaze again. “Not exactly.”

  Zoe shook her head. What else could be the explanation?

  Mum jumped in, words fast and full of emotion. “We thought we couldn’t have children and … we found you. At a park. We found you. You were left there in a basket. There was no one around. I picked you up and took you home.”

  Zoe’s mouth hinged open. She couldn’t speak.

  “We didn’t tell anyone we found you,” said Dad. “We watched the news every night to see if you were reported missing, but you never were—”

  Mum cut in. “So we kept you and raised you as our own. But we were so scared someone would find out and take you from us. We love you. As though you are our blood.”

  Zoe’s breathing was ragged. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. No wonder they were so protective of her, never leaving her alone, never allowing her to venture too far away. This secret was why it was such a fight to go study in a different town.

  And why she was nothing like the rest of the family.

  “You don’t know who my parents are? You don’t know where I come from?”

  Mum shook her head. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. “None of that matters. We love you, regardless. It doesn’t matter.”

  Zoe pushed her chair back and stood. “It matters to me.” She pressed her palm to her head. “Especially because of this … what I see … how I feel. It matters to me!”

  “This doesn’t change anything,” Dad said.

  Zoe’s chest was squeezing like someone heavy was sitting on it. “It changes everything. I must be a real disappointment to you. I bet you wish you never took me—”

  “Never!” Mum shouted, standing now, and coming to her with outstretched arms.

  But Zoe backed away from the intended embrace. She couldn’t deal with any of this. She needed space to get her head around it all.

  “We love you, Zoe. I love you so much.”

  And she loved them. That’s why this hurt so much because that was now in question too.

  In one moment, her world had taken another turn, and her understanding of reality was fractured into tiny pieces.

  Where did she come from?

  Who the hell was she?

  What was she?

  Chapter 15

  Zoe arrived back in Hampshire Saturday mid-afternoon after an awkward send-off from her parents. In a way, she was glad to leave them behind her, so she had some room to breathe.

  Every moment after the revelation about her past was so strained, she thought the air would split if she looked the wrong way at them or said the wrong thing to them.

  Sitting on the lounge in the dorm, she told Asher everything about her trip back to Somerset, how she saw Nan, had another blackout, and then about the family secret.

  “Holy fucking hell. You’re a walking freak show, Zoe Mason, without even trying,” Asher said. “It takes me an hour each morning to achieve this effect, and you just have to breathe, it seems.”

  Asher’s response was harsh, but Zoe knew there was no malice behind her words. “Freak show? Thanks a lot.”

  “You’re welcome. Take it as a compliment, because I’m jealous as hell.”

  “I’m pouring my heart out to you, telling you that my parents found me as a baby and stole me, and you’re envious of that?”

  “Yes! At least it’s interesting. I was born to parents who didn’t give me the time of day. I was raised by a series of twenty-one-year-old nannies, hired so my father could fuck them.” She sighed. “I know, I know, sounds like every other trust fund kid’s life.”

  Zoe stared at her for a moment. “Is that true?”

  She raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Yeah. Boring, right?”

  Zoe shook her head. “Kind of sad actually.”

  “I don’t waste time moping about it.”

  Zoe leaned back against the couch and blew out a long breath. “I just keep wondering if I’m insane.”

  Asher grinned so wide, Zoe wondered if she had actually heard her correctly. “I’m so glad you mentioned that,” Asher said, excitement making her voice a few tones higher than normal. “I had the subject of insanity come up in a forum a couple of months ago.”

  “Great, glad I can be so topical,” Zoe said not hiding her sarcasm.

  Asher gave no indication she had even heard her. “A denial of something, in your case, sanity, is only possible if sanity exists. So to deny your sanity, you’re accepting that you are sane.”

  The corners of Zoe’s mouth curled. “Okay,” she said slowly, not sure she even understood what Asher had just said. But one thing she had learned early about Asher was that looks were deceiving. Beneath her gothic outer shell
was a sharp mind with a strong interest in all things weird and wacky.

  “And what about this dream I had? How do I even begin to know if it were real or not?”

  Asher leaned back and lifted her leg, resting her ankle on the opposite knee. She spread her arms behind her on the couch. “I organised a good friend of mine from the local university who is studying metaphysics to add some commentary to my blog about exactly this matter.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes. “Jesus, Asher, my life isn’t a Reddit post.”

  Asher crossed her arms over her chest and arched a brow. “Do you want to hear the answer or not?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Asher grinned as she squirmed excitedly in the seat. “Nope.”

  “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “Consciousness, that part of you that is aware, is what perceives the things around you that exist. But, for consciousness to function, it requires something outside of itself. It needs things external to it to exist. Existence comes first, consciousness comes second because there can be no consciousness without something existing to be conscious of.”

  Furrowing her brow, Zoe asked, “So, this world I visited, if it exists then that’s the reason I was aware of its existence?”

  Asher nodded. “Existence, though independent of consciousness is a prerequisite of consciousness. It is not responsible for creating reality, but it is entirely dependent upon reality.”

  “So the fact that I perceived this world means that it exists? It’s real?”

  “That’s what I believe.” Asher leaned closer and smiled. “You’re not insane, Zoe. You’re just capable of seeing things someone like me only wishes to experience.”

  Zoe wrinkled her nose, biting back a teasing grin. “So this is what you read all night on the net?”

  Asher laughed. “Yep. The nature of existence. Among other things. Lucky for you.”

  Zoe smiled. “You have this incredible talent of making my problems seem insignificant.”

  “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “I mean that as a compliment. You make me feel better.” Zoe sighed then. “I try so hard to be normal, and it seems everything in my life works against that. I’m starting to think it may be an impossible quest.”

  “If you want my advice,” Asher said, not hesitating even a second to hear if Zoe wanted her advice or not, “I would leave this quest behind you. You’ll never be normal.”

  Zoe nodded, but she wasn’t ready to stop trying. While the world still rejected and was deep down scared of anything that was different, she would keep putting on her mask each morning.

  For the time being, though, she was grateful to have somewhere where she could lower her guard. Asher was responsible for this sliver of solitude.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Asher smiled. “For what?”

  “For accepting me, crazy and all.”

  Her smile broadened. “I thought you would have learned by now that if you weren’t crazy, we wouldn’t be friends.”

  Zoe laughed at the same moment her phone beeped with an incoming message. She winced apologetically at Asher and grabbed her mobile.

  THERON: Hi, Zoe. Just checking you made it home safely. And are we still on for tonight? I understand if you are not up to it, but I also think a night out may do you good.

  Zoe groaned. She’d forgotten about the party. After all the emotion of the past few days, she didn’t want to socialise, let alone go through all the anxiety that came with sneaking out.

  But she did want to see Theron and that overshadowed everything.

  ZOE: Got home an hour ago. Yes, still on for tonight.

  THERON: Meet you at the shed at eight?

  ZOE: See you then.

  ◆◆◆

  Zoe kept her head down as she rushed to the shed. Focusing on not getting caught offered respite from the unease weighing heavily on her shoulders.

  After losing Nan, she wasn’t sure she was ready to face Rhianna and Daniel, nor partying it up with drunk people. But perhaps, and she did hope, Theron was right—a night out would do her good.

  As she approached the shed, music spilled into the night—a deep, throbbing bass. An excited energy hung thickly in the air. Zoe breathed in the atmosphere, sweetly dense, as she strode into the shed and let it expand in her lungs—become a part of her.

  She clamped down on her bottom lip with her top teeth to stifle the teasing smile when she looked at Theron. He was laughing and pumping his arms in the air in time to the bass as he danced through the crowd to meet her.

  The shed was swarming with people who were either mixing drinks at the makeshift bench-cum-bar, dancing to the thumping beats, in rowdy groups gossiping, or as couples clinging to the walls and darkened corners, tongues dipping into each other’s mouth.

  Zoe noticed the stares, pointing and whispers when she walked past people who recognised her, but she ignored them. She had learned that if you fuel the talk, it grew until it burst.

  Instead, she followed the others to the bar for a drink. Theron mixed her a vodka and raspberry, and she drank it down quickly, trying to calm her nerves and capture some of the recklessness she had at the party when she kissed Theron.

  “Woah, slow down,” Theron said with a grin. “Keep that up, and I’ll be carrying you out of here. And with a girl your size, that doesn’t pose much of a problem until you add three floors of stairs into the equation.”

  “I'll be all right,” she said, taking another swallow.

  He placed a hand on her forearm and frowned. “Everything okay?”

  She hadn’t shared a quiet moment with him to tell him about all that had happened over the last few days, and, right now, she ached to go somewhere discreet and talk. But that would be the last thing he wanted to do when the intention of the night was to have fun, not wallow in her mad world.

  Zoe forced a smile onto her lips. “Fine.”

  His eyes narrowed, he stepped closer.

  She hid her incoming frown behind her cup as she sipped the sweet drink.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Her shoulders slumped, she sighed. There was no use keeping up the charade with Theron. She lowered her voice but maintained a volume that he’d still be able to hear over the music. “On top of Nan dying, I got some bad news, plus I had another black out, only, this time, I wasn’t blacked out the entire time…” She shook her head. “It’s a long story, and here’s not the place to talk about it.”

  His eyes widened. “Bad news? Another black out? Come on,” he said, nodding toward the back of the shed. “You need to tell me about this.”

  He started outside, but she gripped his hand and pulled him back. “I’m not going to ruin your night talking about all that.”

  He stared at her for a long moment as though trying to determine if she was serious or not. “What do you think I am? Some cruel-hearted arsehole who is unavailable when his friend needs him because a party is more important?”

  She frowned as she pulled on her earlobe. When he worded it that way, it did make her assumption sound unfair. But she had learned the hard way to the point that she now expected people to put themselves first—friends were only interested in her as long as she didn’t burden them with her world. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not used to people who are nice.”

  Theron frowned. “Oh, Zoe, what the hell has life been like for you?”

  “Recently, not great at all.”

  His gaze met hers unfalteringly. For a moment, she was lost in the ocean-green hue of his irises and the sincerity and empathy that shone from their depths. “If it offers you comfort, I understand what that’s like.”

  Of course he did. His life would have been horrendous after killing his brother, and then his mother hating him. If anyone understood, it was Theron.

  “Come on, let’s go talk for a bit.”

  A small cleared area to the back of the shed offered a quiet refuge under a blanket of st
ars. They sat close beside each other in the darkness, a large log as their seat, a crowd of trees as their only company.

  The night air had a chill to it, and Zoe rubbed her bare arms to generate warmth. Noticing, Theron shuffled closer and rested his arm on her shoulders. His warmth was addictive. She wanted to snuggle her head against his chest, close her eyes and forget about the world.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He smiled.

  Zoe knew that he thought she was referring to the warm arm he had offered, but that wasn’t all of it. “No, thank you for not running. Lesser men would have run the moment they knew…”

  He looked her in the eyes, his face close to hers. “What do you mean? Lesser men?”

  Zoe sighed and told Theron about her boyfriend back in Somerset, and how she was berated for being the bad one for not warning him she was about to start seeing ghosts.

  “I’m not some rude, arrogant dickhead who cares only about what other people think of me. And I’m not going to stop being friends with you because there’s some strange stuff happening in your life. I know what it’s like to be rejected over things you can’t change or ever take back, and I swore I’d never do that to anyone. Ever.”

  Theron’s voice was deep and angry. But it wasn’t anger directed at her, more toward the boy from her past who still affected her to this day.

  “Thank you.”

  Theron breathed in noisily. His body relaxed against hers on the out breath. “So tell me about this bad news.”

  Her throat ached just thinking about it, but she stayed strong as she gave a shortened version of what her parents had revealed.

  Theron was silent for a long moment. “That’s some pretty major news to get.”

  Zoe nodded, still forcing her throat to relax and keep the tears at bay. “I’m devastated.” She lifted her arms and let them fall to her lap. “I feel as though everything I thought was real is no longer.”

  “I’m sorry, Zoe.”

  Zoe shrugged, all she could do to hide the real depths of emotion that stirred like a hurricane in her body.

  “I can’t believe that they just took you and never told anyone about it,” Theron said.