The Lives Between Us (51 page)

Spit-up rag and baby draped over her shoulder, Faith lightly patted little Cole’s back. “What’re you talking about?”

“We had a disagreement with Eileen about another matter, and she told Skye that she shouldn't stick her nose where it doesn’t belong and didn’t she think that you and Peter had been through enough.” Mark leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. “Clearly Eileen thinks she has something to hold over your heads, so what does she know that we don’t?”

Peter and Faith looked at each other, a long minute in silent communication.

Oh for God’s sake, she didn’t have time for games. Her eyes burned and her head ached, and Skye wanted to get to bed. “Look, we can’t help if we don’t know what’s going on.”

Peter sighed. “When Niki’s heart-seeding was cancelled, we had to do something. So we went to a fertility specialist in Chicago and told him we had a critically ill child who needed compatible stem cells and that we wanted to use IVF to make compatible cord blood stem cells for Niki. He made eight embryos. Four were really good matches for Nik, so he implanted three and froze the other five.”

Implanted three? Triplets? Good God, if Faith had gotten pregnant with triplets… Skye closed her eyes and shuddered.

“Why go to Chicago?” Mark asked.

“Anonymity. We couldn’t risk Faith’s OBGYN finding out how she got pregnant.” Peter glanced at his wife and baby. “Her eclampsia had been so severe with Niki, he’d suggested she get her tubes tied. When we went to him with this pregnancy, he was… Very concerned.”

Which was undoubtedly understating the doctor’s initial reaction but still didn’t explain Eileen’s cryptic warning. Skye massaged her tight neck. “So? You lied to use IVF. That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“As soon as the pregnancy was confirmed, we got in contact with Aviva and arranged for collection of the cord blood. When we toured the facilities, we met with Eileen to discuss immediately growing the stem cells for Niki’s treatment. Eileen talked with Niki’s surgeon, and we had the treatment all planned out within the month after Faith got pregnant.”

Faith lowered the baby and popped the bottle back in his mouth. “But we couldn’t risk losing time. What if Niki got worse?”

“So we asked Eileen if she’d take the other compatible embryo and start growing the ESCs as a back-up in case Niki worsened before the twins were born,” Paul finish.

Mark looked at Skye. “And
that’s
illegal.”

Skye shut her eyes. And Niki died anyway. It was all for nothing. Her eyelids flew open. “They could plead ignorance.”

Pete frowned. “I’m a cop. Any stem cell violation would undoubtedly be a felony.”

“
She
won’t say anything. Eileen’s just as guilty as they are—more so, she’s the one who,” Skye curved her fingers in air quotes, “‘killed’ the embryo.”

“That’s not the illegal part anymore, it’s creating the embryo for purposes other than reproduction that would be at issue.”

“But Faith might not have gotten pregnant that first go-round. They
might
have needed the other embryos.”

“That’s about their only hope. However, I doubt a jury in this conservative state would be sympathetic to the idea of savior siblings.”

Skye sighed. “It’s not fair that they could get in trouble for something like this, especially when they never even got a chance to use them.”

“What happened to the line when your daughter died?”

Faith and Peter exchanged puzzled looks. “Uh… We have no idea.”

Since it was all done under the table, it’s not as if they had paperwork determining things like that. But there had to be some sort of documentation. What would Eileen have done with the stem cells? Stored them with the twins’ cord blood for future use? Destroyed it?

“Did the fertility doctor give Eileen all the remaining embryos or just the matching one?” Mark asked.

“All of them,” Pete said.

Skye would have guessed that; it’d look less suspicious that way. “Where are they? Still frozen at Aviva?”

“Doubt it. Embryos would be hard to hide from the others. They’re stored in straws, not bags of blood.”

Faith kissed the sleeping baby’s head. Cole was evidence of the very real potential of those tiny frozen embryos. It must have been a difficult decision. Then again, with Niki’s condition, all their decisions had been difficult ones.

“The embryo stored with the compatible one didn’t survive the warming.” Paul put his hand on Faith’s knee. “We didn’t want the others just thrown away, so Eileen said she’d give them to a lab who worked with ESCs, but we can’t know for a fact that she actually did.”

Faith stopped rocking and looked at Mark. Slumped in the chair, regret and sadness lined her face. “I’m sorry for the trouble we’ve caused. We never dreamed—”

“Not your fault,” Mark cut her off. “You had no reason to suspect Eileen wasn’t trustworthy. She fooled us all.”

“But we feel bad.”

“Don’t. You couldn’t have known.” Mark stood, held out a hand, and pulled Skye to her feet. “We’ll figure this out.”

Skye leaned into Mark’s shoulder, loving that he was so gentle and reassuring with her family.

Peter stood. “How can I help?”

Mark stared at him, considering. “Get a good night’s sleep. We’re going to need somebody to be well-rested tomorrow,” he glanced at her, “and I have a feeling it’s not going to be us.”

Mark fished his phone from his back pocket. “Hey David, sorry to wake you. Can I talk to Serena?”

Skye heard some grumbling and whining through the phone.

Mark nodded. “I know. I
know.
I’m sorry, but we’ve got a problem. I need you back at the lab right away. We’ll bring the coffee.”

* * *

Two days later, Skye was still trying to catch up on her sleep. She’d been at Aviva until two in the morning that night and they still hadn’t managed to find the ESC line. Not that she and Mark were all that much help. They mostly kept Serena company while she carefully poked around the lab and searched the tanks there.

The vapor nitrogen tanks were carefully controlled and monitored and had a very specific protocol to accessing them, so the actual searching had to be done by Serena. Edward sent food and people to ostensibly help her “clean up” the mess. In reality, they guarded the lab while Serena caught a few hours sleep, before hunting again.

Pete called several times wanting to help, but at this point it was all Serena. The most he and Faith could do was swab their cheeks to provide Serena with DNA samples, so she could verify the ESC line once she found one.

Besides, Skye and Mark discussed it at length and decided that because Pete was a cop and he had more than enough on his plate caring for the twins, it was best to keep him out of it as much as possible.

If Serena couldn’t find anything by the end of the day, tomorrow she was moving onto Aviva’s other storage site in Ann Arbor. The three of them discussed bringing in other lab techs to help Serena comb the numerous tanks, but decided secrecy was paramount. Neither Serena, nor her boss, had been pleased at her using PTO for her “family emergency,” but Skye was so grateful that she had.

Though Serena hadn’t found Faith and Pete’s ESC line yet, she hadn’t found any embryos either. What the heck had Eileen actually done with their other unused embryos? Maybe she had actually donated them like Faith had wanted. She really hoped so for Mark’s sake.

As Skye sat at her counter munching on a bowl of Raisin Bran, she marveled at Eileen’s confidence and nonchalance. She hadn’t displayed a single iota of remorse about illegally obtaining embryonic stem cells or tricking her patient and the neurosurgeon into using materials other than what they’d thought. And she hadn’t admitted to anything. How could that be?

Either she doubted they’d be able to find the evidence or Eileen simply didn’t care if they had proof, figuring they’d never have the nerve to use it, or the last and most disturbing scenario was that she simply didn’t care. To her, the ends justified the means.

Eileen’s utter calm and confidence disturbed Skye on so many levels, the worst being that she’d envied Eileen that implacable poise in the face of adversary.

Mark and Edward were adamant, hard, and intimidating. Given the circumstances, Eileen should have been at a disadvantage, yet she’d held her own. It was she, Mark, and Edward who walked away from last night’s encounter feeling threatened and powerless—and they hadn’t done anything wrong. How was that?

Skye would love to be that self-assured. And even if Eileen hadn’t been that confident, Skye would love to be as good as she was at projecting it. So much in Skye’s life seemed to breed insecurity and fear, until it seeped deep into her bones and became an integral, uncomfortable part of her. What made Eileen so secure and how could Skye get some of it?

Was it years of discipline and study spent obtaining multiple higher-level degrees? Was it clawing her way through a male-dominated career? It couldn’t be losing a spouse because Skye was intimately acquainted with death and loss. That wasn’t it. Perhaps it was innate.

Skye firmly believed people came out of the womb with some traits preprogrammed into their psyches. Or had Eileen’s confidence come with age? Skye sighed and picked up a bright hanging basket of colorful petunias.

Walking out the apartment’s front door and around the parking lot to the alley behind, Skye examined at the heavy metal door facing her. The decorative wooden door she’d picked out had been backordered, but the new awning and pretty coach light they’d installed yesterday looked nice. She hooked the basket of flowers from the hanger beside the door and stood back.

“That’s better.”

Unlocking the inner door to the stairs, she climbed the short switchback to her new home. Skye traversed the large, open room, made her way around her new stove, past the leftover faux rock used to build her fireplace. Pulling the sliding glass doors open, she stepped out onto the fourteen by twenty foot portion of unfinished roof surrounded by a hip-tall brick wall, in a space that would make for a delightful enclosed patio.

The contractor had added a few skylights to brighten the family room and was now working on separating the kitchen from the main room with a large counter and bar area. Skye stepped over a pile of two-by-fours. This place was as big of a mess as her life.

He’d finished framing out and dry-walling her master bedroom and bath, the smaller second bedroom and bath, and her little study off the patio. The painter and tile guy were scheduled for next week and then the carpeting.

Patience
. It was coming along. She just had to have faith. Faith that it would turn out like she envisioned and faith that Serena would confirm Noelle’s cells and find Faith’s ESC line. She sighed. Niki’s death had derailed her faith. Skye sat on a hard stack of bathroom tile.

One day she’d curl up a big cushy couch in front of her fireplace high above the street, cozy in her apartment, while watching the snow fall outside. Niki would have loved this apartment. Though Niki had always lived in a house with a large backyard, her niece would have loved sleepovers here where they would eat breakfast outside on the balcony and watch the Saturday shoppers wander by.

“Skye?” Jenny called out.

“Come on up.” Skye left the patio, sliding the doors shut behind her and moved to the stairs. Jenny led Mark and Edward into her new home. “Pardon the construction mess, and I’m sorry there’s no place to sit, but the apartment’s well-insulated so the noise from the bar won’t bother us and nobody can overhear.”

Skye crossed her arms over her chest and looked from Jenny, to Edward and Mark. “So. Any news?”

Mark moved to the center of the room and leaned against Skye’s new stove. “The notebooks confirm that Eileen used ESCs in Noelle’s treatment. And Jenny was right, the Connors—the source of Noelle’s stem cells—don’t exist. Though we won’t be able to prove any of this until Serena grows the cells.”

“And we get a spinal fluid sample from Noelle,” Edward said. “If we need to take it that far.” If they got backed into a corner and the whole mess became public knowledge.

“And where’d she get the money to buy the embryos?”

“Eileen claimed to buy a new, fancy fifty-thousand dollar laser scanning microscope none of the assistants know about and I couldn’t find anywhere in the lab.”

Edward winced. “Fifty thousand? Sorry, man.” They all knew that was stolen money Mark’s company would never see again—and he couldn’t exactly report it to the police or an insurance company. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Mark shrugged. “That’s the least of our troubles.”

“What if you destroyed all the evidence?” Jenny asked. “Burn the files, destroy the ESC lines. That’d get the senator off the hook.”

“No. Noelle might need further treatment.” Edward asked. “Besides, proof’s not the real issue. We need to find a way to guarantee Eileen’s silence.”

“What if I found Eileen her dream job in... China, or Great Britain—maybe Israel? I could do a little research, ask around to see what’s available,” Mark offered.

“That’s an idea, but, there’s no guarantee she’d take it or if she did take it, that she’d keep her mouth shut. We need a more permanent solution.” Edward stared at the floor, before looking up and speaking softly. “She could... Disappear.”

“Permanently?”

Edward nodded. “It’d have to be. She’s too great a risk.”

“Shit.” Mark swiped a hand across his mouth.

“Or maybe not. Maybe just long enough for her to know we’re serious. I have a friend in Special Forces who can be pretty persuasive.” Edward looked at Mark. “Where’s a conference she’s dying to go to being held this year?”

“The International Stem Cell Symposium is in Israel in August.”

“Great location, but we can’t wait that long.”

“UCSD has something next month.”

“San Diego?” Edward slowly shook his head. “Needs to be out of the country. Women traveling abroad disappear from time to time. It’s not all that uncommon.”

“Natalie Holloway,” Jenny murmured.

“How about a cruise? There seems to be a rash of people falling overboard and disappearing lately,” Skye chimed in. But one look around the group of serious faces had a weak smile flittering across her lips. A chill chased down her spine. Edward was senator; a popular, beloved politician who knew hundreds of people. A powerful man with extraordinary avenues closed to the average citizen. Geez, what had Eileen done?