So far, so similar. Zac waited a moment, gave them time to ask their own questions, but they were quiet.
So he kept on. “Okay, say you stub your toe and fracture it. Healed in a few days?”
“No,” Finn said. “It’s not a mortal wound.”
“Right.” This was incredible. They were biologically, medically alike. “You get sick?”
“Sure,” Cady said.
An exception glared at him in the form of Finn’s flat expression. “Wait a minute. If you were given the serum when … Why didn’t you …?”
“The brain stuff was an old injury by then,” he said. “That happened when I was nineteen.”
Zac tried to measure his comfort with the topic, but nothing could be read in Finn’s face. No way to tell if this was the boundary line or not.
Cady pushed her glass away and said quietly, “Zac.”
“No, it’s fine, Cade. Family can know.”
Zac leaned back in the booth and nodded him on.
EIGHT
Finn watched over Zac’s shoulder and lifted one finger as Kath came with plates that steamed, their aromas making Zac’s stomach rumble. He claimed his meat-and-egg scramble and side order of chocolate chip pancakes. In this moment, with these new people who were growing to matter to him faster than his head could keep up, Zac took a few bites before noticing the absence of Colm’s voice in his head. “Breakfast doesn’t need dessert, mate.” It hadn’t left him, but it had faded to the background. It would be back, of course. But he’d take the reprieve while he could get it.
Finn started on his fried eggs and hash browns with the enthusiasm of a trail hand who’d subsisted for months on watered-down coffee, biscuits, and beans. Might have been his reality at some point. Cady ate too, the fork wobbly in her hand at first, aftermath of rejuvenation. She’d ordered eggs, turkey sausage, and ham; the whole-grain muffin sat on the edge of her plate like an afterthought. Protein overload to refuel, or simple preference.
For a few minutes, they didn’t speak, and the quiet was more or less comfortable. Then Finn sipped his juice and set down his fork.
“Some men from a ranch near town had some horses stolen,” he said. “They decided I was the thief. In the course of attack, one of them hit me full in the head with a shovel. I woke up from a coma nine days later.” He gestured to his head. “I was pretty bad off at first. My brain’s had a hundred and twenty years to heal where it can. In the beginning I’d lost reading, writing, short-term memory. All that’s back now, and the headaches aren’t so often.”
Zac pictured himself chafing at the inconvenience and ache of injuries sustained during stunts and sports. Things he had done to himself. And the man across from him sat sipping fruit juice and speaking with tranquility about cognition loss.
“I don’t get it.” The words burst out with an edge he hadn’t known was there.
Finn shrugged. “Life, right? Like you told that girl.”
“And you’re cool with it.” With two separate acts of savagery committed against him. With pieces of his mind missing for the rest of his life.
“Not always.”
“But mostly?”
“Mostly. Yes.”
“How?”
“I didn’t get here alone.” Finn took another bite of hash browns and washed them down with more juice. “I’ve had God.”
Pancake lodged in Zac’s throat. He cleared it and sipped his coffee. He looked up; both of them watched him, and Cady’s eyes held curiosity and challenge.
“I get it,” he said.
It made sense that God would stick by someone like Finn, someone who had suffered such injustice. No doubt Finn served Him with devotion.
“David has Him too, the way you do.” He nodded to Finn. “I think David talks more to God than to any human, maybe every human combined.” Okay, shut up, Wilson. At least until he could steady his voice.
“And you, Zac?” Cady’s voice was quiet as she cut her sausage patty into quarters.
Oh, shoot. Cady too.
This had to be irony. Zac had lived for a century with three agnostics as his closest friends, and now in the course of one month, he met David and Cady and Finn so they could shove scripture in his face.
“I’ll tell you guys what I told David.” Good, steady voice now. A bite behind it to let them know this topic wasn’t to be explored. “I know what He wants from me, and I can’t give it to Him, so I’m not going to pretend. I’m not the submitting type. That’s all there is to it.”
“There’s always more to it than that,” Finn said, still munching his breakfast as if they were discussing preferred ice cream flavors.
“There isn’t.” He shook his head and tried to stop feeling so much. “We’re way off topic.”
“You asked.” Finn pointed his fork at Zac.
“I’m withdrawing the question.” Zac tried to smirk, but neither of them were buying casualness, not now. His attempt felt like an insult. He dropped it. “I understand your concern, given the condition of my eternal soul … and all that. Now back to comparing biology.”
“You wanted to know the story of my brain damage.”
“The biological aspects of the story.”
“Okay,” Finn said.
He should move them on, but curiosity won. “The murder—did someone set you up?”
Finn didn’t shrug this time. “No. My father was Apache.”
At first Zac didn’t see it. Finn’s skin was white. But as Zac studied him with different criteria, his hair, his cheekbones, his nose … Yes. In the late nineteenth century, in the grand old suspicious West—no more or less suspicious than now, though prejudice molded itself a new face for every new generation—Finn would have been noticed. Half-breed. No doubt a name he’d lived with.
“Half Apache. So of course you stole some horses and murdered a man.”
“I told you I didn’t.” He hadn’t so much as blinked, but sudden hurt radiated from him like a shock wave.
Which made zero sense. “I’m not saying you did.”
“That’s exactly what you said.”
“No, I …” Ah. Social subtext. Zac held up his hand. “No, man. Sarcasm.”
Finn frowned.
“Yeah, I’m an idiot. Sorry.”
“That was supposed to be funny?”
“More like bitter.”
“What?” Finn looked to Cady, confusion furrowing the space between his eyes.
“On your behalf,” she said.
He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “Okay, I’m not going to catch up with this one. Just move on.”
Quiet wormed in between them, and the soft drone of conversation from other booths and tables filtered back into his awareness. Zac focused on his food and pondered.
He donned masks so often—masks of fun, frivolity, self-absorption, carelessness. Simon and Moira and Colm had occasionally known what he was doing and let him do it, respecting it as a boundary. The rest of the time, they’d taken those masks at face value, at which point the masks became a true, rather than perceived, defense. The balance was delicate, but it had become unconscious.
Until now.
David got along with him unless Zac relied too much on his persona. But David was too serious for his own good. Finn, on the other hand … He could alienate Finn. And Cady. He wouldn’t earn her respect by wounding her family.
He couldn’t be flippant with them. The realization made him quake inside. With these two he had to be himself. All the time. His screwed-up, thin-skinned, irredeemable self.
God help him.
The sardonic thought rammed headlong into his inner dam, and behind it the words turned into a silent cry.
“Should we switch gears a bit here?” Cady said. “What about the microscopic level? Have you been able to observe that?”
They finished their food while analyzing their discoveries within their own blood cells. They were able to conclude that, in this too, the science was the same for all of them.
&n
bsp; “Good thing we had some crazy innovative doctors back then,” Cady said as they were waiting for the check.
“Yeah.” But her words tugged at old beliefs in Zac, maybe old assumptions. “Did your doc ever tell you about the organisms, where he found them?”
“Some lake,” Cady said. “A long distance from Oklahoma Territory, he told me. He had a limited store of the stuff because he’d only ever found them in that one water source. Fisher Lake, Illinois.”
Around Zac the restaurant seemed to grow still. Finn and Cady stood out in their booth as if they were the subjects in a stereopticon—or a 3D movie, if he wanted to be current about it. The shock must have thrown his mind back in time to … then.
“Zac?” Cady said.
“It was more pond than lake.”
“Um, what?”
“It’s where I’m from, where all of us are from. Fisher Lake.”
Cady’s hand froze around her juice glass.
Facts caught up with him, memories coated in the rust of decades. “But he didn’t go west. He went east. He thought he had TB. He left his notes to us. Not just on David—he took careful notes every time he used the serum.”
“What was his name?”
“Dr. Leon.”
“We knew him as Dr. Noel.”
A chill ran down Zac’s arms. He nodded slowly, though it was impossible. Had to be impossible. He glanced at Finn and tried not to be obvious about it, but the man caught his eye and gave a grim nod.
“I can pick out a four-letter anagram.”
Zac turned his hands palms up. “Sorry.”
“It’s cool. Figuring out my head takes longer than a morning.” He gave a half squint. “Is it medically possible, what we’re talking about?”
“Maybe,” Cady said. “TB’s prognosis is unpredictable.”
“And we don’t know what he had, not for sure. It might have been cancer. It might have been something else, something that wasn’t terminal.”
“But he said he was going east.” As if a man couldn’t lie or change his mind. Zac sounded obtuse. But he couldn’t grasp what they were saying, the upside-down flip of his view of Doc and the longevites and the secret of Fisher Lake. “He said he wasn’t going to practice medicine anymore, was going home to die among family.”
“He never said anything of that nature to us,” Cady said.
“Did he tell you the serum cured all mortal conditions including age?”
She shook her head. “When he was with us, he thought it worked only on mortal injury. Not illness, not age.”
Even in this, Dr. Leon and Dr. Noel matched. Zac scrubbed a palm over his hair. “I just don’t think he took it.”
Or he couldn’t imagine Doc traveling the country making more longevites, half a dozen here and there. It was impossible. Simon had scoured medical media for decades looking for a similar discovery, and not a hint had ever surfaced. Then again, across from Zac sat two people who had existed all this time without showing up in any search of Simon’s.
Finn sat back in the booth and folded his arms. “If he got sick enough, maybe he figured it couldn’t hurt. Didn’t know he’d be making himself like us.”
Maybe. Okay. “So … let’s say he’s alive. For the sake of discussion.”
“We have to find him.” Cady’s voice began to shake. “And Anna and James. Now, right now. Anna would have called me by now if she could, and if they’ve started aging—started dying—if Doc can save them—”
“No.” Finn choked the word so faintly Zac barely heard it, but Cady broke off as if he’d shouted it.
“No what?” Cady said.
“He can’t save them.”
“We won’t know until we ask him. He’s a doctor, a scientist. His research must be ongoing. Maybe he’s still in practice.”
“No.”
“Finn, it’s worth trying.”
“There’s something I haven’t told you. I couldn’t when you were … when I thought you were … but now I have to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Not here, Cade. Finish your food. You need food.”
“I need to know Anna and James are okay.”
“After you eat.”
“I can’t eat now.”
Finn folded his arms. Gazed at her with the flattest expression Zac had seen on him yet. After a moment, Cady ducked her head and took a bite. After a sip of juice, she said, “You’ve talked to them?”
Finn’s Adam’s apple dipped below his collar. “After a fashion.”
“And they’re all right?”
He took a long breath that shook as he exhaled. “After a fashion.”
“Meaning what? Are they in danger?”
“No.”
Cady pushed her plate away, stood, and stepped out from the booth. Without another word she marched out of the diner. Finn watched her then met Zac’s eyes.
“Remember what I told you.”
“That you and Cady are the only ones left.” A weight was growing on his chest. A sense of suffering from Finn that left Zac feeling blind; he still could see no hint of concern on the man’s face.
“Will you stick by us while I tell her? She loves Anna.”
“You think I can help?”
“Well, I can’t. I don’t grieve.”
He couldn’t mean that literally, but he seemed to mean everything literally. “I’ll do what I can.”
“I’ll be obliged,” Finn said.
NINE
Cady was pacing the sidewalk in front of the diner when Finn and Zac stepped outside. She spun and faced both of them with her hands tucked behind her, soldier style.
“Finn, whatever it is, just say it.”
“Not here,” Finn said. “It needs to be private.”
“We can go back to David’s,” Zac said.
“We don’t have to go anywhere. Inside a car is private.” Cady marched to her car and got in on the passenger side and motioned them in after her. Finn got behind the wheel, and Zac slid into the back. He took a deep breath as he shut his door. A bigger car would be helpful.
Cady swiveled in the seat to face Finn. “Come on, Finn. Talk.”
“I’ve been to their house. The first day you were laid up, before you got bad.”
She clenched her hands in her lap. “You found …?”
“They weren’t there. But this was.”
He shifted in his seat to thrust a hand into the front pocket of his jeans. It came out with a sheet of white stationery, adorned with burgundy scrollwork around the edges. Cady reached for it, and Finn’s fingers tightened on the paper.
“You have to be ready, Cade.”
“Give it to me.”
He did. She unfolded the sheet and began to read. At last she handed the letter back to Finn and sat there, lips parted, chest barely rising and falling, looking like a cast of herself, eggshell thin.
Zac expected Finn to break the silence, to reach out to her somehow. But in a few minutes, Cady collected herself and met his eyes.
“They’re gone,” she said.
Finn stared down at his hand clutching the letter, crinkling it at the center fold. He nodded.
“Let him see.” Cady’s voice had become as flat as Finn’s. “He needs to know.”
“Only if you want me to,” Zac said.
“It’s your right. As Elderfolk.”
Zac accepted the letter from Finn’s hand. Its edges were crumbling to softness, though it had been found only days ago. Finn had handled it enough to age it. Cady turned her face away, staring out the side window, as Zac began to read.
To our loved ones, Finn and Cady.
We hope to be able to say these things to you in person, but in case something goes wrong as it did for Sean and Holly, we leave this letter to speak for us. We’ve agreed to maintain the anonymity of the person who has offered us hope for a natural life span, brought into contact with us through Holly’s facilitation. Said individual does not know of this letter. If you find
this, if you find our shells after we have abandoned them for spiritual eternity, please do not lament too long. We made a careful decision, reached for this chance to join the normal world again. We refused to do it except together.
If we don’t meet you here again, please forgive us. We know we could lose. No, I mean to say we know you could lose. We will gain, however this ends.
Dearest Cady, you know of my (Anna’s) yearning for a child. You have witnessed my tears and my petitions to our Lord Jesus that He cure this thorn of timelessness in me that others might see as a blessing, but I cannot. Cady, you know; now please believe. I made this choice, and James is doing it for me. He won’t allow me to venture into this uncharted place alone.
To both of you: if we are separated from you now, we ask you to show your love by remembering us with kindness and letting us go. Remember always we will see you again. Deepest love to you, our kin through lifetimes.
Anna and James
Zac swallowed past the stricture in his throat and looked up from the gentle script. He handed the letter to Finn and clasped his hands at his knees. Their despair was flooding the car; already he felt up to his armpits. But neither of them demonstrated a hint of it.
“I am so sorry,” Zac said.
“I was wrong. They didn’t age out.” Cady looked into his eyes and seemed to find support in them to continue. At least he could offer that. “Someone did this to them.”
Zac shouldn’t be here. The devastation didn’t belong to him. He couldn’t do a thing for them. Yet he couldn’t abandon them either.
“Anna did want a baby. Whoever he is, he knew details about them.”
Finn gave her a squint. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying this letter is nonsense. They didn’t want to die.”
“It’s not that they wanted to. It was a risk; she wrote that.” He lifted the letter. “They accepted the risk.”
“After it killed Holly and Sean? No way.”
“This is proof.” Finn jerked the letter in her direction.
“Or not.” Cady looked to Zac. For an outside perspective. For backup.
Zac shook his head. “Not following.”
“Anna didn’t choose the cure, and she didn’t choose to write the letter.”
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