The 100 Year Miracle (7 page)

Had she? If it was open, she supposed she must have. “So close it,” she said, reaching the top of the stairs and then walking past him and into the house.

Harry was wearing the same gray sweatpants she’d seen him in the night before. His hair stuck up in a sort of spasmodic swirl in the back, and he needed a shave. Both of those things could be remedied in less than fifteen minutes, rendering him fit for public display. That was one disparity even the ERA had not attempted to address, and Tilda would carry that bitterness with her until the end of her days.

Harry followed her inside, and Shooby ran over, prancing a circle around their feet. She would need to walk him. She’d forgotten dogs needed walking first thing, having not had one of her own since leaving Harry. They were lucky Shooby was so well trained and had been doing his Kegel exercises.

She patted his ears, and he followed her through the house toward the kitchen. Harry brought up the rear.

“When did you get a boat?” she asked.

There was a pause, and Tilda knew he had forgotten it was down there.

“Maggie wanted it,” he said when his memory caught up. “Bought it from the guy who used to run the hardware store but never did anything with it. Now it just sits down there eating insurance money.”

“You could get rid of it,” Tilda said, opening the cabinets and taking down coffee cups.

Harry shrugged. She knew he shrugged. She didn’t have to look over to see it. It wouldn’t occur to Harry to get rid of the boat. It just wasn’t Harry’s way. It would rot through and sink into the sand first.

“Is it seaworthy?” she asked.

“Doubt it. Been sitting there for years.”

Tilda took a pause to think about the next sentence, but in retrospect, it probably wasn’t a long enough pause. “I could take a look at it.”

Harry snorted, and this time Tilda did look up. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I know about boats.”

“Didn’t say you didn’t.” It took Harry this far into the conversation to make it with his cane to the kitchen table. He seemed stiffer than yesterday, but there was no point in mentioning it.

“I grew up with boats.”

Tilda took the half-and-half from the fridge and gave it a sniff before dumping it down the drain and throwing the carton in the trash.

“That was still good.”

“It smelled like baby vomit,” Tilda said and loaded the stainless steel four-slice toaster. The dials were unnecessarily complicated, a purchase of Maggie’s no doubt. It was too early for that, so she just pressed the two plungers and let the crumbs fall where they may.

“Those sell-by dates are just there to get you to waste more and buy more. You’re a cog in the consumer machine.”

Tilda splashed plain 2 percent, which passed the sniff test, into her coffee and put the half gallon back. Harry took his coffee black. She poured it for him and placed it on the table along with a tub of margarine and a half-empty jar of orange marmalade that had formed crystals around the lid, making it hard to open.

Harry watched her struggle, which ended in victory, before saying, “I eat strawberry jam on my toast.”

“Since when?”

“Since the past ten years.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You love orange marmalade.”

“If I loved it, the stuff wouldn’t have turned to sugar in the jar.”

Tilda didn’t see a good reason to answer that. The toast popped, a little too light perhaps but serviceable. She dropped the hot pieces onto a small plate and brought both that and a jar of strawberry jam to the table.

“You’re not eating?” he asked.

“I’m going to walk the dog,” she said. “Don’t eat it all.”

“I’m not making any promises, and don’t be long. I need a ride into town.” Harry had stopped driving six months before and had sold his car. He had done it quickly and a little impulsively, but he was glad that he had. He wouldn’t have wanted to have to look at it sitting in the garage getting dustier each week.

Tilda decided it was in her best interest to take something to go and snatched a plain piece from the top of the stack, making Shooby wait a minute more while she buttered it.

“A ride into town for what?”

“I’m going to church.”

Tilda stopped buttering. “You don’t go to church.”

Harry was using a spoon to fish a glob of seedy jam out of the jar and onto his toast. Spoons had a larger margin of error than knives. “Why do you believe my life stopped when you moved out?” he asked, getting the glob onto the bread and using the back of the utensil to spread it around. “I eat strawberry jam. I go to church.”

“What church?”

“Episcopalian.”

Neither she nor Harry had ever gone to church during their marriage. They had never gone, and they had never discussed going. They had not, as far as she could recall, had a single religious conversation of any kind up until this very moment. It was one of their sincerest compatibilities. That and their love of orange marmalade.

“Well, don’t expect me to go in,” Tilda said.

“Don’t worry. You’ve been banned. We had a vote.”

“I thought churches were supposed to welcome everyone.”

“Most of the time, but we made an exception in your case.”

10.

Rachel woke to her alarm, feeling more tired than she had a few hours before. She sat up and groped for her hooded sweatshirt, the one with the university’s husky mascot on the front. She was already wearing a long-sleeved thermal shirt, but the cabin’s heater was anemic, and the doors and windows leaked.

This was the second night of the breeding. There were only four nights left. In the time it took fish to go bad, she would know—either everything would be different, or she would spend what savings she had left on her own burial plot.

She rolled over to the side of the bed, slid out, and performed her stretches, impatient at the time they took. When they were done, she padded over toward the glowing, whirring, hissing tanks at the end of the room. There was no doubt the machinery was alive, and it spoke to her exhaustion that she was able to sleep next to the growling, gurgling—

The thought froze Rachel before she could finish it.

She pivoted on her heel like an officer corps cadet, careful of her tender back, and opened the door of her cabin a crack then enough to stick her head out. The air smelled of rain and the rot of leaf litter. In another half hour or so, her colleagues would be waking up, too, but for now she saw no one and stepped outside, shutting the door behind her.

Cold in her stocking feet, she listened. There were birds and leaves that rustled. She heard those right away. No fans or sprayers though. She had half a second of relief and then stilled her breath and listened harder. Maybe there was something, or maybe it was the blood rushing in her ears. She pressed the side of her face to the cabin door. There. There she could hear something. She could definitely hear something. She pulled her head away. Still, Rachel could hear the sound, faint but there. Faint enough to wonder if she was imagining it but distinct enough to tell herself that, no, she just knew what to listen for. She pressed her ear to the door two more times and then walked around the side.

The ground was muddy with only a layer of pine needles over it that went from thin to downright sparse. She could feel her feet sinking in like pressing a handprint into wet clay. She’d never get her socks clean again. Almost to the window, she stopped. There were already footprints here, larger ones with the tread of a hiking boot. When and who? Careful not to disturb them, she tiptoed up to the glass and listened. It was thin, single-paned. It was easier to hear through the window. And maybe someone had heard, someone who had stood right there.

Her stomach roiled with worry like a snake in death throes.

Shit.

She needed to do something, and she had no idea what. She hadn’t brought any soundproofing materials with her, and she didn’t have time to find a hardware store and shop for something suitable. She tried to follow the trail of boot prints, but they disappeared in the leaf litter almost immediately. It was hopeless and a waste of time.

Rachel ran back around to the front, her feet sinking deeper in the mud.

And then she screamed.

She had been looking down at her feet, scanning the ground, and she had not seen him. The top of her head bounced off his chest, and John reached out a hand to steady her then withdrew it sharply as though he’d been given an electric shock.

“What are you doing here?” Rachel demanded.

“Can I come in?”

“No.” The single syllable came out fast like a punch. He started to respond, but she cut him off. “Wait, show me the bottoms of your shoes.”

“What?”

She was looking at his feet, but he didn’t raise one up. “Show me your tread.”

He did not comply. “Dr. Bell, there are some issues I’d like to go over with you.”

“I explained myself earlier,” she said.

His were more like running shoes than boots. She thought the prints had been made with boots, but she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t even be sure what the bottoms of her own shoes looked like.

“Well, apparently, I didn’t explain myself.”

He took a step forward, coming uncomfortably close. She stopped thinking about feet. Her heart, already jumpy, shifted into the next gear. He was too near her. She didn’t like it.

“You can find me at the site,” she said.

“I’ve found you now.”

“Now isn’t a good time.”

“Really, why?”

Rachel wanted out of the conversation. She wanted him to go. “What I do on my off hours is none of your business.”

John leaned in, closing the space between them that was too small as it was.

“What you’re doing will destroy the breeding, which makes it absolutely my business.”

“That’s not true. You shouldn’t lie.”

“We are here to study,” John said. “We take only what we need to understand and, by understanding, to protect. No more.”

Anger bloomed beneath her nervousness. He was so conceited, so demanding and entitled. He had walked in off the street and dared to treat her as an underling to be dictated to. It was so like that kind of man to expect her to acquiesce.

“This is a biological phenomenon. It doesn’t belong to anyone, including you, which puts you in no position to dictate how others work,” she said.

“How are you working exactly?”

“I’m working right next to you,” she said.

“No, you’re not.”

Rachel fought the blush that was threatening to spread up her neck to her cheeks. “Why won’t you show me your shoes?”

“The
Artemia lucis
are part of our culture, not some cheap way for you to get high.” His voice had started low and menacing but was rising with every word. Rachel started to object, but John continued right over her. “I shouldn’t have to tell you how vulnerable this population of animals is. The last thing it needs is for you to be starting up a side business for drug heads. You open the floodgates, and the entire colony could be destroyed.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rachel hissed, hoping her voice would lower his. It did not work.

“Then let me in.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like you.”

“You go inside then,” John said. He tipped his chin toward the door but didn’t move away from it.

“You leave first,” she said.

“No.”

“John!”

They both turned to look. Hooper was down the road, far enough away that he appeared as small as an action figure. He was yelling as loud as he could and waving his arm. Whatever he wanted from John, he wanted it right then.

John looked from Hooper to her and back again before blowing a sharp puff of air between his lips. “Not over,” he said to her and took off down the road at a jog.

*   *   *

Rachel slipped back into her cabin, slamming and locking the door. She took little breaths, pushing her heart rate down. Her blinds were closed, but he had heard her experiments. Obviously, he had. She would need to work fast.

Her duffel bag of clothes and toiletries lay on the spare bed. It was unzipped, and bits of clothing hung out the gape like a panting tongue. She pulled out sweaters and fleece and all the thickest things and carried them over to the window, pulling the string that turned on the bare bulb in the middle of the room on the way. She stood on the end of her bed and leaned precariously over to the top of the window. With her roll of duct tape, she began to secure the clothes over all of it, covering the glass, the shade, and the framing.

She had to tear the tape with her teeth, and she wished desperately for a few more inches in height. She was leaning out too far, still in her muddy stocking feet, her footing shaky on those two measly inches of footboard, when gravity got tired of waiting.

Her hands scrambled for purchase, anything to slow the fall, but it was much too late for that. Her back caught the edge of the cooler, scraping all the way down. She landed with a clattering thump like someone dropping a hundred-and-thirty-pound bag of potatoes.

Rachel howled. It was the sound of an animal under attack. She brought her knees up to her chest and rolled to her side. The pain was so bad that she hoped to pass out. Instead she began to retch, dribbling down her cheek and onto the floor.

As soon as it stopped, she started to move, trying to get herself up off the cold linoleum. She kept her back as still as she could, moving like Frankenstein’s monster. Once she had her feet under her, she went straight to the tanks. She knew the fright of the fall would have released adrenaline into her system, and it was dulling the pain. As bad as it was, it would get worse. It was best to move now and get the work done before the adrenaline drained away.

“Focus,” she said aloud, colder and more demanding with herself than she had been even with John.

She peered through the ambient chilled water into the flasks. She picked one up, pulled out the aeration tubing, and held it close to her face. She could see them in there, her
Artemia lucis
. They were some of the smallest creatures on earth that were still visible to the naked eye, still recognizable as having bodies and parts. They were a reddish brown with an exoskeleton so insubstantial it was transparent in places. She could count their twenty-two legs if they held still. And they were holding still. They were dead.