“The Aryan nose and exceptionally white teeth give you away.”
Finn did have Rollie’s straight nose and narrow chin, though his dad’s sharp features had softened with age. But fifty years of four cups of coffee a day and the belief that the new whitening treatments were a vain waste of time had left Rollie’s teeth far from pearly. The woman couldn’t be thinking of the same man, Finn decided and squinted up at her.
“Cat got your tongue?”
He couldn’t let her conclude that she’d rattled him. “I’m Finn. Nice to meet you.”
“But that’s Irish . . . and your eyes: they’re green. Not that it matters; you’re a Gettler.” She climbed to the next branch, in line with the column of knives. “Get off my island.”
Her island?
That claim would be better pondered from afar. “How do I know you won’t plant one of those in my back as soon as I start running?”
“You don’t.”
Without deliberation, he slung his pack over his shoulder and sprinted toward the field, where he would be completely exposed.
Over his heavy breathing, he listened for the breaking of branches behind him and detected nothing.
Reaching the meadow, he sped up. Above his hiking boots, weeds and poison ivy raked his bare shins.
A whistle sounded, followed by a fwunk.
His joints locked.
If she’d hit him, he’d be feeling extreme pain. Finn exhaled with relief.
Her dusty voice came from behind, high up. He whipped around, and the sun momentarily blinded him.
“The orange,” she said from the branches of a maple. “Leave it.”
His mouth gaped. She must have traveled through the canopy.
He regularly scaled trees for his job as a landscape lighting designer, yet he couldn’t move that fast. No one could.
She pointed at his bag.
As he’d left home that morning, Lily had tucked an orange beneath the cord crisscrossing the front pocket. He lowered his pack to retrieve it and nicked his hand on a scalpel embedded in its flesh. Beads of juice clung to the metal. Finn extracted the instrument.
She maneuvered to a far branch, putting the trunk between them.
The knife seemed heavy. An instrument like it—or this very scalpel—could have caused her scars. He inspected its ivory handle, tracing a small crucifix etched near the hilt.
Just holding the prize from the killing of an elephant made him feel vile.
He let it fall.
Although thin, she didn’t appear to be starving. Throughout his travels, he’d encountered many fascinating people but none who exuded both her toughness and vulnerability. He felt a compulsion to learn what she’d been through, and if it were ongoing, though he sensed that the longer he remained in her presence, the more of an enigma she would become.
For not respecting her privacy earlier, he owed her far more than a bruised piece of fruit.
He removed the insulated bag that contained enough food to keep him going until nightfall, when he’d planned to glide past the patrols. Along with the orange, he tossed it near the tree where he’d last seen her.
He knew he should run. Instead, he waited for her to reappear.
Barely audible over the hoarse squawking of the herons, a morning announcement drifted from the PA system for the neighboring Riker Correctional Facility.
It was as if their encounter had never happened. As if she didn’t exist.
Yet he knew she was still watching him. Despite the burning rash that would result from reaching into the poison ivy, he picked up the scalpel—proof that she’d truly been of this world—and raced toward his kayak.
Two weeks later
July
ily Skolnik clung to the shed along the property line of the Gettlers’ Long Island sore home. Concealed by the encroaching sycamores, she listened to the beating of waves on the distant, rocky shore; the cawing of seagulls; the scratching of black elder branches against the weathered planks; and the heaving of her breath, louder and more primal than all else.
To calm her thudding heart, she fingered a sumac leaf and inhaled the plant’s citrusy scent. Usually, she loved coming here to get away from the congestion and concrete of the city. But, today, she wished she were still at home, enjoying a cup of green tea and a Sudoku puzzle.
Instead, here she was, about to spy on her boyfriend.
Before she could lose her nerve, she pressed her ear to the lichen-encrusted wood. From the far side of the windowless wall came a thunk, followed by a metallic clanging.
Lily knew that Finn had sneaked away from his mother’s birthday celebration on the back patio to have another look at his father’s journals. But something else in there must have caught his attention.
She wished she were with him. Or that she could have been content to keep an eye on Rollie and Kristian, as Finn had asked her to do. Normally she would have eagerly helped, but Finn hadn’t been the same since he’d returned from North Brother Island two weeks earlier, and she needed to know why.
What had he discovered among those ruins? Four years ago, during their third date—a tour of Alcatraz—Finn had casually mentioned his family’s multigenerational involvement in another haunted past. Two years later, after swearing her to secrecy, he’d sheepishly explained that one of his great-grandfather’s patients had recovered from typhus, then scarlet fever, with miraculous speed. Ever since, his family had been looking for the elusive, immune system boosting chemical reagent that they believed she’d ingested. “My dad’s too serious a guy to chase a myth,” Finn had countered when she’d questioned their theory.
It had taken him another year to reveal that his grandfather, who’d treated hundreds of patients at Riverside, had also been a doctor in Hitler’s Schutzstaffel. She understood his hesitation: although her mother had never taken her to a synagogue, Lily was Jewish. Two of her great-uncles had died at Auschwitz.
If Finn had found proof that his grandfather had conducted involuntary medical experiments on those exiled on North Brother, it would explain his sullenness since showering off the stench of the East River.
Repeatedly she’d begged him to tell her what he’d seen. Each time, he’d told her he wasn’t ready to talk about it, that he was still “processing.”
Nervously picking at a hangnail, she pictured him now, paging through his father’s handwritten observations of NYC’s forbidden island—currently off-limits in their conversations.
It hadn’t started that way, she thought bitterly, wiping perspiration from the back of her neck. Even in this shade, the air felt like the hot, steamy breath of a stranger too close on a packed subway car.
Three days before Finn had stolen onto North Brother, he’d asked her to go with him. She had, after all, accompanied him on all five of his dangerous bridge expeditions thus far, despite being too terrified to cross any of the canyons.
Though she had no desire to poke around ruins teeming with asbestos, she’d wanted to be there with him on North Brother Island. She had the means: a kayak stowed beside Finn’s in their basement locker. Only her job as a horticulture coordinator for the Central Park Conservancy had held her back. If the Harbor Unit caught her trespassing in the federally protected heron preserve, she’d surely lose her job.
Maybe she should have risked it.
A gust, carrying a trace scent of kelp, buffeted her sundress and the sensitive ferns at her feet. She allowed the breeze to batter her cheeks and liberate sections of long, black hair from her ponytail.
This must be how Finn feels when he’s halfway across an abyss.
When he’d first floated the idea of turning his fascination with bridge construction into an extreme hobby, she’d called him crazy. So had Rollie. As far as Lily knew, it was the first time Finn had ever brushed away his father’s heavy guiding hand.
After
their first expedition, the Gettler family had gathered in their Upper East Side apartment for a digital slide show. As Finn narrated the images of lush forest, a bemused smile occupied Rollie’s face. But when the first view of the precarious Ghasa suspension bridge appeared, he scowled. “How reckless. Hasn’t our history taught you to value life above all else but God?”
Finn flinched and dropped his chin.
A charged silence filled the room.
Lily fumbled for the right words to defend him, but none came. She couldn’t disagree with Rollie’s concern for his son; her worry matched his.
“You have to stop this,” Kristian said from a leather armchair in the corner, “It’s just too dangerous. And stupid.”
“Fuck off.”
Immediately, Finn apologized to the group.
“It’s not like I haven’t heard that word before,” eight-year-old Milo quipped, glancing at his father through the gap in his shaggy, dark blond hair. He turned to Finn: “Have you got a shot looking down from the bridge?”
“Milo,” Kristian said, “don’t encourage him.”
Finn coolly shut his laptop and strode from the room.
Two bleak, cold blocks from the apartment building, Lily caught up with him. Without a word, she slipped her hand into his coat pocket and wrapped her already icy fingers around his warm skin. One of the things she loved most about Finn was how alive she felt in his presence, perhaps because he seemed so unconcerned with death.
Lily knew that if Rollie found Finn rifling through his old journals now, he’d be furious, despite the project’s dormant status. In his soft yet commanding demeanor, Rollie routinely preached respect and family loyalty. Even she had been on the receiving end of that message.
While somewhat awkward and disturbing coming from her boyfriend’s father, she would have welcomed that same expectation from Leonard, her father. A familiar aching sensation stretched across her chest.
Maybe she should have stayed with the others on the patio, where she’d been painting a watercolor of the craggy shoreline far below while Sylvia watched from her wheelchair, a rare smile on the side of her face not paralyzed. Lily loved making her happy; she should have prioritized that over her curiosity.
Soon everyone—including Finn’s aunt and her twenty-three-year-old twin sons—would be wondering where the couple had gone.
But as long as she was already here, she might as well take a quick peek, she decided and peered around the corner. The pawpaw shrubs and blue joint grass rising from the bluff rippled in the wind. What she could see of the two-acre lawn that stretched between her and the house remained empty. Any moment, though, someone might decide to stake out the croquet set.
Not to mention, Finn could emerge.
Her temples pulsating, she pulled herself upward on the ledge to see through the high, narrow window, her toes leaving the ground.
Finn stood only a few feet away with his back to her, a sheet hanging limply from one hand.
Near him, atop an old wooden spool table, sat a wire animal cage.
Her stomach clenched as she dropped, and she suppressed a scream. She glanced toward the field; no one had seen her.
Leaning against the shed, she tried to re-create a visual of that crate. Something—or things—had been in there. Moving.
A tingling sensation overcame her eyes, and white flecks streaked her vision.
Why would the Gettlers have lab animals here? she asked herself, already fearing the answer.
Her panic attacks always began this way, but she couldn’t give in to this one. Her right shoulder began to twitch.
“No,” she said, too loudly.
Slowly, she counted to twenty.
The tingling faded. Lily smiled at this small victory.
She had to know what was in that cage.
At the edge of the thicket, she spotted a short log and set it beneath the window.
Although wobbly beneath her sandaled feet, it gave her the height she needed. She peered into the room and sucked in her breath.
Hanging from the top wire latticework were several bats, their wings wrapped tightly around their furry bodies as they slept. One of them had woken early and was crab-walking, using its sharp claws, along the front of the crate. Its mouth opened, revealing small, daggerlike teeth.
Finn must be watching it, Lily thought and smiled despite the circumstances. He loved anything nature-related, just like her. Each month, when the National Geographic arrived, they curled up on the couch with bagels and lox and read the issue straight through.
Given this critter’s big ears, beady eyes, and horseshoe-shaped mouth, she might have considered it cute, if it weren’t so creepy that these animals were here in the first place.
In search of an explanation, she shifted her gaze to the workbench just below the window. Spread across it were the journals, the knapsack from which they’d presumably come, and an open carton of individually wrapped syringes.
They had to be for the bats, she surmised. But what are they injecting them with?
Grunting, she pulled herself another inch higher.
Her hands lost their hold. The heel of her sandal snagged the log, causing it to roll, and she fell. Her knees hit the rocky dirt.
Based on his hunched shoulders, he appeared to be as disturbed as she was by the presence of laboratory animals on his parents’ property. For all she knew, he might have seen more of them on North Brother. Acutely aware of how little she knew about his trip and thoughts since then, Lily breathed in the scent of the sandy loam.
Her nausea receded, she raised her head.
Halfway across the lawn, Kristian was charging toward her, unhindered by his loafers and chinos.
Adjusting the bodice of her sundress, she scrambled to her feet. To head him off, she rushed forward, then slowed to avoid arousing suspicion.
“Time to eat?” she asked as they neared each other.
“That was quite the tumble,” he said, panting from the exertion. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, conscious of Finn still within the shed only ten feet behind her.
He wrinkled his brow and scrutinized her. “What hurts?”
“Seriously, I’m good.” She retied her hair and straightened her shell necklace. The slightest dishevelment might cause him to worry that her neurons had been misfiring.
“Your patellae took the brunt of it.”
Lily lifted the hem of her dress, and the sight of dirt-streaked crimson triggered a stinging sensation. If Kristian discovered Finn now with that cage uncovered, the confrontation might provide some answers, but the fallout for Finn wouldn’t be worth it. As head of pediatric neurology at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Kristian was closer to Rollie, an internist with his own practice. Surely Kristian would tell their father that Finn had been nosing around.
She had to draw Kristian away from the shed.
“Can you help me find a bandage?”
“Yes, but your heart rate may still be elevated.” He took her wrist to gauge her pulse.
“I’m not that frail,” she said but didn’t pull away. Her petite stature, in comparison to the Gettler men—Finn and Rollie were more than six feet tall, and Kristian’s heft made up for him slightly missing the mark—didn’t help her case.
“Sorry,” he said, dropping his hand. “You can take the doctor out of the hospital, but . . .”
She smiled gently. “God knows I’ve given you a few scares.”
He raised his sunglasses and peered at her, his sky-blue eyes cluttered by long lashes. “Finn said your anxiety has been worse lately.”
Avoiding his probing stare, she studied her hands, which made her feel more self-conscious. Her nails were whittled down to the flesh.
Kristian tapped his hawk-like nose. “You’ll call me if you find yourself checking more than six squares
on that chart?”
“I promised I would.” Just this morning, while Finn had been in the shower, she’d taken out the laminated checklist of “Signs of Depression/Anxiety” and had shaded eight of the ten boxes. Then she’d wiped the sheet clean.
His gaze shifted to a spider, spinning a web beneath the eaves of the flat roof. “Like cancer, mental illnesses are treatable. Neither should prevent you from joining our family.”
Her smile fell. Fourteen years apart in age, the half brothers had grown up separately and now had little in common. Yet clearly Finn had shared with him her reservations about marriage.
The extent of his family’s knowledge about her medical issues and their relationship had always been disconcerting. Considering how private they all were, it was pretty hypocritical.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Kristian ducked his chin in apology. “It’s just that I see how much he loves you.” He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “All we’re guaranteed is the present. Yes, you almost died. Twice. But you also received two second chances, thanks to science. Make the most of them.”
She blinked to hold back the tears. Only Kristian, with his oddly calming black-and-white perceptions, could address her this way. Whenever Finn tried to tell her to stop worrying, the conversation quickly shifted to an argument that ended in deadlock.
“Enough about that.” He let his arms swing to his sides. “Where’s Finny? Mom won’t start her birthday dinner without him, and her pain’s an eight. We need to get her to bed soon.”
Lily had always admired Kristian’s devotion to his stepmother, despite his job and own family’s demands. His birth mother had died from congenital heart failure when he was only seven. Two years into a Doctors Without Borders trip to Cambodia, Rollie met Sylvia, an International Red Cross volunteer from Romania. Rollie brought her to the United States to meet his son, and six months later, they married at City Hall.
According to Finn, from the start, Sylvia had viewed Kristian as her own, so it made sense that he adored her. Still, even biological sons often aren’t that dedicated to their moms. Finn tried, but there was little he could do to alleviate her ever-worsening arthritis, nerve palsies, and polyneuropathy—all side effects of her chronic Lyme disease. Seven years ago, she’d been bitten by a tick carrying a rare, antibiotic-resistant strain of the virulent bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi.
The Vines Page 2