Her hair had fallen into her face and he brushed it back behind her ear. “You mad at me?” he asked, because she still wouldn’t look at him.
It was wrong and he knew it, but he’d taken Moore’s scrapbook with him when he’d left the lab building the night before. He’d sat up for awhile once he’d slipped back into his room at the barracks, too full of adrenaline to relax or sleep, and had flipped through the book, reading all of the articles tucked inside. Time and again, he’d found himself drawn to the photograph of Moore carrying Alice down the stairs of Gallatin State Hospital.
Daddy says it’s a place for crazy people, Alice had told him. He says I didn’t belong there. My mother put me in it. He had to go to court to get me out. It took a long time because she had a court order that said I had to stay.
Andrew had studied that photo, the haunting image of Alice’s large eyes, her vacant stare spearing out of the print and up at him. What had happened to her in that place? he’d wondered. Three years, he’d thought, stricken and sad. Jesus Christ, the poor kid.
Her cheek was cold to his touch. Though she’d worn socks and shoes that morning, unlike before, she still wore only a thin flannel nightgown. “Where’s your coat?” he asked, because she still wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t acknowledge him. “Here.”
He wore an insulated flannel shirt, the one he’d been wearing on the day he’d wrecked his Jeep. Suzette had laundered it for him since then. It was quilted inside, thick and warm, and he shrugged his way out of it now, wearing a long-sleeved thermal shirt beneath. “Put this on. You’re going to get sick.”
As he drew the shirt around her narrow shoulders, tugging the collar together beneath her chin, Suzette drew near. “Watch it now. I’ll get jealous,” she chided with a smile.
Andrew thought of the magazine clipping he’d seen last night, the image of Dr. Moore and Suzette together in the laboratory.
Noted geneticist Edward Moore, M.D., Ph.D., and research associate Suzette Montgomery, M.D., at work at the Genomics and Bioinformatics Division at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
She carried a lit cigarette in her hand and lifted it to her mouth now for a quick drag. “We need to stop meeting like this, you know. People are going to think you’re in love with me.”
He forced a laugh. “Just a coincidence, I promise,” he said, standing. After an uncertain glance around, he added, “I was on my way to the garage to see how my Jeep’s doing.”
She took another pull from the cigarette. “Oh.”
“Well, I, uh…” Fumbling now, he raked his fingers through his hair, then managed a clumsy wave. “I’ll see you around then.”
Suzette smirked, bemused. “Sure.”
He started to turn, to walk away, but Alice caught him by the hand, her grip tight and urgent. “Is it fun?” she asked.
Surprised, he looked down at her. “What?”
“Your job. Is it fun?”
Even yesterday, the question, and the whole line of disjointed thinking that had prompted it, might have caught him off guard or puzzled him, but he found himself growing used to Alice’s way of phasing in and out of conversations with no apparent concept of time.
“I’ve never thought about it like that before,” he admitted. “I guess it can be, if you’re into being out by yourself a lot in the woods.”
She looked up at him, patient. “Are you?”
“Sometimes, I guess. Sure.”
“Do you get lonely?”
Andrew knelt again, bringing himself to her eye level. “Not really. Sometimes I like being by myself.”
She studied him for a moment. “Me, too.”
Whatever inner bulb had illuminated in her mind abruptly snuffed again. He watched, fascinated and somewhat sad, as her gaze grew abruptly distant, her attention unfocused, her expression slackening into stoic impassivity once more.
“Good bye, Alice,” he murmured, stroking her cheek once, gently. “See you later.”
Because he’d made up the pretense of checking up on his Jeep for Suzette’s benefit, and she remained within view as she followed Alice across the yard, Andrew ducked into the garage. There was no way in hell Santoro would have the truck up and running again and he knew it, not that day or any other. She might have been joking when she’d told him the Jeep needed a salvage yard, not a mechanic, but she’d been right nonetheless.
Even before reaching the garage building, he’d heard music, and once inside, with its vaulted ceilings, smooth concrete floors and cinderblock walls, the garage amplified the guitar strains of Santana from a CD boom box to nearly deafening levels.
“Hello?” he called, trying in vain to pitch his voice above the music. His poor Jeep listed in the corner, a dilapidated, waterlogged paperweight. Three other vehicles, these all of the olive drab camouflage paint job variety, sat parked in different service bays, one with its hood up, another with tires removed and the third still raised on lifts and left to dangle in the air.
“Santoro?”
Because other than the music, there seemed no sign of life inside, he walked inside, crossing the expansive open floor, looking curiously around. “Hey, Santoro,” he called again. “Anybody home?”
In the far corner, he spied a desk, an antiquated behemoth made of gray-green painted steel. Circa 1960-something, it took up nearly the entire corner with its squat, square bulk. Framed photos of children littered the top, a dark haired boy and girl, both grinning broadly in a variety of poses—the boy on his bicycle with a helmet cock-eyed on his head, in his swim trunks in a green plastic wading pool, the girl in pink plastic sunglasses or dressed up in oversized shoes and carrying an adult-sized purse.
In another photograph, the only one not of the children, Santoro stood in a wedding gown. Curious, he picked it up to study it more closely. Younger, with make up on, her hair pin-curled and coiffed, she beamed at the camera. Her dress hugged the indention of her waist, the generous outward swells of her hips before pooling in a wide train around her feet. She’d made a breath-taking bride as she’d posed on the arm of a handsome Hispanic man in a tuxedo.
Lucky guy, he thought. He’d only ever been in love enough to want to marry someone once—with Lila. There had been no one since he’d ever even thought about spending the rest of his life with, but he hoped that if he ever did, she’d look that happy on their wedding day.
Not to mention that beautiful.
The music cut off, startling him, and he turned to find Santoro walking toward him, wiping her hands on a towel. “Well, hey, partner,” she said with a puzzled but pleased sort of grin. “Wasn’t expecting to see you so early today.”
“Hey, hi.” Feeling intrusive, like he’d been caught snooping through her underwear drawer, he set the wedding picture back on her desk. It promptly fell face-down with a clatter against the blotter and abashed, he propped it upright again. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” she said, then the picture toppled again. “The little thing on the back is kind of broken. You have to…” He tried to set it up as she spoke, and when it fell again, she laughed. “Here. I’ll do it.”
She leaned past him, reaching for the picture.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“It’s alright. It’s an old frame.” Because she couldn’t get it to stand again, either, she finally settled for slapping it face-down on the desk. “There.” Laughing, she swatted her hands together. “That’ll work.”
He laughed with her. She had dark smutches of grease on her cheeks, embedded beneath the crescents of her fingernails, the creases in her knuckles. Loose strands of hair had worked loose from her ordinarily meticulous ponytail and drooped over her brow to dangle lankly against her cheeks. When she smiled, he could see beneath that to the radiant bride in the wedding photo.