Chain Reactions

by Lynn Ames

  “Well, well. Are you talking to yourself? Because you know what they say. Talking to yourself is the first sign of…” Rosemary Neufeld rotated her forefinger in a clockwise motion next to her temple as she fell into step alongside Diana.

  Of all the people in the world she might have wanted to run into, Rosemary never would’ve made the list. If Diana had known Brooke four years ago, she never would’ve made the mistake of the Rosemary-one-night-stand debacle. Whatever had possessed her to think Rosemary was an appropriate or desirable choice for her?

  “Hey, did you hear the scuttlebutt? Roger Deacon is moving his research here to Columbia from Penn.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard. My great-aunt just died and I’ve been tied up with her affairs.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear that. Anyway, apparently Columbia enticed him away, NIH grant and all, with the promise of a dedicated lab and a tenured position. Deacon is a superstar. This will bring the department a ton of prestige. I’m going to ask him if I can join his team.”

  “Good for you. I hope you get in.” She meant it because if Rosemary managed to wheedle her way onto Deacon’s research staff, it would mean she would stop hounding Diana about joining her team.

  “Well, I’ve got to run. It’s been fun.” As she jogged on, Rosemary turned to glance over her shoulder. “Oh, and for God’s sake, stop talking to yourself in public. People are going to think you’ve lost your mind.”

  The ocean roiled, swelled, receded, and crashed against the boulders again. Brooke perched on a rock far enough away from the action to avoid getting soaked. Idly, she observed that Mother Nature seemed as unsettled today as she felt. The low-hanging, charcoal-gray clouds perfectly matched her mood.

  Was Diana as miserable as she was? Brooke started to pull out her phone to check for text messages. She paused with it halfway out of her pocket and pushed it back down.

  “Like the answer’s going to be any different than it was five minutes ago when you last checked. If she’d texted, you’d have felt the phone vibrate.”

  She pushed off the rock and carefully picked her way across the slick boulders of the breakwater and back to the safety of the sandy beach. She zipped her jacket higher to fight the buffeting wind and stuffed her hands in her pockets.

  She felt like a woman without a home. She couldn’t bring herself to stay at the cottage, despite what Nora’s letter said. It was too soon and Brooke had yet to reconcile herself to the new reality that she owned the place. Being in the rented house in P-town—the house that still carried faint hints of Diana’s perfume—was practically intolerable, but the better of the two options.

  When she was halfway back to her rental, she felt the phone vibrate and snatched it up.

  “Hi. Hope this text finds you well. Sorry it took me a few days to figure out the timing. If the offer still stands, do you think you could secure a venue for two weeks from now? I’m thinking maybe a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon service. FYI, I placed the obits as discussed. The newspapers are waiting for the funeral details before finalizing the copy. The announcements will run this coming Sunday. I guess that’s all for now. Be safe, sweet Brooke.”

  Brooke cradled the phone and stared at the words. She particularly focused on the last line. It wasn’t much, but it was at least something—a modicum of affection to offset the sadness and uncertainty that permeated the remainder of the text.

  “Hi yourself. I have a venue—The Dana-Farber Chapel. I already checked open dates. That Saturday afternoon is available. How about 2 p.m.? I will nail down the details ASAP so that you’ll have them in time to meet the newspaper deadlines. The Director for the Center for Spiritual Care there can officiate, if that is something you want. I have an e-mail ready to go for Dana-Farber and Harvard as soon as the date and time are confirmed. I’ll cc you on the letter. Once we know who can attend, maybe we can select a few speakers? This is your show, so you let me know what you want and I will help make it happen, if you so desire.”

  She reread the note and hit send. After a beat, she sent a follow up. “I hope you are practicing excellent self-care, sweet Diana.”

  She gripped the phone tightly. Had she said too much? Overstepped? Should she not have added the postscript? She hated having to weigh every word. The phone buzzed again.

  “That all sounds great. Thank you.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re welcome. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know more.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  She waited as the three blinking dots remained on her screen for several moments. When they disappeared without another word, she trudged wearily toward the house.

  Diana hadn’t indicated where she was, how she was doing, or what she was feeling. But then again, Brooke hadn’t said anything personal beyond telling Diana to take care of herself.

  She envisioned Diana alone in the attic hunched over Nora’s diary. Her heart stuttered. Nora would be most disappointed in her right now for abandoning Diana to handle the task without her.

  Brooke unlocked the front door, hung up her jacket, and dropped onto the couch. Something niggled at her. Nora clearly put a lot of thought into every detail of what would happen after her death. From the disposition of her property, to the reading of the will and the letters, to the discovery of the trunk and its contents, each and every aspect of this process had been expertly choreographed and orchestrated.

  What really had possessed Nora to leave the cottage to her? Seeking clues, she reread Nora’s letter to her. Somehow the words on the page seemed inadequate to explain this choice. She was missing something, but reading between the lines was getting her nowhere.

  Frustrated, she set the letter aside. It was late in the day. She should call and finalize the funeral arrangements with the chapel. That would give her one last excuse to have a text exchange with Diana. Then she could get the letter off to Daniel for dissemination. After that, the next move would be up to Diana.

  Diana stared at Brooke’s e-mail on her computer screen. The letter to Aunt Nora’s Dana-Farber and Harvard colleagues was pitch perfect. She’d been good for her word and taken care of everything. The venue was ideal, and she’d secured the desired time and officiant.

  So, what was the problem? “Now you have no reason to interact with her again until it’s time to choose speakers.” She sat back and crossed her arms. The bigger problem was that she felt like she needed a pretense to talk to Brooke.

  Just once, why couldn’t she have everything she wanted? Why couldn’t everything fall into place and go smoothly? You’re brooding.

  Why shouldn’t she brood? She mentally counted off the many ways in which the fates conspired against her.

  One. Aunt Nora came back into her life, but for such a brief moment that Diana might’ve imagined it. Two. After years alone, she found the woman who could be “the” one, only to be thwarted by geographic challenges. Finally, three. The NIH selected and agreed to fund her project, something she’d been working toward for a decade, and she was finding it hard to muster any enthusiasm for it in light of the situation with Brooke.

  Yes, the fates indeed were cruel. She balled her hands into fists and banged them on the desk. Several precariously perched books slid off the corner and landed with a thud on the floor at her feet. “Perfect.”

  As she bent over to clean up the mess, her eyes alit on a self-help book she’d bought in a low moment after the breakup with Bethany. She stuffed the other books in a drawer.

  She had ignored most of the guidance contained in the self-help book, which she’d felt foolish for buying in the first place, but two pearls of wisdom had proven useful.

  How had the author put it? Diana closed her eyes and tried to recall the sentiment. In the early days after the breakup, she’d repeated the mantra often as she endeavored to put the pieces of her shattered life back together again.

  “All the help you need is supplied to you as soon as you ask for it. The answer may not look the way you expect it to look and/or
may come to you in an unexpected way, but if you are open to it, you will see the path forward.”

  The second piece of guidance was more complicated. Diana palmed the self-help primer and thumbed through only the dog-eared pages until she found what she was looking for.

  “You attract to yourself that upon which you focus. You have two choices. You can continue to dwell on negative thoughts and manifest those in your life. Or, you can envision the outcome you truly desire and point your energy in that direction. When you shift your mindset, you realign your energy and attract everything positive you can imagine. Your life. Your choice.”

  She flipped to the back of the book where the author included action items to facilitate the shift.

  “Start by making two columns. In the first column, list what is true right now. In the second, posit what you wish was true.”

  She fished around in the drawer and pulled out a notepad. This was crazy and foolish, wasn’t it? She was wasting her time. But what if it works? She sighed. It wasn’t as though she had anything better to be doing tonight.

  “Let’s see, Column One, What is True… One. I’m a tenured professor at Columbia, which is located in New York City. Two. I recently received a major grant to conduct research that, if successful, could change hundreds of thousands of lives for the better.”

  She paused with her pen over the page. Honesty is the best policy. “Three. I am in love with a woman who prefers to avoid New York City and really, all big cities. Four. I recently inherited a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” She cocked her head to the side. In the margin she wrote as she mumbled, “Does Cambridge count as a big city? The house is in a bucolic, sleepy neighborhood.”

  Again, she hesitated. Oh, what the hell. In the column directly across the way, under the heading, What I Wish was True, she jotted, “I am happily sharing my life with Brooke, living under the same roof, and conducting my research at the same time.”

  She exhaled and tapped the pen against the page. She liked the sound of the right-hand column. She returned to the exercise in the book. “Now, ask yourself this question: What would it take to transform the item in Column One into the item in Column Two? What is holding you back? Are there action steps you can take right now to facilitate this shift?”

  What was standing in the way was the immutable fact that her research and job were in New York City. If she were going to put her relationship with Brooke first, as she should do and as Brooke required of her, that would never work. Brooke didn’t want any part of living in New York.

  What was the second question? “What action steps could you take to shift that dynamic?”

  She scoffed, “For starters, I could relocate to a place that’s acceptable to Brooke so that my two priorities aren’t mutually exclusive.” Slowly, she repeated, “I could relocate to a place that’s acceptable to Brooke so that my two priorities aren’t mutually exclusive.”

  She dropped the pen on the page and mumbled, “The path forward may present itself in an unexpected way and from an unusual source.” Rosemary Neufeld certainly counted on that front. What was it she’d prattled on about this afternoon? Columbia had enticed Roger Deacon to pack up his grant and move it from the University of Pennsylvania to Columbia.

  She rocked back in the chair. Deacon kept his grant and shifted it from one university to another. Of course he did. That sort of thing happened all the time. What if she could interest Harvard or MIT in her and her research?

  You’d have to negotiate tenure and course load, and… Panic bubbled up in her chest. Breathe. She reread the worksheet guide. “Are there action steps you can take right now to facilitate this shift?”

  She opened her web browser and typed in, NIH grant, change of recipient organizations. A plan of action began to take shape.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Dean Montrose.” Diana sat ramrod straight in the visitor’s chair. Her hand rested on the handle of her computer bag, in which she’d placed a manila folder with her notes and forms she’d downloaded from the NIH website.

  “You’re welcome. I have to say, Diana, I was surprised to hear you were back at work so soon. And again, let me extend my deepest condolences on the loss of Dr. Lindstrom. I hope you take solace in knowing that her legacy endures in all of us whom she trained or mentored.”

  Diana wanted to tell the dean she hadn’t intended to be back at work so soon—that she wouldn’t have been had it not been for the falling out with Brooke—and that losing Aunt Nora so soon after finding her again was unbearable. Instead, she said, “It’s both overwhelming and comforting to know Aunt Nora was so much larger-than-life, and she left such a lasting impact and impression on so many.”

  She shifted and crossed her left leg over her right in an effort to appear more relaxed than she felt. “Honoring that legacy is why I’m here, sir.”

  “Oh?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Say it exactly the way you practiced it. “You said you assumed I’d chosen Columbia because it was where Aunt Nora got her start with the Manhattan Project.”

  “Yes.”

  “The truth is, she was really conflicted about her role with the project and the moral and ethical dilemmas it posed.”

  He stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “I can see that. She hinted as much even back when I first knew her.”

  “The work of which Aunt Nora was proudest was the research and teaching she conducted at Dana-Farber and Harvard.”

  “There’s no question that her research and teaching did more to advance a cure for childhood leukemia than perhaps anyone other than Sid Farber himself. I often told my friend and counterpart at Harvard, Henry Ballinger, that Dr. Lindstrom was the reason so many top-notch scientists chose his school instead of mine.”

  She resisted the urge to smile. She couldn’t have scripted this any better. Dean Montrose had given her the perfect opening. Maybe that self-help stuff really did work. “I’m sure that’s true, although Columbia is an amazing environment and you do so much to nurture our work. It’s why I came here in the first place.”

  “Why does it sound like there’s a ‘but,’ coming?”

  She took a deep breath. Stick to the script. “In her last few days, Aunt Nora and I spoke a great deal about her legacy, the lessons she learned in her career, and her wishes for me. She left me several letters and documents, along with her house in Cambridge. Everything she did, she did with forethought and intent.”

  Diana chanced a glance at Dean Montrose. His hands were steepled in front of him, his gaze firmly on her. Right. On with it.

  “Sir, I feel a strong responsibility to continue Aunt Nora’s legacy. Her area of expertise was leukemia. As you know, my field of study is seizure foci in patients with epilepsy. If I succeed in my research, I hope to facilitate a cure for epilepsy by identifying, and making it possible to surgically remove, the seizure foci that cause the condition. I hope to do for focal epilepsy what Aunt Nora and Sid Farber did for childhood leukemia.”

  “An admirable and laudable pursuit. We here at Columbia are very proud of your work and the grant you secured to further that goal.”

  “Thank you, sir. The thing is, I believe Aunt Nora intended for me to do the work at Harvard. All indications lead to that conclusion.” She forced herself to make direct eye contact.

  Apart from a minute facial tick, his expression never changed. Finally, he said, “I see.”

  Her throat was dry. Maybe she should’ve done what others she’d researched last night had done. She should’ve secured a deal with the new institution and then simply given notice to Columbia. But that didn’t feel right or honorable. It wasn’t what Aunt Nora would’ve done in her place.

  “I chose to speak with you directly, sir, before I contacted Harvard. That felt like the right thing to do. You’ve been a great mentor, and I love it here at Columbia. Honestly, I thought I would finish out my career here and had every intention of doing so. Like you, Aunt Nora was my hero, and that was before I knew anything
about her work. Now I feel strongly that I need to carry out her wishes.”

  She sat back in the chair and released a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. There it was. All the cards were on the table now and there could be no turning back. It was the biggest gamble she’d ever taken with her livelihood. What would Brooke think of the gambit?

  Her heart quickened. What if she went through all this, risked her standing at Columbia, and things didn’t work out with Brooke? What if Harvard didn’t want her? What if…

  “I appreciate your candor, Diana. Not many people in your position would have approached their current institution without the security net of a new deal in their pocket.”

  She bore his scrutiny and did her best not to squirm. She re-crossed her legs and tried to appear nonchalant. “I’ve never been most people, sir.”

  “That’s the truth.” Finally, he offered a ghost of a smile. “You know that Harvard would be under no obligation to honor your tenure. You might have to start from scratch.”

  “I do.”

  “And you know they might turn you down altogether, which would leave you in a precarious position here. How do I know you won’t try to shop your research to another school and another until you find the deal you want?”

  She bristled. “I’m not some mercenary looking for a sweet deal. I’m simply trying to honor my great-aunt’s wishes.” And to find my life. She clicked her jaw shut. Her personal life was none of his business.

  He sat silent for a long time. She resisted the urge to fill the empty space. She’d said what she came here to say. The rest was up to him.

  “I could offer you a larger stipend, reduce your class hours for the remainder of the semester until your scheduled research sabbatical, and create a dedicated lab for your research.”