Run (The Tesla Effect #2) (12 page)

Just as Tesla was about to reach for the door handle and yank the girl out from the hands of this monster, the man cursed and said, “Get in the backseat, now!”

Tesla scurried back behind the car, went a few feet past it and back up on to the sidewalk, where she stood up and began walking, as normally as she was able, back toward the car and the busy sidewalk ahead. She saw a tired-looking woman with two blonde girls in tow, moving hurriedly toward the car. As she drew near, Tesla heard the woman, who had opened the back door and was ushering the little girls inside, say, “Well, I didn’t know where you’d gone! Of course I came looking. We’ll do this another day.”

As she walked past the car Tesla ventured a quick glance into the backseat and met the dark eyes of the skinny little girl, who neither cried nor spoke, sitting as still as death in the far corner of the backseat while the little blonde girls squabbled over a toy and the parents argued quietly up front.

They were the oldest eyes Tesla had ever seen.

After she turned the corner and had walked past the first couple of storefronts, Tesla turned into a doorway and pushed open the glass door, a jingling bell announcing her arrival.

She was in a boutique of some kind, a small shop that sold—soap, maybe? The purpose of the store was unclear, but Tesla relaxed immediately. There were delicate little chairs in pastel colors, ferns and vases of fresh, cut flowers. A fountain tinkled softly somewhere, and antique tables and sideboards and hutches, lightly distressed and whitewashed, held glass bottles and framed photographs of lovely women in vintage, sepia tones. Chunky blocks of artisanal soaps sat beside rounded pebble-like bath beads that shimmered in the light from softly shaded lamps. It smelled like heaven, sandalwood and jasmine, peppermint and sweet pea blooms, and Tesla was absolutely certain that nothing ugly or cruel could ever exist in this room.

“May I help you, dear?” asked a kind-looking woman with soft white hair and eyes that crinkled when she smiled.

“Yes,” Tesla said, unable to summon a smile of her own and holding her inked hand out carefully, awkwardly, as if it was precious and she was afraid it would shatter.

“May I use your phone? It’s very, very important.”

CHAPTER 14

Greg Abbott sat at the kitchen table, his newspaper open, folded back and held in one hand, with a steaming mug of coffee in the other while he read. The morning sun shone in through the windows, and despite the frost that still blanketed the lawn, his overall feeling was one of hope and renewal—an attitude more commonly associated with spring than the decay and inevitable onslaught of winter.

He paused in his reading, laid the paper down on the table and took a sip of his coffee, while a hint of a smile played around the corners of his mouth. Last night had been—well, exactly what he’d needed, and didn’t happen nearly often enough.

No sooner had he come to that conclusion, accompanied by a determination to change things on that score, than he heard a sound and looked up to see Jane Doane walking into the room.

A smile broke across his otherwise ordinary-looking face, making him handsome, his happiness contagious. “Good morning,” he said.

Jane responded in a whisper as she grabbed the back of a chair and leaned down to slip on the sensible heels she’d carried into the room, “Yes. Morning. I am
so
sorry about this. I overslept. He’s not up yet, is he?
God
, I can’t believe I fell back asleep. I was up most of the night, worrying. What do you think Tesla is doing back there—back then? Greg, what if she finds out? Any hope we have of her accepting this—accepting us—will pretty much be shot.”

Greg set down his coffee and stood up, walking around the table to where she stood, nervously twisting her fingers together. He put his hands on her upper arms. “Jane. We’ve been through this,” he said gently.

“I know. I
know
. But they’ve been through so much already. What if they hate it? Hate me?”

Greg’s hands dropped away from her. “That could never happen. How could it? They already love you.”

“Greg, I’m not an idiot. I appreciate the reassurance, but you know as well as I do that loving me as good old Aunt Jane is not the same thing as loving me as the woman who wants to take their mother’s place. With them, and with you.”

He took her in his arms then, and held her tightly, kissed the top of her sleek, dark hair, the upper edge of her ear. “I know. But how long do we have to wait?”

Jane extricated herself from his embrace, pulled her navy suit jacket back into place, and smoothed her short hair back behind her ears. “As long as it takes,” she said with absolute conviction. “I would do anything for them. For this family.”

“I know,” Greg said quietly. “You proved that long ago, but it’s time to put all of that behind us. Now we—”

“Hey,” said Max as he walked into the kitchen and headed directly for the refrigerator. “You’re here early, Aunt Jane.”

“Yes, I needed to discuss some things with your father, and figured I’d stop by before some meetings I have across town this morning.”

Max said nothing, but whistled a horribly dissonant tune through his teeth as he perused the possibilities for breakfast. When he emerged from the gaping maw of the refrigerator, juggling a carton of orange juice, a cold, leftover pork chop, a half-filled Chinese takeout container and a strawberry yogurt, Jane crossed her arms and looked at him with one raised eyebrow.

“
That’s
what you’re having for breakfast?”

Max grinned, set his haul on the counter and pushed his glasses up higher on his nose. “Sure, why not?” He shrugged. “Dad doesn’t care, do you, Dad?”

“Oh, uh, I’m not sure I’d phrase it exactly that way,” stammered Greg, glancing at Jane, who was annoyingly healthy in her eating and exercise habits.

“Really, how would you phrase it?” she asked sweetly.

“I’d say that, ah, in the aggregate, over time, the kids eat a balanced diet. Plenty of vegetables, whole grains, you know. Just maybe not represented in this one meal.”

Jane shook her head. “You’re having black coffee for breakfast. You can’t be trusted.”

Greg sat back down at the table, picked up his mug and winked at Max before taking a sip. “What?” he asked, the picture of innocence. “This is nowhere near enough data for you to draw any conclusions. I’m a scientist, I know these things.”

Jane took off her jacket and hung it on the back of a chair, then unbuttoned the cuffs of her shirt and began to roll up her sleeves while eyeing Max. “How about we put back the pork chop and the lo mien, you pour orange juice for all of us, and I’ll make omelets. Pretty sure I saw spinach and feta in the fridge.”

“Omelets?” Greg asked, looking exactly like Max as he pushed his glasses up further on his nose from where they’d slipped. “Sounds good to me. I’ll make more coffee.”

They all set to work, and just as Jane began to whisk the eggs together in a bowl, Max, who was getting forks out of the drawer, spoke casually, without turning around. “When did you rummage through the fridge Aunt Jane? I thought you just got here.”

Greg and Jane both froze, though their eyes immediately sought each other. For two incredibly intelligent and competent people, they looked like deer caught in headlights, paralyzed, without a single notion between them of how to respond.

Max shut the drawer and turned, with the forks in his hand and a wicked grin on his face. “I thought so. You’re both grounded.” Whistling, he continued to set the table, and the startled grown-ups turned awkwardly back to their tasks.

A few moments later, the strained silence still unbroken, Jane flipped the fat omelets, just beginning to ooze melted cheese, as Max walked around the table pouring juice, then headed back to the refrigerator to put the carton away. He passed behind Jane and, on impulse, put his arm around her waist and hugged her, pressing his face against the middle of her back. It lasted only a few seconds, and no words were said. Greg watched from the table, his throat constricted, suddenly raw. Jane, her back to the room, blinked a couple of times in quick succession, and then turned and said briskly, “Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

They sat, and they ate, Jane and Greg exchanging one bemused, gloriously happy look, as Max said, his mouth full of omelet,
“This
is how you start a day.”

Jane walked out the front door, feeling lighter and more hopeful than she had in a very long time. All these years she had been such an integral part of the family, but strictly in the guise of a friend, a comforter, someone who helps out. But her love for Greg Abbott and his children was fierce, and in no way about being “Aunt Jane.” She had loved Tasya, too, of course, but it was the love of friendship, admiration and shared experiences that nonetheless did not obscure the differences between them. She had kept her distance for a long time after Tasya was gone—there had been so much pain, and a great deal of guilt. Hell, there was still a great deal of guilt, and she lived with it every day, as did Greg. But over the years, as they grew closer, they had learned to help each other with that, to reassure each other that they had done the only thing they could do that night.

That awful, terrible night when all their lives had been irrevocably changed.

As Jane walked from the house to her car, she saw Keisha walking up the driveway to the house.

“Hey, Aunt Jane. What’s up?” asked Keisha. As a fixture in Tesla’s life from a very early age, she’d known Jane for many years.

“Stopped by for a quick meet with Dr. Abbott and wound up cooking breakfast, believe it or not.” She managed to produce a mild snort, and tried to inject a mildly offended tone into her comment. It was, of course, an epic fail.

Keisha looked at the much shorter woman. She had always seemed pretty serious, or at least didn’t mince words. She didn’t try to keep things pretty, she said and did what needed to be done. She was straightforward. And while she wasn’t exactly morose, or without a sense of humor, Keisha’s experience had always been that Jane was sort of “steady,” not one to show exuberance, or any other extreme emotion for that matter. And yet here she was, fairly vibrating with excitement, trying (and failing) to keep her lips from turning upward in a huge, shit-eating grin.

“Huh. Well, that sucks. Like you don’t have your own work to do,” said Keisha.

“Right?” Jane asked, finally letting her smile loose, which split her face wide open, crinkled her elfish eyes, and made her really beautiful for the first time in Keisha’s memory. She laughed, even though nobody had said anything funny, climbed into her car, and the window came down as she adjusted her mirrored, government-issue aviators.

“Toodles!” Jane quipped, wagging her fingers in Keisha’s general direction as she backed out of the driveway and then drove toward town.

‘Toodles??’
Keisha thought, snapping her mouth closed when she realized it was open.
What in the world?

No matter how bizarre (and interesting, obviously) that whole scene was, Keisha did not have time to stand around and try to decipher it. She was here for a reason, and man, did she love being purposeful. And all because of Beckett—who would have thought? She walked up to the front door of the Abbott house and knocked twice before opening the door and stepping inside.

“Hey Dr. A, it’s Keisha. Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Of course, come on in!” came his unusually buoyant reply. “Max and I are finishing breakfast. Want coffee or OJ?” Keisha threw one glance at the front door, from which a literally
giddy
Jane Doane had emerged, and from the sounds of it, Dr. Abbott was on the same trip.
Hmmmmm
.

“I wonder what Tesla’s gonna make of
this
development,” she muttered to herself as she headed for the kitchen. “Nobody wants to know their parents have a sex life.
Nobody
.”

Two hours later, Keisha, Malcolm, and Beckett sat in the parlor of the old Victorian house, discussing the conversation Keisha had had with Dr. Abbott, and the plan Beckett was hatching.

“Well, we knew Dr. Abbott was aware of the One God One Truth group,” Beckett said matter-of-factly. “I am a little surprised he’s had contact with them, though, and didn’t tell us.”

Keisha stepped in. “Yeah, it sounds strange when you put it that way, but honestly, when we were talking it was really clear that he doesn’t see them as a threat in any way, and that the one time they approached him was not that big of a deal.”

“That actually makes sense,” Malcolm said. “I mean, that he would see it that way. I’ve been with them before, you know out or whatever, and on campus, and people come up to him in public and just start talking to him about his work. He’s been in the paper a bunch of times, and a couple of years ago
Newsweek
did that piece on several scientists’ work, and he was one of them. And there were photographs, too. I mean it’s not like he’s a celebrity, but people have opinions about the kind of work he does, and it’s not uncommon that they’ll just walk up to him and tell him all about what they think, even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“I suppose,” Beckett said, frowning. “But it’s still troubling. Tell me again what he said about the encounter with the group?”

“Sure, but there’s not much to it,” Keisha said. “He was at a conference in Chicago, had given a talk, a paper or something that was going to be published I think, and during the Q&A afterward some man stood up and asked him to reconcile his work with the Bible, with the ‘expulsion from Eden’ in particular. Something about knowledge forbidden by God, he said. He didn’t think it was a big deal, he sidestepped the whole thing, saying something like he respected the question and the concerns behind it, but it wasn’t his area, he had no theological expertise, and others would have to address those issues.”

“Yeah, but what about after the session?” Beckett prodded.

“Well, he was sort of frowning when he got to that part, but it seemed more like he found the encounter confusing, than that he found it disturbing.”

“Yes, but what
happened
?” Beckett insisted.

“Geez, Blondie, settle down,” Keisha retorted, but the sting that used to accompany her every comment to the other girl—and vice versa—was completely absent. “Basically, Dr. A said that when the session broke up, and people were leaving the room, some milling about in small groups, stopping to chat or shake hands, three people approached him, two men and a woman. One of the men had asked the question in the Q&A. This time, only the other man spoke. He shook Dr. A’s hand and introduced himself as Reverend Doyle of the One God One Truth Church. He was polite, but asked Dr. A pointblank how he felt about the fact that his entire career was an affront to God.”

“That is so creepy,” said Mal, flicking his pale blonde hair out of his eyes.

“And that was it?” Beckett asked, though Keisha had already told her the entire story once before.

“Pretty much,” Keisha said, nodding. “He said he felt ‘mildly uncomfortable,’ that the three had seemed oddly intense, and that Doyle had actually waited for an answer to his question, it hadn’t been rhetorical at all. But all Dr. A said was, ‘please excuse me,’ and he walked away.”