It had been years since all of Orion Zoan’s children were in the same place at the same time. The last time Zina saw her father, she was a closeted woman, appeasing Orion by acting as the boy she’d been assigned. This was difficult. There was a time, years ago, when Zina hid inside her room with Sunday clothes she’d sneaked from her mother’s closet. It had felt degrading and embarrassing to dress up in public like this. It had felt like a betrayal of the ultimate sort.
If Zina could have told her thirteen year old self anything, it would have been that change was possible. With nobody to talk to growing up, much of her feelings and worries had been internalized, or admitted in anonymous confessions to strange priests. There was Mary, and Delilah - but like anyone else, Zina’s sisters had their own problems. No one wanted to feel like a burden.
As a teenager, Zina was a scared boy, possessing little dreams or ambitions in life. She was outed as gay by an elder of the congregation, which led to a long lecture by her father and Lillian. She was beat up often and predictably from bigger boys at church, who called her terrible names and left her traumatized to return. She was the third of Orion’s children - and the third to become a disappointment. It was almost to be expected, after a while. It was almost inevitable that any child of Orion’s would be loathed by him.
It was meant to be a happy day. As a young person, Zina never imagined she’d ever transition, let alone get married - but the day had come, and she was rushed. It was just like Zina, to be rushed. She prepared her makeup in the bathroom of her home, already dressed in the frilly dress she’d chosen. It was late April, two months after the death of her father, and nothing had yet come of it. Atticus had left early that morning, having agreed to get ready at the home of his best man. He was six years Zina’s senior, and had three younger sisters Zina hadn’t yet met. She wasn’t the most confident of women, nor the most adaptable. Today, she expected to be the centre of attention.
After a brief knock on the door, Mary’s voice rang through the house. She wasn’t always loud, but certainly wasn’t afraid to raise her voice when the times called for it. “Where’s the beautiful bride?” She’d brought Monty with her, and Alma too. Zina wasn’t in touch with most of her siblings - and hadn’t been since leaving the home seven years ago. Her younger brothers had tormented her during childhood, and she hadn’t quite forgiven them.
She felt beautiful, for once. When she wasn’t wearing her bright orange firefighter clothing, she was in sweatpants and coffee-stained tees. Zina never had time to dress up. She never had time to do much of anything. “Up here!”
Zina’s home had two bathrooms, and both were rather small. When River lived with her, he always had a mess strewn around the basement bathroom. She missed him: instability and messes and all. He wasn’t the type to check in, especially with somebody he’d had a falling out with. Once in a while, she heard an update from somebody else, but she hadn’t spoken to River in months. The night he ran off, she received a text from Salem informing her of his location, which she’d appreciated.
As a bridesmaid, Mary was dressed like the rest of the women. She’d helped Zina choose the lilac dresses that would best match her wedding dress, and looked beautiful wearing it. Monty had never been allowed to wear a suit before. In his sheer navy tuxedo, he looked radiant. “Hey.” Zina hadn’t gotten good at makeup until her mid-twenties, after begging a female friend to give her tips. “You guys look nice. Any updates on the case?” She’d regret asking, probably. It was all she spoke about with her siblings these days. Sometimes, it was refreshing to take a break from conversation about death and mystery.
The wedding venue was a park downtown that meant a lot to Zina. Her fiance never understood her desire for an outdoor wedding, but he usually gave in to her whims in the end. It was a nice day. She’d be out late that night.
Monty, an asocial and timid teenager, wandered slowly to the empty living room. Mary, looking weary, sat roughly on the side of the bathtub, checking her phone for updates about Malachi. “We can talk about that later, Z. C’mon, it’s your wedding. Are you excited?” Mary was never one to keep her opinions to herself. As a woman who openly distrusted Atticus, she kept silent in the company of Zina. “It’s going to be a great day!”
Zina got engaged two years ago, on the New Year’s Eve after her breast augmentation. The most liberating part was getting married as a woman. “I am excited. Lots of my friends are coming out.” She didn’t see her friends much, between her schedule and theirs. Friendships in adulthood were mostly scattered messages in between work and personal responsibilities. Friendships in adulthood were very hard to maintain.
She wondered what it was like, living alone at the farm. As a teenager, she’d have done anything to be left alone.
“You’ll never be a woman!” said Lillian, scoffing in Zina’s face after breaking her way into the teenager’s room. “You can put on my makeup and dress up in women’s clothes, but you’ll always just be a boy in a skirt.”
For a long time, this was exactly how Zina had looked at herself. Some days, it still was. Atticus was a silently accepting man, never openly expressing his support or approaching outsiders who spoke badly of her. He was affectionate in private: a man of pride and reputation, stoic and opinionated. Checking the time, Zina put her hairbrush down. “I do wish Asher could have come, though. He said he’d be here, but I haven’t heard from him.”
There was so much to do. Zina was dressed, but she’d promised friends to help set up the venue. Wedding planning was stressful enough in itself; Zina would have felt defeated if anything went wrong after all those months. Mary followed her from the bathroom, atypically quiet. “Z - ”
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“Have you heard from him?” Zina wasn’t motherly. But she worried, just as much as the next person. “Did something else come up?” Her vehicle was too small to hold two extra people. Mary, who drove an SUV, could transport them all. Mary didn’t have many friends. “I’m going to be so late. I should be at the venue by now.” She snatched her purse from the counter, the one Atticus had gotten her as a birthday gift, and smoothed her hair in the hallway mirror on the way out the door.
Mary was nearly as tall as Zina on a regular day. When she wore heels, she could pretty much look the older woman in the eyes. “We can talk about it later.” She was purposely aloof, which was unlike her - Mary had poor impulse control at the worst of times. Her vehicle was messy and smelled of apple juice: toddler toys and food scraps scattered across the back seat. She’d tried to be organized, in the past. She never had the patience or the motivation. Zina hated a mess. Mary never seemed to care. “Let’s get you to your wedding!”
Mary met Atticus for the first time when she was kicked out of the farm at seventeen. Mary made her opinions known, and Atticus demanded respect. In the first few months of Mary staying with Zina, she and Atticus argued a lot. Zina wasn’t stressed by conflict, but she enjoyed the peace. It wasn’t until Mary suggested Zina leave her fiance that she’d lost her temper.
She was a cautious driver, but let her guard down when Malachi wasn’t in the car. Some people called Mary a neglectful mother. She was a single mother: eighteen years old, underpaid and struggling to get out of bed in the morning. If it weren’t for Malachi, Mary probably would not have left the house at all.
In the back seat, Monty sat quietly with his legs crossed, the way he’d been taught to sit as a child. Zina should have stopped prying, probably. Her siblings knew something, and she hated feeling left out. “Tell me now.”
“Aren’t you embarrassed to be seen with me in public?”
When Zina began dating Atticus, she was eighteen years old and very insecure. Coming out to him had been scary; Atticus was a strictly straight man, and he had always been certain of this. Zina wasn’t stupid. She’d noticed the way his affections had changed as her transition progressed, When they’d begun dating, he’d known of her plans to transition, and she realized now that this was important to him.
When she doubted herself back then, he’d give her a reassuring smile and remind her that she was a woman, even if she didn’t yet feel like one. He wasn’t often a comforting man. Zina had learned to understand his affection came in different ways.
In the mirror, Mary glanced at the back seat: Monty looked small and tired. He was still young. Weirdly, it was hard for Zina not to be envious of him at times. Mary sighed, pulling onto the street which led to the venue. “Asher’s in custody. He was arrested last week.”
Anybody could have killed Orion Zoan. But it took a certain type of person to take another’s life, regardless of the abuse they might have suffered. Zina was starting to believe that, under the right circumstances, anybody could become a killer.
“That’s impossible.” She shouldn’t have asked. Mary warned her not to bring it up. “For what?” It was foolish to ask. It was foolish to hide from the truth.
Monty sat quietly, his hands folded neatly into his lap. Mary gave Zina a strange look, her eyebrows disappearing under mops of curly hair. “Second degree murder. I thought you’d have heard by now.”
It was quiet. Turning her music down, Mary exchanged a silent look with Monty in the rear-view mirror. It wasn’t the time for this: but Zina had brought it upon herself. Never pry into matters which aren’t yours, Orion had said once, if it’s any of your business, it’ll be told to you. If anything, he was a man who never busied himself with the intimate lives of others.
“No.” Zina had no knowledge of her father’s death, aside from what she had heard from siblings. Some liked to gossip. Others liked to lie. “He could never do that.” It was true what they said, of course. Everybody had a dark side: even those you knew and loved the most.
Mary shrugged, pulling up in front of Zina’s wedding venue. “Well, he swears he’s innocent, but you know - that’s what they all say.” She parked roughly, adjusting the bobby pins in her hair. “Anyway, we’re here. Let’s get you married.”
Today was a long time coming. Even as a child, Zina had dreamed of getting married, though she’d never been able to picture it quite like this. It was a cloudy day, but the sun poked out, and the flowers were in bloom.
“Where did you meet this guy, anyway?”
Mary was the first one Zina confided in when her relationship began. She was a blunt and intelligent preteen, better at speaking than listening. To this day, Mary had a way of judging a person without saying anything at all.
Zina was eighteen years old, and spent most of her time in her bedroom. Like all of the eldest children, she’d aged out of homeschool without ever learning a single life skill, and had had to learn all of this on her own. She and Mary sat in her room, up earlier that morning than their parents. “We met online. I haven’t actually met him in person yet.”
She wasn’t the first of her siblings to have a cell phone, and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. Most of the children had had phones sneaked in to them by older siblings, and ZIna was no exception. Mary didn’t question this - but frowned, standing to close the door. “Mom said it’s dangerous to speak to people you don’t know.”
Since meeting her fiance, ZIna had often wondered about his affections. She was an affectionate woman, and he wasn’t the same. She’d heard someone say, once, to love your partner in the way they liked to be loved, and not the way you did. She often forgot this. “But I like him.”
Mary looked like her father. She used to like being compared to the man. “Well, how old is he?”
“Twenty-four.”
At eleven years, Mary didn’t seem to quite grasp the concept of age. It was hard for children to understand things that didn’t have to do with them. When ZIna lived at home, she often grew tired of the questions from younger siblings. Kids wanted to know everything, and adults didn’t know anything close to everything.
At the front of the makeshift altar, Atticus waited for her. Zina should have been excited to walk up and lock hands with him. Instead, she felt an odd sense of obligation.