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somehow lived had vanished from Peg’s
brain years ago. It was almost easier to believe that this was some
imposter. That was absurd, though. She had Zoey’s face. She had
Zoey’s tattoo. Besides the teeth her body was exactly the same…
    Exactly the same. In her shock and disbelief
Peg hadn’t even realized the other thing that was incorrect about
this picture. Perhaps she’d been thrown off by the filth all over
her, but Zoey didn’t appear to have aged a day. After eleven years
she still looked like her nineteen year old self.
    Peg tried to dismiss that idea. That could
only be her short-circuiting mind playing tricks on her. As soon as
she got Zoey cleaned up she would see the differences, she was sure
of it.
    “I didn’t call 911, just like you asked,” Peg
said. “But I really think that’s a bad idea. The police need to
know.”
    “You can’t,” Zoey said. “I’m ripe.”
    “You’ve got that right, sis. But that’s
something we can fix.” She held out her hand. “Come on. I can clean
you up.”
    Zoey hesitated. “The fruit is all grown and
it’s ready to be picked,” she whispered.
    Peg summoned up some of that deep inner
patience she’d been forced to learn when she became a mother.
“Zoey, you’re safe now. I promise you. I won’t let anything happen
to you.”
    You were the one that let something happen
to her the first time , she thought.
    She closed her eyes for a moment, did her
best to force the negative thoughts from her head, and then opened
them again. She moved her hand closer to Zoey but she made no
attempt to touch her. Something about her body language suggested a
gazelle that had heard something suspicious in the brush and might
bolt at the slightest provocation.
    After several tense seconds Zoey put her hand
in Peg’s. Peg gripped it firmly and Zoey squeezed back, although
thankfully without the same bone-crushing strength as earlier.
    With the same care she had taken when holding
her son’s hands during his first steps Peg led Zoey out from
between the furnace and water heater. Zoey didn’t seem overly weak
but she took every step with extra care as though she expected the
ground to sink beneath her at any moment. She stopped for no
apparent reason at the bottom of the stairs to stare into space,
and Peg could only get her going again by taking both her hands and
leading her up the stairs in an awkward backward sort of crab
step.
    She didn’t give Peg any more trouble until
they reached the top steps. Peg came out into the hall but Zoey
pulled away and pressed herself tight up against the wall just
beyond the door.
    “Zoey, please. We have to get you cleaned up
if…”
    “Too bright,” Zoey murmured. “No more light.
Faced it already. No more no more.”
    Peg frowned and looked around in the hall.
She didn’t even have the light on in here. It was actually slightly
darker than on the stairs. “Honey, I don’t know what to say. We
have to have some light.”
    “No! No more! Walking in the day felt bad.
Please. Make it go away.”
    “You mean… the daylight? Do you want me to
close all the windows?”
    Zoey sighed and her face looked almost, but
not quite, pleased. “Yes! You understand. Thank you. Thank you,
Peggy, thank you.”
    If it meant she could get Zoey moving again
then Peg didn’t see what harm there would be in humoring her. It
was probably a good idea to keep anything going on in here to
themselves for now anyway. Most of the neighbors seemed nice
enough, but yet another lesson she had learned the hard way in the
last eleven years is that, no matter how large or small the town,
you could never quite trust the people living next to you to mind
their own business. In a town the size of Oconomowoc one could be
sure that the local busy-bodies were always on the lookout for some
bit of juicy dish that they could spread around, and Peg was sure
that a naked girl walking around her house covered in shit would
qualify.
    She went around the whole lower