“If I don’t answer, they’ll know something is wrong,” my mom said as the phone entered its third ring. “They may send someone.” She spoke to the room at large, but then she looked to Ariane, with deference and perhaps a hint of fear, for permission.
Ariane nodded. “Answer it. But be careful, please.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a threat or a warning. And I had no idea how to feel about it either way. This was my mom, after all. Then again, I wasn’t sure the person I’d thought of as my mom actually existed. I’d felt guilty about the way I’d behaved toward her before she left—and I still did—but I couldn’t make all that compute with these new secrets revealed, with this new side of her. What she’d done to Ariane was horrible. So, was it wrong to still feel bad for not being better to her?
I shook my head. It was so messed up and confusing.
But my mom just nodded at Ariane, as though she’d expected nothing less, and lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?” she said. “Dr. Laughlin?” Her panicked breathing was loud enough to be just as audible to him as it was to us.
She was going to give us away without saying another word. He’d have to be an idiot not to realize something was wrong.
I must not have been the only one thinking along those lines, because Ariane started toward my mom with her hand out.
But my mom backed away, setting her chin in determination. “I just wanted to tell you that it’s not necessary for you to send your little drones to spy on me while I’m shopping,” she said in a steadier voice, one threaded with indignation. “I don’t think they really need to know whether I prefer frozen broccoli or asparagus.”
She paused, listening to him on the other end, her anger spreading fresh color over her pale and sunken cheeks.
“What difference does it make to you when I go to the store?” she demanded. “Maybe it is early for a grocery run, but it’s not as if I’m sleeping much anyway.” She gave a bitter laugh.
Another pause, and her mouth tightened at whatever he was saying. I knew that expression. She was getting pissed. I’d seen that face plenty of times when Quinn and I were arguing over toys or the TV remote or who drank the last of the orange juice.
“I don’t care if you say they’re still at the facility. I know what I saw,” she said. “I’ve kept my end of the agreement, you better keep yours.” Then without waiting for a response, she ended the call, dropped the phone on the counter with a clatter, as if she couldn’t stand to touch it for a second longer, and covered her face with her hands.
I edged closer to Ariane, giving my mom a wide berth—well, as much as possible in this small kitchen. I felt as if I didn’t know what my mom would do, how she would react—a wildly unpredictable variable in an already difficult situation. Weirdly enough, in this room with the woman who gave birth to me, Ariane was my source for familiar.
“Did he believe it?” I asked Ariane quietly, resisting the urge to pull her closer, tuck her under one arm like I needed the stability. But the tension in her shoulders and the tight set of her jaw told me she was on guard. She was in war mode, or whatever she called it, and probably wouldn’t appreciate me hampering her ability to respond.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t read thoughts over the phone. And unless he’s in the neighborhood, his mind is outside my range.”
“He believed it,” my mom said, looking up, her cheeks damp. “He thinks I’m scared and paranoid, which is exactly what he wants.” She smiled, tears overflowing again. “The worst part is, he’s right. I was telling the truth. I got so used to looking for them around every corner, I thought I caught a glimpse of Ford at the store last week. Watching me from the end of the frozen-food aisle.” She laughed, an awful, choked sound. “It’s not possible. Laughlin says he restricted them to the main facility a few months ago, except for when they’re in school, so I don’t know, maybe I really am going crazy.”
Ariane frowned and looked to me.
I shook my head. I had no idea what was going on, how much of it was real and what percentage might be in her head. But there were some coincidences that couldn’t be overlooked. Like the fact that she and Ariane knew each other and that the name Laughlin was being tossed around.
“Mom,” I began.
“I’m fine,” my mom said, straightening up and wiping under her eyes. “But you need to leave. He may have someone check up on me, and he cannot find you here. I won’t make it that easy for him.” She made a shooing gesture at me. “Go now.”
I stared at her. “You must be crazy if you think I’m leaving here without answers.”
“Zane,” she said in that exaggeratedly patient Mom tone, “I don’t have time to explain everything, so you’re just going to have to—”
“Fine, forget all of that,” I snapped. “How about what you’re doing here? Why you lied to me? Why you left in the middle of the night and never came back?”
She squared her shoulders, as if preparing for a fight. “You don’t understand. I was trying to—”
“What is your arrangement with Dr. Laughlin and his company?” Ariane spoke up next to me. “Did you seek him out to continue your…career?”
Oddly enough, that question—or maybe the fact that it came from Ariane—seemed to break through my mom’s resistance.
She slumped back against the counter with a defeated air. “Of course not,” she said. “When I took this job and moved here, I swear to you, I thought it was the office job I applied for. Laughlin Integrated has so many subsidiaries and branches, I didn’t even know it was his company.”
“That doesn’t explain GTX,” I pointed out. And Ariane. That, to me, was the most difficult part to wrap my brain around—that my mom had bundled me off to kindergarten with a kiss on the forehead and then gone to work where she’d stood on the other side of that glass wall and watched Ariane suffer or, worse, actively participated in the experiments and tests on her. Just the thought made me feel ill.
“I had the best of intentions, I promise you,” she said, but she couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “I didn’t know the extent of the project when I signed on. We needed the money, and your father was thrilled that I was working at GTX.”
Of course he was.
“I did the best I could, and I thought it was for a good cause,” she said, looking down at her hands, her fingers laced together.
“Yeah, that’s what they all say,” I muttered. That was pretty much the same excuse Ariane’s adoptive father had given for his role in everything. He’d done it to save other human children from cancer. Well, how could you argue with that? Except after seeing Ariane trapped in the small cell, miserable and alone, I couldn’t imagine anyone not arguing with it. “She’s not a freaking lab rat.”
Ariane cleared her throat. “It’s okay. She was kind to me.”
“Compared to what?” I demanded.
“Zane,” my mom protested weakly.
“If I am willing to accept her apology for what she did to me, then you need to as well,” Ariane said in that calm way of hers.
“That’s bull,” I said. “There is no apology to cover what they did to you.”
“Maybe not, but it’s more than any of the others have ever offered,” she pointed out. Then in a deliberate effort to change the topic, she turned her attention to my mother. “How does Laughlin come into this?”
I exhaled loudly. Trust Ariane to keep on point.
“He wanted someone who knew what GTX was doing with their…with you,” she said. “When I started applying for jobs—”
“So you were planning to leave?” I asked stiffly. I’d suspected that, of course, but hearing it was something different. Somehow, if she’d just, I don’t know, snapped and left on the spur of the moment, I could have handled that better than the fact that she’d made preparations for weeks or even months in advance. A thousand opportunities to tell me or even hint at it, and she’d said nothing. That made every moment I’d spent in her presence during that time a complete and utter lie.