Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [117]
“Then I’m pretty good, huh? Of course, I’ve been Ian for ten years now.” He nodded, a touch of pride in his voice. “I’ve got it down pat.”
“You’ve been Ian?”
“Yup. You ask anyone on the streets in San Francisco. They all know Ian Smith.” He laughed and added, “Hell, I’ve been Ian almost as long as Ian was Ian.”
“What happened to him, Zach?” Shielded from the cold by the quilt, she rubbed her hands together hoping to regain lost circulation.
“That little shit.” The smile curled into a snarl. “And he was a little shit, Kendra, make no mistake about it. Your precious little brother was a first-class prick.” He leaned forward, close to her, and she drew back instinctively.
“Look, Ian could be an annoying little kid sometimes, and yes, he could be a pain in the ass, but—”
He grabbed her arm. “I hated him. Hated every one of you. Self-righteous, sanctimonious, better-than-everybody-else bastards.”
Kendra stared, wide-eyed and dumb. She hadn’t known that a body could contain that much hatred without exploding. It whipped around her like a blinding wind and pounded at her with its fury.
“All of you, patronizing me. Oh, our poor little cousin Zachary. Let’s bring him out for a few weeks in the summer so he can see how the real Smiths live. Stupid little Zach.” He looked at her with eyes now filled with the remembered pain of the child he’d been. “I wasn’t stupid. I just never got to go to school.”
“Zach, it was never like that. Nobody thought you were stupid.” She sought to quell the storm she saw building within him, knowing if it was released, there would be no chance to survive its fury.
“Do you know that the great state of Arizona didn’t even know I existed until they thought I’d died? They never knew I was there until my mother called them in when I didn’t come home for days.” He snorted. “And even then, she told them I’d been home-schooled. Home-schooled,” he repeated for emphasis. “Want to know what I learned in my home school?”
His voice quivered with hot anger.
“I learned how to cultivate weed and how to sober up a drunk. I learned how to avoid the advances of my mother’s girlfriends—and sometimes her boyfriends, too. I learned that if I didn’t get away, I was going to die there long before I ever got to live.”
He tossed his cigarette on the ground and crushed it under his heel.
“I could have been just like you. Just as good as you. She had inherited just as much money as your father had. I used to see the checks. But it all went to drugs and liquor and supporting that flophouse she called a ranch. Everything she had went into the ranch, into having fun with her friends.”
Tears formed in the corners of his eyes and began to slide down his cheeks.
“And then I’d come East every year for two weeks, and see what it was like to be a Smith. A big, beautiful house that was always clean, always smelled good. I remember everything about that house. Everything.” He closed his eyes for just a second. “There was always good food. We went places. Places I’d never even heard of. Museums. Amusement parks. We watched television. We did things. For those two weeks I was just like you. Only not as good. Never as good.”
Zach felt in his chest pocket for his cigarettes. The bitter, brittle words came ever more quickly, and his hands were beginning to tremble. How long before the rage boiled over?
“I had to watch you to see how to act, listen to how you spoke, so that I’d know how to speak right. But Ian knew. And Ian never missed an opportunity to remind me. Made fun of me because I didn’t talk as good as he did. Because I didn’t know about all the things he knew.”
“For God’s sake, Zach, why didn’t you say something?”
“Say what? Hey, Aunt Elisa, did you know my mom’s a junkie who’s putting all that Smith money up her nose?”
“Yes.” She looked him directly in the eye. “Yes, that’s exactly what you should have said. Ian should have told us if you couldn’t. I don’t understand why he always painted such an idyllic picture of the ranch.”
“Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand? Ian loved that little walk on the wild side he