It felt strange to be married. Zina had no time for a honeymoon, no time to take a single moment to herself outside of work. Fifteen or so years ago, she argued with her father about careers and children - a rather strange thing for a grown man to argue with a preteen about. It was her duty to find a wife, to make money for her children, to teach her sons to be strong and manly. Zina had never wanted kids. This was a discussion she’d had with Atticus shortly after they began dating. The couple lived far too busy a life to raise children - and Zina had just never been interested.
It had been assumed by most that Samantha had killed Orion and Lillian, despite her DNA not matching that at the crime scene. Even after Asher’s arrest, it was believed by many that Samantha had framed him - but she was nowhere to be found, and there was no proof of her ever having been at the scene at all.
“How did it happen?” Zina asked Mary, who sat in her living room with Malachi. Atticus loathed children, refusing to visit even with Zina’s siblings or nephew. The toddler played on the floor, keeping to himself. “There’s no way Asher could do that. He’s the most passive person on the planet.”
The trial was coming up, according to Mary. At just eighteen years old, Asher was looking at a lifetime behind bars, and that didn’t seem right. A person could torment the boy daily, and he’d politely put up with it.
When Malachi tugged on Mary’s pant leg, she sighed and pulled him onto her lap. “They found his fingerprints on Dad’s back and the walls of the cellar. Apparently there was all kinds of DNA linking him to the crime.”
“That makes no sense.” Atticus, sneaking in the front door, swept past the living room without saying a word. “Are you sure?”
Malachi whimpered. Mary thrust a toy at him, impatient. “I’m just telling you what the police told me. That’s all I know. Anyway…” She shrugged, setting the toddler back onto the floor. “When’s your honeymoon?”
Before the ceremony, Zina and Atticus had agreed on a prenuptial agreement, although they had argued before this. Zina didn’t take her husband’s last name, and he’d seemed offended by this, but it was a woman’s right to choose.
“We’re not having one.” She was stressed from a long day at work, and from being scolded by a superior. “Don’t have time. Don’t have the interest, really.” Her phone was ringing, flashing on the edge of the coffee table. “Maybe we’ll take a trip on one of the weekends we both have off. Maybe not.”
The phone stopped ringing, and then started again. Few people phoned Zina more than once at a time. Few people phoned her at all. Mary stood, bouncing the whiny toddler on one hip. “You gonna answer that? Stop whining, Malachi.”
It was an unknown number, which called back each time Zina didn’t pick up. “You know, maybe if you didn’t get so impatient with Malachi every time he whined, he wouldn’t whine so much.”
Mary scowled. “Yeah, come back and give me advice when you have kids.” She glanced at Zina’s phone, which now rang for the third time. “Answer your goddamn phone, or I will.”
“Jeeze.” Snatching the phone from the table, Zina shuffled across the room. “Grump.” She was irritated; whoever was calling certainly was persistent. “Hello?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” said River, several months after moving out on his own, when he and Zina met up for coffee. “I just feel so angry, all the time. It’s like one minute I’m happy and laughing, and then out of nowhere, I wish I was dead.”
She hadn’t known where he lived at the time. When he wasn’t with her, she never knew where he was. “Have you talked to a psychologist?”
He was tired. River was always tired, even when he got a full night’s sleep. “No. What are they going to do? Tell me I’m crazy, like everyone else?”
“You’re not crazy,” she wanted to say. He didn’t listen. You could reassure River of the same thing a million times, and he’d never believe it. “They can help you, River. If you think something’s wrong, you should talk to a professional.”
The caller had a tired voice, strained, calling from a place which whirred and beeped. “Zina?”
She paced, covering an ear to quieten the sounds of Malachi’s whines. “River?”
Somebody spoke softly on the other line. “I’m at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Can you come?”
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Already, her keys were in her hand. It was bad timing, certainly, for she’d had a long day, and had looked forward to an evening of relaxation. “What happened?” Mary listened, although she’d never particularly cared for River. He’d never much cared for her, either. “River, why are you at the hospital?”
He was quiet. She hadn’t heard from him in a while. Despite the circumstances, it was nice to hear his voice. It sounded hoarse, and soft. He mumbled; Zina could hardly hear him. “I took too many painkillers.”
He’d done this before. Only last time, he hadn’t done it on purpose. Leaving Mary in the living room, Zina made her way to her little car, which had just gotten washed that afternoon. “Why did you do that?” He was quiet; she drove quickly. “River? Why did you do that?”
He heaved a long sigh, which rumbled in Zina’s ear. “Because I fucking hate myself!” There was a shuffling noise. River spoke softer, once again sounding tired. “I have to go. Just come to the hospital.”
Zina and River were only a year apart. Perhaps that was why they had spent so much time together growing up. It had always been important to him that she loved him. The night Zina spoke to him about moving out of her house must have been the biggest betrayal of their relationship. It was hard to understand River’s mind, even to the people who knew him best. Zina had been practising understanding him since she was old enough to know his brain worked differently.
“Hi,” she said, arriving at the admissions desk, “I’m here to see my brother.”
The first time Zina questioned her identity, she was seven years old. She remembered looking into a mirror and feeling strange, as though her body didn’t belong to her, even though she’d known it did. There was always an odd sort of disconnect between Zina’s reflection and her perception of herself, and nobody ever understood until Monty. She existed to support him when nobody else would, to be the voice of understanding and comfort: a voice she’d never had herself. Perhaps, now that their father was dead, Zina could adopt him. Perhaps now he could finally begin to become the boy he saw inside his head.
“River?”
She’d been directed to his room. They all looked the same: small and white, impersonal, designed for ease over comfort. He sat in a thin blue hospital gown, speaking quietly to a nurse at his bedside, who fiddled with the IV machine he was connected to. When the nurse left the room, River sat up to smile sheepishly at ZIna. “Hi.”
“What did you do?” It had been a while since he’d been a hospital patient. Zina was here then, too, to keep him company. “Are you okay?”
He grumbled, taking a sip from a water bottle on the bedside table. “I told you. I took too many pills. I took them with alcohol. I went into cardiac arrest. I don’t know who called the ambulance.”
His hair, which used to be a bright green, was now a faded orange, and fell into his eyes. “Why, though? What were you trying to accomplish?” Zina knew. Sometimes, someone needed to explain things themselves. “Don’t you live with Salem? Why didn’t you call him?”
“He’s working.” River’s eyes were red, and appeared puffy. “He’s always working.” He sat up further, tugging on the sleeves of his hospital gown. “I wake up and hate myself. Go to sleep, hate myself. I had a mini stroke two days ago. Apparently I have Grave’s disease. It doesn’t matter.” He wouldn’t look at her. “I’m a fuck-up.”
“First of all,” Zina wasn’t openly comforting, or supportive. She talked sense into people by using tough love, the way her mother had. “We’re all fucked up in some way or another. You’re not special.” He blinked, peering at her like a child. “The rest of us had to stay alive through tons of shit. You have to stay alive, too.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“Too bad.” Zina had a message from her husband. He wasn’t a man who worried. In her rush out the door, she’d forgotten to say goodbye. “You have to.”
A nurse bustled in, and then out. River shook his head. “I can’t. I’m just stuck inside my head all the time. Happy, and then angry, and then scared, and then fucking depressed.” Everybody reacted to trauma in different ways, after all. Trauma didn’t make a person strong. Surviving it did. “You have no idea what it’s like to want to die everyday.”
“Oh, really?” Zina could tell you stories. She’d lived a thousand times. “Dad used to say he’d rather die than give in to my delusions. I’d stand in front of the mirror, sobbing, begging to look like all the other girls. When Mom went out, I’d sneak into her room and steal her clothes to try on in secret, even though I know I’d get slapped if she found out.” So many people thought they knew her. There was so much more to people than what they let you see. “I used to think I’d rather die than be trapped in a body I hated.” The room was quiet. River was quiet, too. Reliving the past wasn’t painful anymore. At one point, it took all of Zina’s strength not to break down and cry.
He was easy to read. Zina was good at reading people. “How come you never told anyone any of that?”
“Because -” The past didn’t matter. Sometimes, the only reason to stay alive was to prove to yourself you could. “Complaining about it doesn’t make it better.” It was strange. Two people could be exactly the same age, and be at such different points in life. But nothing changed overnight. Three years into her transition, Zina still had moments where she felt crippled by insecurity. “There are really great things waiting out there for you, River.”
He stared at her. He could try to be apathetic, but she knew him better than that. “What if there’s not?”
Zina shrugged. “Well, I guess you’ll just have to stay alive and find out.” All River really needed, like anyone, was to be loved. When ZIna was a sad, lonely teenager, all she needed was to be loved too.
“Does it ever really go away?” Monty would ask, staring at himself sadly in her standing mirror. “The self-hatred? If I start transitioning, will it fix all the things I see that are wrong with me?
“No,” said Zina, each time. “You have to learn to love them on your own,"