After All These Years | ✔

23 - ZAC

Zac turned the boat to face the middle of the vast Lake Galle. Carlie sat happily on the knee of Arthur, playing with her buckles that wrapped around her stomach. She was making weird kissing noises as she pursed her small lips, joggling now and again as Zac turned the boat beneath her.

They were armed with fishing rods and bait, the perfect recipe for a long, sunny, autumn day on the water. But Zac was still wary, consciously aware of the risk he was taking by being out on the water. He wore a grey hooded jumper; the white strings tied to shelter his profile from any unwanted sights. And he persisted to wear it, even though the sun was shining bright and reflected with heat off the surface of the water.

He was always going to be precautious as he travelled into the open, for leaving his little house in the forest and placing his safety on the line was something that could potentially take his supposed 'freedom' away for a very long time.

The recent newspapers also held something different to the first time they had shown his face. The police included in their weekly article the description of their search for a young woman and a young child. Those they suspected to be with him. Yet little did they know that searching for the 'young woman' would be pointless. Little did they know that she had died before she even had a chance to be connected to the child they mentioned.

It is for this reason that Zac cursed the day he found the changes they had made in the article. To him, their words bordered on insulting and disrespectful, because they just didn't know what he'd been through. They didn't know why he did the things he did, and how the consequences of his actions sent him into a downward spiral of regret each and every day.

Zac squinted at the horizon, clenching his jaw with one arm moving the motor that pushed the boat through the tiny waves forming on the lake's surface. The police had every reason to send out search parties for them, in fact, he was expecting it. But everything had just gone terribly wrong; the situation started twisting the moment Lara began to scream from the pains of her labour. Now he couldn't possibly live a normal life. And if he remained hidden, neither would little Carlie.

Arthur gave the signal to stop when he lowered Carlie from his lap and reached for the fishing rods on the side of the small boat. The child held out her arms for Zac and he took her in. It gave him a chance to look at those blue green eyes again.

The eyes that made his brain confuse him of the time and place. He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn't Lara he was looking at, but her daughter. They both shared the same beauty, and he couldn't help but to feel like it was on purpose. Even in her death, Lara gave him something special. Something with mutual features and smiles to keep a part of her alive.

It was now his duty to keep it breathing.

"Do you want to go fishing Carlie?" She shyly nodded but hesitated when he placed the bait tin next to her. Zac didn't blame her; Carlie had barely been further than a ten metre radius around their cabin, let alone in the middle of a lake. But she loved water, and nothing was to say she wouldn't climb over the boat to swim with the "fishies" herself.

The three of them took the rods and Carlie leaned with curiosity over the edge of the boat, trying to reach the water with her fingers. Zac took hold of a strap on her lifejacket and squinted to see Arthur, "You're going to have to teach me, I've never done this before."

"It's easy." Arthur joked, baiting his hook, "If I can do it, you can do it."

Zac cracked a smile, even though the old man looked weak with his hands shaking around the bait. He reached for his own rod, one eye focusing on handling the bait and keeping the other eye centred on Carlie alone.