The Memory Painter

Linz smiled and went with it. “The wonders of computers.”


“Though I’m not quite sure about this Epigenomic analysis,” he said, more to himself, and turned away to study a nearby monitor. He had clearly exhausted his social skills. Linz knew other scientists with the same flaw, especially from her father’s generation. Luckily she was not similarly afflicted. A thought occurred to her.

“Dr. Parker, did you know Michael and Diana Backer? I believe they were in your field.”

He looked up from the monitor, startled that she was still there. “Of course. I met them through your father years ago.”

“Because they went to med school together?”

“Yes,” he said. “Then Conrad worked for Mike.”

Linz nodded as if none of this was news. “Of course.”

“He took over their research when he started this company.”

Linz nodded again, a sense of surrealism starting to kick in. “What were they working on?”

“A study to help enable memory retrieval in Alzheimer’s patients. I was disappointed that it was never published. It was all such a shame.”

“Yes, I remember him talking about it. What was the project name again?” Linz prompted.

“I’m not sure if I…” Dr. Parker paused a minute. “Ah yes, Renovo.”

Linz hid her surprise—that was the same name Bryan had mentioned during dinner. “Right, Renovo.”

“Over the years, I’ve asked your father on several occasions if I could take a peek at the file. But he’s always said no. Such a shame, to see their research buried in a coffin.”

A shiver ran down Linz’s spine. She nodded, unable to speak. Dr. Parker smiled and turned back to his work.

Linz hurried back to her lab, where she found Steve watching a video online. It took her a second to realize it was a video of him on YouTube, doing a bizarre dance-performance piece. The second he noticed her, he killed his monitor, mortified. She pretended not to see. “Steve, can you do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Get me whatever you can find on a research project named Renovo. Check NIA’s databases and our archives.”

“What year?”

“1982.” The year Medicor was founded—five years before she was born.

Her cell phone rang before Steve could ask her any more questions. It was a number Linz had never seen before—it looked like an international call. She was about to answer when the call dropped. She waited to see if a voice mail would register, but nothing came.

Linz was annoyed. She had hoped it would be Bryan. She knew she should make first contact since she’d been the one to suggest they needed a break, but still she wished he’d ignore her request and call her anyway—or better yet, show up at her door. Linz shook her head, disgusted with herself. So much for willpower.

Frustrated, she turned off her phone and threw it in the drawer. Missing him wouldn’t accomplish anything. There was work to be done, and it just might help her ignore the feeling that simply wouldn’t go away: her life was beginning to fall apart.



TWENTY-FIVE

Bryan hung up the airphone, not sure what he would have said if Linz had answered. He imagined how the conversation might have gone and grimaced. How could he explain his actions without driving her further away?

He had pushed too hard when he had forced her to watch the film. The problem was that Linz remained a stranger to the memories they shared, and the farther down the rabbit hole he went without her, the more she became a stranger to him. The distance between them was growing, and the realization terrified him.

It didn’t help that the memories from Bjarni’s life threatened to overwhelm him. After Linz had left, Bryan had stared at the ceiling for hours and then headed to the studio to paint.

He had done one painting, but for the first time in his life his art felt like a distraction. An urgency had been building inside him ever since he’d remembered Bjarni’s life—there was something in those memories that he needed to find.

Frustrated, Bryan had left his loft to go for a walk. The ghostly history seeping from the nooks and corners of Boston’s streets usually managed to calm him and help him connect to a past he knew was alive and breathing. But not that night.