Ghost Planet (11 page)

“If you could see the rest of them—the ghosts—like I see them … I’d rather die than end up like that. I’ve fought it as hard as I can, but I know I could have been smarter about it. It’s been a mistake to make things so difficult for you with your colleagues.”

Murphy picked up the teapot and refilled both our cups. He leaned an elbow on the table, rubbing his temples.

“I don’t know what to say to you, Elizabeth. Yes, you’ve complicated my life. Immensely. Maybe even put my career at risk. But I can hardly cling to my position and my comfortable office at the expense of facing the questions you’re raising.”

I swallowed—loudly. “Where does that leave us?”

He dropped his hand and looked at me. “You heard what Lex said about you today?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve
wanted
to believe you were sent here to manipulate me. It fits in with all my beliefs about you—about the aliens. It makes everything much easier. But I’m watching you in this very personal, very committed struggle to understand your own existence, and it would be sheer arrogance to go on thinking it’s somehow all about
me
.”

Murphy had been paying attention. More than I’d ever imagined.

“What happened earlier,” I began, flushing again, “were you just fed up, or was it some kind of test?”

He laughed bleakly. “Possibly both. Or neither. I’m not sure I’m that sophisticated in my thinking when it comes to you.”

Our eyes locked as the thin smile faded from his face. My heart abandoned both fight and flight and just froze like a floodlit deer.

“So what do we do now?” I asked softly.

His gaze settled on the tabletop. He fidgeted with his empty cup. “Are you hungry?”

I raised my eyebrows, glancing at the darkened windows. We had opened a discussion that could change my life, could change
his
life—had the potential to change life on the planet. Yet we’d sat drinking tea. The world had kept spinning. The sun had gone down. And now he wanted to know if I was hungry.

“Well, yes.”

“I could make us dinner.”

I smiled. “Like every night.”

“We could eat it together.”

“Interesting idea. How would that work, exactly?”

A smile played at the corners of his mouth as he continued to stare into his cup. “Much like we’re doing now.”

“But with food.”

“Ah, you’re quick.”

“Top of my class.”

“So I understand.”

“All right, sounds like fun. Can I help you?”

Murphy sat up, resting his elbows on the table. “You tell me.”

I winced inwardly. No way he could have missed all those burnt toast scrapings in the sink. Or that sponge I’d shredded cleaning a scalded skillet.

“Are you the sort of man who takes a risk now and then?”

“Not generally. But people can change.”

“Maybe I should set the table.”

Murphy grinned. “Can’t be as bad as all that. Come on.”

*   *   *

“No, no—you’ll cut your fingers off, love. Let me show you.”

Love?
I knew it was an Irish thing, but his hand grazed mine as he said it, and my stomach flipped like a pancake.

I surrendered the knife and he deftly halved the onion, then pressed one half onto its flat side. He curved his fingers in and let the knife fly, and seconds later the thing was neatly diced into a million translucent pieces. He scraped them into a skillet coated with hot oil, where they began to sizzle. He shoved the pan forward, giving it a quick jerk, and all the pieces flew up a couple inches before landing right back in the oil.

Murphy pushed the cutting board, with the remaining half of the onion, toward me. “You try.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m supposed to follow that?”

He handed me the knife. “You can go slower.”

I struggled under his gaze, feeling very much like I was back in school, compiling lab data with a professor looking over my shoulder. I was making decent progress (I thought), though with painfully less uniform results, when the knife slipped and nicked the index finger of the same hand I had injured wielding the tea mug.

With a sympathetic groan, he took the knife from me and handed me a dishtowel for my finger. “How bad?”

I stuck the wounded finger in my mouth. “I’ve had much worse.”

“Hmm,” he murmured. I was pretty sure he was trying not to laugh.

Murphy made quick work of the remaining bits, including repairing my ragged efforts, and tossed them into the skillet. “Want to do the pasta?”

I scowled at him. “You’re bumping me down to the remedial class.”

“Not at all. You can boil water, right?”

I flung the towel at his head.

He ducked and caught it. “Honestly, how do you manage?”

Plunking the pot onto the burner, I muttered, “Takeout.” I could hear him chuckling over the sizzling of the onion. “And careful selection of roommates.”

I watched him chop vegetables until the water came to a boil. As I slid the linguini into the pot I steamed my fingers, then bit back a yelp as I strode casually to the sink and ran cold water over my hand.

This was not the first time I’d been humiliated by my dysfunction in the kitchen. It made no sense to me—I was reasonably intelligent, and a quick study. Cooking was following step-by-step instructions. Any idiot could do that. But nothing I made ever tasted like I imagined it was supposed to. And anything more complicated than a baked potato (I ate a lot of them) left me covered with nicks and burns.

When I shut off the water, Murphy took my arm and guided me to the table, pressing me into a chair. He returned to the fridge for a bottle of wine, filling a glass and handing it to me.

“It’ll be ready in a minute,” he said with a wink.

“Oh, fine.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s not like I didn’t warn you.”

As I watched him finish the sauce with white wine, herbs, mushrooms, and cream, I couldn’t escape the feeling I was on a first date. What bizarre circumstances for a man and a woman—practically strangers, single, and close to the same age—to find themselves in.

“Okay,” said Murphy, as he came over with two steaming plates. I hopped up and grabbed silverware and napkins, and when I came back I saw that he’d set our plates on adjacent sides of the table rather than across. I sat down and he refilled our glasses.

“Sorry it’s just noodles and sauce. It’s time to go to the market again.”

I forked a mushroom and took a bite. “Mmm, you’re amazing at this. I’m jealous.”

I watched the pink stealing along those high cheekbones. “My
mother
is amazing. She worked as a chef in Dublin before she married my dad.”

“How did you all end up on a farm?”

Murphy looked surprised, and it occurred to me this was a rather personal piece of information to have on the tip of my tongue. I couldn’t think of a tactful way to explain I’d been reading up on him.

“We moved to the farm because my dad had a strange fascination with dairy cows.”

“And your mom?”

“She had a strange fascination with
him
. And he managed to convince her she wanted to make cheese.”

I smiled. “And babies. You have four sisters, is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And the photo on the wall in the laundry room—that’s your mother, with your aunt?”

Murphy nodded, his expression clouding.

“They look like they were close.”

“They were. But it’s been twenty years since she died.”

The easy, flirtatious mood that had prevailed during dinner preparations was evaporating. The problem being, of course, that there weren’t many topics we could discuss without brushing up against the troubling realities we faced. We focused on the meal, and a gloomy silence descended.

When we finished, Murphy rose to carry our plates to the kitchen.

“I’ve thought a lot about my aunt the last few days,” he said. “Especially about what happened to her.”

I watched him for a moment before answering. Did he mean the new Aunt Maeve, his ghost?

“I’ve thought a lot about her too.”

He returned to the table. “I wonder whether she’s still…”

“Alive?”

He nodded. “Assuming there’s been nothing calculated about it—that Lex was wrong about me having been targeted—”

“I don’t know that we can assume that.” Much as I might like to, I couldn’t discount an explanation with merit just because it made me uncomfortable.

“Perhaps not, but for the sake of argument. I’ve been thinking about what you’ve said about symbiotic relationships. There was little potential for a strong bond to develop between my aunt and me. She was born thirty years before I was, and we were never close.”

“You also never accepted her ghost as your aunt.”

“True enough. But I’m thinking more about compatibility. If there is something important about the bond, and if she and I were a weak … pairing, could it be your own death actually triggered her replacement?”

I raised my eyebrows, not sure I understood what he was suggesting. “You and I were little more than strangers. What would indicate we had the potential for a stronger bond?” My face grew hot as I recalled what Ian had said about the bond of attraction.

Murphy shrugged, and his gaze drifted down to the tabletop. “More common interests. Similar backgrounds. I don’t mean to sound cold about my aunt—I did care about her. But there was never a strong temptation to…”

“To interact with her ghost?”

“Yes.”

Setting aside the implication that had now brought color to his face as well, I said, “But you must see you’re reinforcing Lex’s theory.”

He glanced up. “Could be, yes. I think it comes down to whether you’re comfortable believing there’s a conscious decision about ghost selection, made by some kind of alien intelligence with a sinister motive. I think that’s naïve.”

“So you think there’s some kind of natural process at work? That the reason the whole thing makes no sense to us is because there
is
no grand scheme.”

“Yes, we try to make sense of it by assigning motives to the planet.”

“Ones we’re familiar with. Hostility, and aggression.”

“Exactly.”

I stared at him. “How long have you been thinking about this theory?”

The frown of concentration relaxed into a grin. “What time is it?”

“I see,” I said, laughing.

Encouraged as I was by all of this—intrigued as I was by his idea—it was impossible not to extend out the theory and question what would happen to
me
if someone closer to him suddenly died.

Murphy’s attention had shifted to my hands and I realized I’d begun twisting a strand of hair around my index finger.

“You did that the first time I met you,” he said.

Releasing the strand, I explained, “I do it when I’m thinking. Peter—my fiancé—thought it was cute when we first met. Later it drove him crazy. I always worked a bunch of loose ones out and they’d end up all over the floor.”

Murphy’s smile dried up. “You were engaged?”

I stared down at my bandaged hand, remembering the monitor I’d smashed to prevent myself from contacting him. “For a while I was. Funny, after the transport accident I couldn’t help wondering if I’d still be alive if I’d married him.”

Murphy stared at me and I was touched by the pain in his expression. “I’m not sure that
is
funny.”

“Probably not.” I smiled, hoping he’d let it drop. But that was not in the cards.

“Why didn’t you marry him? If you don’t mind my asking.”

I realized with surprise that I
didn’t
mind him asking. He was easy to talk to. I was enjoying his company. And I no longer noticed any of the pangs that I’d felt when I’d thought about Peter before.

“I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times. We were together on and off for ten years. When he finally asked me I said yes. But every time he’d try to get me to name a date, I’d put him off. Finally I realized I couldn’t do it. I broke it off and came here.”

Murphy’s head tipped forward as he studied me. I fidgeted in my chair. “No ideas why you couldn’t do it?”

Because when he looked at me, I never felt like I feel right now
. “A few.”

“But you’re not going to share them.”

I smiled. “How come
you’re
not married?”

He rolled his eyes at the evasion.

“No, really. You cook. You have nice manners. Clean fingernails. A good job.”
Don’t even get me started on your eyes.

“You forgot arrogant, stubborn, and single-minded.”

“Ah, well. A girl can’t have everything.” But I didn’t buy it. “Come on, there must have been someone.”

“No one I thought seriously of marrying. And since I’ve been here—well, you can imagine romances on Ardagh 1 are complicated.”

“Mmm, yes. Having your girlfriend’s husband following you everywhere is definitely a complication.”

He had the decency to look uncomfortable. “Julia and I weren’t really … we hadn’t been seeing each other for long.” I noted his use of past tense.

“Yes, Ian told me.”

Murphy’s eyes moved back to my face. “The two of you seemed to hit it off.”

“We did. I like him very much. I take it I’m not going to be seeing him again.”

Murphy picked up the wine bottle and emptied what was left into our glasses. He folded his arms over his chest, leaning back in the chair and studying me. “You can see him at the center, when Julia comes for counseling. But I’m not seeing Julia anymore, so he won’t be coming here.”

“Did you stop seeing her because of Ian and me?”

He shook his head. “You and Ian are just one piece of it. Lex and I dated in college—actually we lived together very briefly. It didn’t work out, but we parted friends. She’s Julia’s counselor, though, and it’s been a bit … weird.”

“Ah,” I replied, nodding. It explained a lot.

A dark eyebrow shot up. “
Ah
?”

“I knew there was something. The dynamic between the two of you—it’s not just colleagues. Or friends.”

“Well, that’s been over now for about five years. We’ve been friends much longer than we were … more than that.”

“I see.” Maybe it was over for
him
.