“Yes, please,” she says, leaning back against the seat. She debates calling the cottage again. Starts to punch in the numbers, hangs up. If there was news, they would have called. Tries Jane. The phone goes to voicemail. Holly doesn’t leave a message.
To distract herself, she scrolls through her emails, finds the one from Elliot Benton, and scans it. It’s hastily written, but shows promise. Like Holly, Benton came to the beauty industry from the outside. A biologist with an interest in mollusks, of all things, he can see the big picture and make connections most people can’t—he’d caught her attention at a conference years ago when he told her a quahog clam could live up to five hundred years.
When Barry balks at Elliot’s salary, she points out that Darling Skin Care is one of the few beauty companies to have a biologist. It’s an advantage not many other companies have, and plays into the current trend for products heavy on natural elements. Already Elliot’s work on the Pixie Dust line has paid for itself.
She emails Elliot back, telling him to pursue the modifications in trial form. She hesitates, her fingers poised over the screen. Elliot might know a way to stabilize the proteins in the blood she gives Jack. He could help her synthesize the serum. Could possibly even help her find a way to cure Eden. Slow her growth, wake her up. But bringing anybody in on that is too risky. As tempting as it might be to have someone to work with, to talk with, she has to go it alone.
She shakes her head to clear it. Her days of collaboration with scientists like Elliot are over. The handful of people she’s kept in contact with from before the crash can’t believe she’s happy manufacturing lotions and creams that cheekily promise to defy time. But they’re not in on the irony. And they never will be.
Time stopped for Holly the day of the car crash. She’s been defying death, defying time, for all these years, and she’s not going to stop now.
“We’re here, Dr. Darling.”
She looks up. She’s been so caught in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed they’ve arrived at the airport. And as if on cue, an alert dings on her phone. Her flight has been delayed. While she hesitates, trying to decide what to do, another ding—now it’s canceled.
Shit.
“Give me a second,” she tells the driver. She calls her travel agent. “What’s the best you can do?” she asks. “I have to get to London today.”
There’s a pause as the woman reviews her itinerary. “Your flight was full, and so are the subsequent ones,” she says. “There’s a whole line of storm fronts with high winds coming in, so it’s going to be a while. But there’s a flight leaving . . . let’s see . . . I can get you on a flight at eight.”
“Tonight?” Holly bites her lip in frustration.
“I need to know right now, before it’s gone.”
“Fine. Yes, I’ll take it,” Holly says. “But keep trying for something earlier.”
“I’ll do my best, but I can tell you it’s unlikely,” the woman says.
After she disconnects the call, Holly considers her options and decides to go home. Her head is still sore and she’s exhausted. This way she can rest, get some work done, then have the car service pick her up with Jack’s bags. She’ll surprise him after practice and drop him at Barry’s herself before heading back to the airport. She’s certain he’s still upset that she won’t let him stay home alone, and she hates leaving with tension between them. Maybe she’ll even stop and pick up his favorite pizza as a peace offering along the way.
Traffic is snarled, and by the time she gets home, the rain is sheeting down. She’s soaked in the few steps from the car to the door, and her leg is twinging again. She’s glad she decided to go home instead of to the office—she’ll take a hot bath before she picks up Jack. She’d like to reapply the cream too, but she knows from experience its potency lessens if she uses it too often.
As she reaches the door, a tall figure brushes past her, face obscured by a hoodie. The person is in such a hurry he bumps her shoulder as he passes. The doorman scowls at him before offering to take her luggage, but she waves him off, takes her bag to the elevator, and then it’s blessedly quiet. Except, as she steps out onto her floor, it’s not. There’s a low heavy throb in the air, thumping through the walls so hard it reverberates in her chest. It takes her a second or so to realize it’s actually music, another second to realize that the sound is coming from her apartment. She tests the doorknob—locked. Could she somehow have left the speakers on? Or perhaps Manuela came back for something, although Holly for the life of her cannot imagine her grandmotherly housekeeper listening to music with a bass line like this. She unlocks the door, cautiously opens it. And in a glance understands everything.
Two of Jack’s friends are lounging on her couch, dirty sneakers draped across either end. Beer cans litter the coffee table in front, and there is the faint but unmistakable aroma of pot. Jack himself is leaning against the kitchen wall, holding a cloth to his nose. Blood is dripping down his shirt, puddling onto the floor.
Eden’s blood.
One of the boys must have heard or sensed the door opening over the music. He raises his head and sees her. It’s Brett Pike.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Dude. Your mom.”
But Holly’s already moving past him to Jack, fear propelling her forward. “What happened? Where are you hurt?” she says, taking the cloth from his face. His nose is grotesquely swollen.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” he says, his voice nasally. He takes the cloth back. “I got punched in the nose, is all. It’s no big deal.”
She looks at him, at the blood on his shirt, and suddenly she’s furious. At the waste. The price she’s paid—the things she’s done—and for this? And then it occurs to her that more is at stake.
“Did you bleed on them? On anyone else?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. She crosses the room before he has a chance to speak, inspects Brett, the other boy. Their eyes are red, their breath smells like beer, but there’s no blood and, more importantly, no visible cuts on their skin. Satisfied, she jerks her head at the door. “Out. Now.”
* * *
Sending two high and drunk teens out onto the streets of New York may not be her finest moment, but Holly doesn’t care. They’re lucky she doesn’t call their parents or, worse, the police. But she has no time for them. She grabs paper towels from the kitchen and uses them to clean off Jack’s face. His nose is swollen, but she’s pretty sure it’s not broken. She gets another paper towel, wraps ice in it, and makes him sit at the kitchen table with the ice on his nose.
She scrubs the kitchen floor, mourning every single drop of blood she cleans up. She has no idea whether it’s still potent. For a second, she considers trying to save it, but the scientist in her points out how unsterile it is, so she puts the paper towels in the sink and burns them, one at a time, so she doesn’t set off the fire alarm. She wets down the remains until they’re formless black sludge, then throws them in the trash. Only then, when she’s expended some of her energy, is she ready to face Jack without killing him.
She takes off her cleaning gloves, snapping them away from her wrists, and tosses them in the garbage. She leans against the counter, arms crossed.
“Now talk.”
“What?” Jack says, his voice muffled through the cloth. If he rolls his eyes at her, she swears to god, she’ll undo all the years she’s spent trying to keep him alive with one blow.
“Oh, I don’t know, let’s see. Let’s start with why aren’t you at school? Who punched you? Or, my personal favorite, where the hell did you get the pot?”
She sees him thinking about a way to deny all of it, can recognize the thoughts as they come and go behind his eyes. But his brain must be too muddled from the beer and the weed to lie. He shrugs his shoulders.
“Some guy. Brett knows him.”
“Really, just some guy, huh? Does he have anything to do with the bloody nose?”