Page 14 of Lost
“You can do it down here while we chat,” Georgia insisted. “Why don’t you tell us about your first day?”
“Georgie,” Zack said. “I think he’d rathe—”
“You don’t have questions, Zack?” It sounded more like an accusation than a question. “You don’t want to know more about your son? About your daughter? About theirmother?”
She spat the last word out like it was poison.Oh. Zack was an idiot. He should have known. He should have realised that, no matter how put together Georgia had led him to believe she was, there was still that bitterness festering within her. She was mad.
But now she also looked guilty.
Lysander had swung on his heel without a word and darted for the stairs, taking them two at a time at a speed Zack could only dream of achieving. Zack gave his wife a look he hoped conveyed everything he wanted to say:I’m sorry, we need to talk, I need to fix this.
“Oh, no.” She sunk into one of their dining chairs, looking put out. “I’m sorry. You better get up there.”
He didn’t stick around long enough for her to change her mind. In a matter of seconds he had climbed the stairs and was on the other side of his son’s closed door. He paused when he came to it, debating whether or not he was doing the right thing here. Should he give the kid some space first? But there was no time to call Pat or Brendan to ask for their advice. He went with his heart and knocked on the door.
There came no answer. No invitation to enter, nor a demand to leave. Zack took a chance and opened the door. The first good sign came from it not being locked, the second from Lysander not immediately ordering him to get out. He slipped into the room quietly and shut the door behind him.
He hadn’t set foot in the room since he’d given it to his son, but it hadn’t changed much. It reminded him more of a hotel room than anything else — the bed perfectly made, the curtains neatly drawn, and a serious lack of personal items scattered about. Lysander hadn’t even bothered to start unpacking his things, his suitcase propped open but still mostly full in one corner.
He was standing directly across the room, staring out the window while his hands gripped the sill tightly, his shoulders tense. He didn’t turn as Zack made his way over, just went on looking out at the ocean. It was a view Zack enjoyed watching from his own room down the hall, one that never got old. He brought a hand down hesitantly on one of the boy’s shoulders and squeezed. Lysander let out a long, shaky breath.
“I’m sorry,” Zack said. “She shouldn’t have said what she did. She wasn’t thinking.” Another squeeze. “Are you all right?”
Lysander nodded. One hand relaxed and the other reached up to wipe away tears that Zack knew he wasn’t supposed to see. He kept his own hands exactly where they were. The gesture felt right, and he wasn’t being shrugged off.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“No. It’s fine.” Lysander ran a hand through his hair. “I’m...in California.”
The comment took Zack by surprise. “Yeah?”
“With my father.” Lysander swallowed, hard. “Mom...is dead.”
His voice cracked as he said it. His shoulders trembled. Zack turned him around so the pair of them were facing each other, only to find himself met with bright blue eyes that swam with fresh tears. Well, crap.
“My mom’s dead,” Lysander said again. “Dead. She’s not coming back.”
Zack knew how the kid felt. He could still recall perfectly the moment it had hit him that the band’s old drummer was gone. He wondered if Lysander’s sister had told him aboutthat. For Zack, it had taken a few days — one moment Tommy was gone, the next he was goneforever. It hadn’t been an easy realisation. The only thing that had held him together were his friends and family.
But Lysander had nobody in California. Nobody except Zack.
He swallowed his unease and pulled the boy into a hug. It was awkward at first, neither one of them knowing what to do, but eventually Lysander relaxed and allowed Zack to embrace him fully. He buried his face into Zack’s shoulder, and by the dampness that Zack felt there he knew the boy was sobbing freely now. His entire body shook with the force of it.
That was the way they remained until all of Lysander’s tears were spent. It was closing in on four o’clock by then, enough time having passed that Zack knew they were in danger of being interrupted by his ever-impatient mother. He opened his mouth to offer to head down and hold her off, but didn’t have the chance before Lysander was pulling away from him and wiping his eyes dry.
“I’m sorry,” the boy mumbled between sniffling and running his hands across his face. “That won’t happen again.”
“You have nothing to apologise for,” Zack said, and meant it. How could the kid have ever thought otherwise? “It was bound to happen eventually. Georgia should have known better than to bring it up.”
“No, I get it. She wants to know about her. You both do.”
Lysander sat down on the edge of his bed. He ran a hand through his sandy hair and looked up at Zack. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, the red bringing out the blue in a way that Zack wouldn’t have believed possible. Had his mother given him those eyes? They definitely hadn’t come fromhisside of the family.
The boy motioned for Zack to take a seat beside him. Zack did.
“You met her at a party,” Lysander said quietly, “in your senior year. She was a senior too, but she didn’t go to your school. You had a mutual friend or something. Anyway, she’d seen your band play a few times. She was a fan. So when she saw you at the party, she wanted to meet you. Get to know you. Apparently you both got pretty drunk, and you hooked up.
“Next thing you know, she finds out she’s pregnant. She knew that your band was going to make it big as soon as you graduated, and she didn’t want to burden you with a baby. So she decided not to tell you, and then moved to Wisconsin to stay with her grandfather. She didn’t want to risk you finding out.”
