“Maybe she was scared,” North said. “Maybe she knew someone was out to get her. Someone who was capable of more than just some doctored medical files.”
“But who? And why didn’t she just go to the police? Or at least to Griffin. She could’ve proven to him that those test results were fake.” Unless she sent them to him. But why would she do that?
Just then something out the window caught my eye. A flash of light in the dark. It was a meteor, zipping through the night sky. For a moment I thought there were two of them, one below and one above, but then I realized the second one was a mirror image of the first, reflecting off the water below it. We were passing the reservoir. We were almost back.
“Theden” came the train’s automated voice. “Theden Central Station is next.”
I wiped my eyes and sat up as the train pulled into the station.
“Well, as far as dates go, this one was pretty uneventful,” North deadpanned.
“Totally dull,” I agreed.
“I’m glad you got a chance to talk to Griffin,” he said, softer and sincere.
“Me too.” Neither of us needed to say what we were both thinking. That we hoped it wouldn’t be the last time I got that chance.
The train stopped and we got to our feet. Mine were aching in Hershey’s stacked heels. “So we regroup tomorrow?” North asked as we stepped off the train onto the empty platform.
“Yeah, I guess so.” It was Saturday, so I didn’t have classes, but I’d resolved to use the weekend to catch up on all the schoolwork I hadn’t done. I’d assumed that talking to Griffin would answer my questions, not raise about a hundred more. Now I doubted I’d get anything done before Monday, or that this coming week would be any different from the past one. A blur of lectures I wouldn’t absorb and homework I wouldn’t do.
My jeans and sneakers were in the compartment under the seat of North’s motorbike, which was parked outside the station. North shrugged out of his suit jacket and held it up as a curtain, keeping his eyes on the sky as I changed in the space between it and him. When I had my jeans on but not my sweatshirt, I took a step closer to him so our bodies were touching, my bare chest against his white dress shirt. He looked down at me in surprise.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him. When my lips touched his, I let my eyes flutter shut and my thoughts go still, pretending, just for that instant, that we were just a boy and a girl kissing in a parking lot. A boy who wasn’t a cyber criminal and a girl whose life actually made sense. I felt his arms begin to lower. I shrieked. “Back up, back up!”
“Sorry,” he said, raising his arms again. “I got distracted.”
I giggled. “Okay, look away again, I have to put my sweatshirt on.” Obligingly, he tilted his head back, exhaling a big puff of warm air into the cold night sky. I tugged the sweatshirt over my head, and the skin on my chest prickled with goose bumps. “Okay, done.” I folded the dress and handed it to North. “Tell Noelle thank you.” North put the dress and his suit jacket under the seat then handed me a helmet.
“I should call my dad,” I said as I buckled the strap. “It was crazy to think I could keep this from him. He deserves to know the truth.” My voice broke a little. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I couldn’t imagine actually saying the words. Mom lied to you. I’m not your kid.
“What can I do?”
“Download Beck’s Lux profile,” I told him.
“What are we looking for?”
“An explanation,” I said. “He starts using Lux and suddenly he’s taking crappy photographs and not returning my calls. That can’t be an accident.”
“Contentment changes people,” North replied. He swung a leg over his bike and tilted the seat down so I could get on behind him. “He’s obviously getting a lot of validation for those photographs—which, by the way, aren’t that crappy—”
“Yes, they are.”
“And he feels like his life is coming together. It’s the same reason ninety-eight percent of the people in this country won’t make a decision without Lux. Life gets easier when you use it.”
I gaped at him. “You’re defending Lux?”
“Hell, no,” North replied. “I’m just explaining it.”
I shook my head, the helmet knocking against my temple. “No. There’s something else going on.”
“Like what?” North asked as he started up the bike.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I climbed onto the bike and wrapped my arms around his waist. “But maybe it’s connected to whatever Griffin was about to say tonight. Before he left for his speech, he said something about needing to say a few things before ‘this thing’ went any further.”
“But he collapsed before he could get it out.”
“That’s pretty odd timing, don’t you think?”
North turned his head to look back at me as the bike roared to life. “Wait. You think there’s a chance what happened to Griffin wasn’t an accident?” he yelled over the noise.
I met North’s gaze. “I think there’s a lot we don’t know.”
I got back to the library ten minutes before closing, and my Gemini was right where I’d hidden it, under a seat cushion in one of the upper reading rooms. It’d posted two mundane status updates in the time we’d been gone, and other than a few likes, my late-night study session hadn’t drawn much attention on Forum. We’d pulled it off. Unless, of course, Tarsus heard from Griffin that I was at the party, or worse, had seen me, but at that point I had no way to know. I’d just have to wait.
I called my dad on the walk back to the dorm. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet in Seattle, so I knew he and Kari would be awake. He answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, my voice breaking.
“Sweetheart, what is it?”
The tears spilled over. How could the man who knew me well enough to know that something was wrong from the words Hi, Dad not be my real father?
“It’s about Mom . . . ,” I began.
“Okay,” Dad said slowly, guarded. There was the sound of a door opening. I imagined him stepping outside onto the small porch off the kitchen, barely big enough for the charcoal grill he kept there.
I started with the simplest truth. “Mom was— She was already pregnant when you guys got married.”
My dad sighed. “I know that, honey.”
“And”—I took a shaky breath—“you weren’t the father. You aren’t—my father.”
There was a long pause. I stopped walking and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing against his reaction, the pain I expected to hear.
“I know that, too,” I heard him say, his voice heavier than I’d ever heard it.
My eyes flew open. “You know?”
“I’ve always known,” he said sadly. “Your mom and I, Rory, we— We were never a couple. Not romantically, anyway. Your mom— She was in love with someone else. But, sweetheart, that doesn’t change how much I love you. Or the fact that I will always be your dad.” His voice broke. Tears rushed to my eyes.
“I love you too, Dad,” I whispered. “So much.”
“Maybe I should fly out there,” he said then. “I could—”
“No, that’s okay,” I said quickly. Airfare was expensive, and money was tight for them already. Plus, I felt like North and I were getting closer to whatever truth was behind all this, and having my dad around would only slow us down. “With classes and homework, I would hardly even see you.”
“If you’re sure,” my dad said, sounding uncertain. “I just hate that you’re by yourself in all this.” By myself. My mom was dead, my biological father was in the hospital, my best friend was acting like he’d been body-snatched, my roommate was missing, and my dad and stepmom were three thousand miles away. I felt like one of those bright-orange buoys in the ocean, floating in deep water. But those were tethered by rope. I was on my own.