Invisible

by Carla Buckley

  I headed right, toward the administrative offices.

  The hallway was hushed, door after door closed tight. Would Peyton give me a chance to explain? I couldn’t just pretend nothing had happened. There’d been enough silence between us. It was time to tell the truth.

  I reached a dead end, realized I’d made a wrong turn, and backtracked.

  How much did I dare tell Peyton? No one knew the whole story, not even Julie. I’d held tightly on to my secrets all these years, and now they were shriveled reminders of all the ways my life could have been different. I’d refused to think about the past. I’d put my head down and forged forward. But that had been a terrible mistake. In the end, the truth had come out. In the end, I had to accept responsibility.

  But how much was truth worth, really? Look how I’d ferreted it out here, and everything had collapsed. Maybe Joe had been right—there might have been a better way.

  The administrative suite was dimly lit, the carpeting soft underfoot. The sweet green notes of lilies and roses hung in the air, pleasant. Something tangy and acerbic twined among the floral aromas, something out of place, a smell so familiar it resonated in my very marrow.

  Dynamite?

  I froze. There, along the baseboard of this handsome office suite, snaked bright yellow detonation cord, heading joyfully and with great purpose around the corner.

  Dynamite. I began walking, faster and faster, then I ran. “Peyton!”

  Corner after corner, feet pounding, following the yellow cord as it lured me deeper and deeper into the building. The guy who’d let me in stared as I passed. “Get out,” I yelled. “Call the fire department.”

  He backed away, turned and jogged.

  “Peyton!”

  Another corner and there she was, miraculously whole and unhurt, standing with her back to me. Beyond her was LT, with a black box bristling with wires, duct-taped to his chest.

  Space tunneled. Peyton stood miles away, too far.

  “PEYTON!”

  She wheeled around, her face blank with confusion.

  A clap of thunder.

  She flew up like a doll.

  The floor shook. I stumbled, threw out my hands for balance. The walls collapsed. A wave of gray debris rolled toward me. Instinctively, I threw up my forearm, clenched my eyes shut. Small things rained against me.

  Peyton.

  White dust coated a topsy-turvy world. The world had gone sickeningly silent.

  I clawed at chunks of cement. The ceiling was above me, then it was not. It was gone, revealing a desk on its side, a shattered bulletin board hanging askew, a blinking fluorescent bulb. I fell to my knees, crawled forward. My white-powdered hands reached for things and left behind red smears. I slithered between tented sheets of linoleum. The floor was wet. A tiny black-and-white fish flopped in a dusty patch of linoleum.

  Beside it stretched a hand, a slim hand lying beneath it all. No. Not again. Not again.

  I heaved rocks and boulders. Someone was working beside me, the flash of hands grasping and lifting. Bit by bit, Peyton’s arm was uncovered, her shoulder, her face, pale and bloodless, her beautiful blue eyes unseeing.

  I pressed my mouth to Peyton’s and blew. I pounded her chest, bent again to blow. My heart and breath and will pouring for all eternity, and then I was jerked away and lifted, kicking, straining to see her as I was carried away, my daughter gone and growing smaller until I could see no more.

  FIFTY

  [PEYTON]

  CREATURES IN THE ABYSS SOMETIMES SLITHER OUT of their homes at night, pulled northward by the rising moon into the middle reaches of the ocean. It’s called vertical migration, and they only remain long enough to grab a meal. Well before the sun rises, they turn and make the long journey home, descending through icy black until they’ve reached the bottom. Why do they do that? Since they’ve already made the long trek north into warmer waters, why not stick around where there’s light and food is plentiful, where they could find a mate and have babies?

  Maybe they’re not the least bit lonely down there in the darkness. They probably find it restful living where nothing ever happens. Maybe they find peace in the solitude.

  She was thrown up into the air, landed hard into a world gone silent and white.

  She hung upside down, things biting into her arms and legs. Dust clogged her eyes, her mouth, her nose. It was too much trouble to push it out.

  Pressure on her chest. The light had changed, gaining texture. A high ringing in her ears, like angels’ bells. Somewhere nearby her mother waited. Peyton took a final breath and sailed right into her mother’s arms.

  FIFTY-ONE

  [DANA]

  EMERGENCY VEHICLES PULLED IN ONE AFTER ANOTHER, sirens wailing, lights cycling blue and red. Police radios buzzed with staticky, urgent voices. A firefighter, bulky with gear, gripped my upper arm, dragged me away from the building.

  “Peyton!” I was shouting but could barely hear myself, just felt the pressure in my lungs from pushing out the frantic words.

  The man leaned closer, saying something. I watched his lips move. I’ll go look. He patted the air. Stay.

  I nodded, couldn’t stop nodding. He released me.

  Frank was there, his face smeared with a paste of cement dust and water. He grabbed my arms and shook me. He was screaming, too, his mouth wide, his eyes wild. “Where is she?”

  I could only shake my head.

  “This is all your fault!” He flung me away from him.

  Yes. I fell to the ground and buried my face in my arms. Yes, all of this, from the very beginning, was my fault.

  The hospital doors whooshed open to admit a stretcher. I sprang up, along with so many others, a ripple of motion among the seated crowd, turning to see who had just been rushed in. A doctor pushed into the waiting room, looking for someone. For me? No, he walked over to someone else.

  A nurse came over with a rolling cart. Sitting, she snapped on latex gloves and dipped a piece of gauze into a basin of water. “Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” Gently she dabbed at my temple. “Doesn’t look like you’re going to need stitches.” She held my hands in hers, turning them this way and that. Dipping a fresh piece of gauze into the water, she washed the blood from my fingers, patted on some ointment, and unrolled a bandage. “When was your last tetanus shot? Are you allergic to anything?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said. “Peyton Kelleher. Do you know where she is?” I searched the nurse’s broad face for a clue, a hint that she knew something she wasn’t telling me.

  She paused, then resumed wrapping the length of gauze around my palm. “Someone will come out and talk to you.” Patting my shoulder, she gathered up her supplies.

  Someone called my name, and there was Joe, walking toward me with long strides, his shirt rumpled and his dark blue eyes intent. The relief on his face was so evident that I felt something inside me soften. “Hey,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.” He sat beside me and reached for my hands, hesitating when he saw they were bandaged. “How are you? Are you okay?”

  “Joe—I don’t know how Peyton is.”

  A flash of worry in his eyes, swiftly suppressed. “They brought her in?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll wait with you. Someone should be out soon.”

  Another rush of movement as the doors swept open to let in a limping man, leaning heavily on the woman by his side, her arm around his waist.

  Joe watched with a frown. “Did you hear they’re evacuating Black Bear? The EPA’s worried about the release. Something about the warm weather holding everything down and keeping it from blowing away. They’ve already cordoned off the highways leading into town.”

  “So quick,” I said distantly.

  “Dana,” he said. “It’s been hours. I looked everywhere for you.”

  An orderly pushed a stretcher past us, IVs dangling from the metal pole, a nurse almost running alongside. The evacuation was beginning.

  “Your phone�
��s ringing,” Joe said. “Maybe it’s Frank.”

  Yes! I scrabbled inside my purse with my bandaged fingers. Joe took it from me, found my phone, and handed it to me.

  “Hello?” I didn’t recognize my voice, strangely high-pitched and terse.

  “What’s the matter? You sound terrible.”

  Halim. “What is it?”

  “I’ve got marvelous news. Unbelievably miraculous news. Are you sitting down?” When I didn’t reply, he went on. “The autopsy came in. The coroner found a bullet in her chest, another one in her throat. She was dead long before they stuck her in Burnside. She was dead long before we blew the building. You can come home, Dana. I’ve got another project for us, a high-rise in Los Angeles that—”

  I closed my phone.

  “Anything important?” Joe asked.

  I was silent for a moment. “No,” I said. “Not anymore.”

  “Ms. Carlson?” a nurse asked, walking toward us.

  Finally.

  The nurse held open the swinging door and indicated a curtained room. “The ambulance will be here in five minutes,” she told me, then turned and walked to the nurses’ station. They were transferring Peyton to Fargo, into the care of a whole fleet of specialists.

  I paused outside the room, my hand on the curtain, afraid to pull it open, afraid to keep it closed. Frank came around the corner, talking with a doctor.

  “Can I give blood?” Frank was asking. “Even though we’re not related?”

  The doctor put his hand on Frank’s arm and said something in a low voice. Then he strode away, leaving Frank standing alone, shoulders sagging.

  I walked up to him and put my arms around him. After a moment, he drew me tight. I could feel him trembling. It didn’t matter whom Peyton’s real father was. That life-changing winter night seventeen years before, when I’d squabbled with Joe at a party and ended up sleeping with Brian, had blurred from memory. Here was Peyton’s true father. Somehow, Julie had been wrong about Frank, or maybe he’d changed. He could love a child who wasn’t his own, and it was that small misunderstanding long ago that had set everything to follow in motion. I wished Julie were there. I missed her more than ever.

  Frank pulled open the curtain and we looked down at Peyton, lying there so still and white, the beeping of the machine beside her the only indication that she was breathing. Her eyes were closed, and she looked impossibly young and fragile. Frank and I stood close, his sleeve touching my shoulder, our shoes inches apart, and I understood.

  Maybe Frank did, too. He put his arm around my shoulders and I rested my head on his shoulder. Day by day, we’d knit this family together. It was what Julie had been trying to teach me, all those years ago.

  FIFTY-TWO

  [PEYTON]

  PEYTON OPENED HER EYES AND SAW HER FISH TANK bubbling away on a plain metal dresser against a faded peach-colored wall. Not her dresser, and certainly not her bedroom wall, so where was she? She lay on her back, propped up in a bed, but not tucked beneath her navy sheets. These sheets were utterly foreign—white and stiff, and smelling faintly of bleach. A machine stood sentinel beside her, blinking red numbers, and a long plastic tube ran up from the back of her hand to a pole. Her arms ached, and her back. Her head pounded. She tried to struggle to a seated position, but something was wrong with her leg. She lifted the sheet and saw the white cast running from her thigh to her heel and firmly anchoring her left leg in place. And was she wearing a hospital gown?

  Something terrible had happened. She remembered the floor shaking and pieces of wall and ceiling crashing down on her. She was choking, and then her mother suddenly appeared, smiling and holding out her arms. That had not been a dream. No one could take that away from her.

  She glanced to the window, at the rectangle of blue sky that looked perfectly fine, but must be spinning with billions of tiny dangerous particles.

  The murmurs of voices outside in the hall and the door handle turned. Peyton held her breath, hoping to see her father, who would explain everything to her. But it wasn’t her dad coming into the room. It was Dana, her slim form slipping quietly through the doorway. Her mother. Peyton closed her eyes and lay perfectly still, hoping Dana would go away. The air shifted and she knew Dana stood there, looking down at her.

  What did she see? What did she want? Peyton was suddenly filled with a yearning so strong that she felt tears collect in her eyes, and desperately hoped Dana wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t reach out and put her arms around her. Peyton concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly, and after a moment, knew that Dana had moved away.

  She opened her eyes the tiniest fraction and saw Dana standing with her back to her, looking down into Peyton’s fish tank. Something was wrong there and it took Peyton a moment to figure it out. One tank, not two. Where were the endler babies? Dana reached for the container of fish food on the dresser, and now Peyton saw the tiny flickers of movement inside the tank and realized someone had already dumped the babies in with their parents. Someone had known it was time.

  Fish have learned that there’s safety in numbers. They hang out together in large groups, mixed species and all, to hide from predators and forage for food. This behavior is called shoaling.

  Shoals change shape according to whether fish are fleeing, hunting, or resting. They can be long strings or fat ovals; they move in a gridlike pattern or meander aimlessly. Fish choose their shoals based on the coloring and markings of the other fish, as well as the release of pheromones. They prefer fish of a similar size, the healthier the better. Some fish, such as cod or salmon, shoal for brief periods of time, usually for mating purposes. Other fish, such as anchovy and tuna, shoal their whole lifetimes, and get upset if they’re separated even briefly from their shoal mates.

  Because it’s not all about survival. It’s about love, too. The ocean is huge, populated by billions of fish swimming in a hundred million different locations. Fish have long ago lost sight of all their family members, and what are the odds of finding one of them again? Shoals are packed with potential friends. Think of them like college dorms or busy bars. Somewhere, in all those rooms, in all those towns, are the fish that will hang out with you and watch your back, the fish that you can come home to.

  And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to Marghi Barone Fauss, who looked across her kitchen counter at me one beautiful May morning, and said, “I know something scary you could write about. . . .”

  She was right. The minute I began researching nanotechnology, I learned about the benefits it offers, as well as the threat it poses. The Chinese study upon which this novel is based is real, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Nanomaterials have already been proven to behave like asbestos in the human body. They’re in our blood, the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, and the water we drink. We don’t know yet how much we can tolerate before we start showing ill-health effects. Scientists are working hard to figure this out. One scientist, Emma Fauss, PhD, was particularly helpful to me by both discussing her own research and providing a layman’s explanation of a very complex technology.

  Thank you to Tina Moore, RN, at MeritCare Dialysis Detroit Lakes in Minnesota, for giving me a tour of the dialysis center, and to all the patients at MeritCare who shared their experiences. Thank you to Jill E. Columber of Marion, Ohio, for telling me her inspiring story of living with, and triumphing over, kidney failure. Thank you to Bill Wymard, marine biologist and owner of Aquarium Adventure, for helping me stock Peyton’s and Brian Gerkey’s imaginary fish tanks.

  I am deeply indebted to my agent, Pam Ahearn, and to my editor, Kate Miciak, who walked snow-blind with me to find this story. I am grateful to others at Random House for their support, including Gina Centrello, Jane von Mehren, Randall Klein, Susan Corcoran, Alison Masciovecchio, and Gianna LaMorte.

  Thanks to my sister, Liese Schwarz, for listening to many iterations of this story, to Julie Compton for reading the first draft, and to Chevy S
tevens for reading all the drafts that followed. Thank you to the other authors whose friendship sustained me, including Pam Callow, Karen Dionne, Sophie Littlefield, and Brad Parks. A special shout-out to my genius website designer, Madeira James. Finally, I am humbled by, and grateful for, the kindness and generosity of Jacquelyn Mitchard, Lisa Gardner, and Linwood Barclay.

  Thank you to my husband, Tim, for inspiring me every day and for being the best person I know. Thank you to our children, Jillian, Jonathon, and Jocelyn, for overcoming having a novelist for a mother, and for the countless ways you have enriched and blessed my life.

  INVISIBLE

  CARLA BUCKLEY

  A Reader’s Guide

  A CONVERSATION WITH CARLA BUCKLEY

  SISTERS

  An essay by Carla Buckley

  WHEN I WAS YOUNG, I WOULD PESTER MY MOM. SHE had three sisters, I knew, but one she never talked about. I’d met my aunt Jennifer a couple of times, but then the visits abruptly stopped. When would we see her again, I asked my mother. Why couldn’t we visit her? My mother was vague in her responses. She’s busy, she’d say. Or, we live too far apart. As a family, we had traveled all around the world for my father’s work, so I knew that crossing a few hundred miles wasn’t really the issue. There was something else there, but whatever it was, my mother wasn’t telling me. Deep down, I worried: if she could stop speaking to her beloved sister, could she stop speaking to me?

  My mom had grown up during the Depression. She was the oldest of four sisters, and she regaled me with stories of how she once persuaded Jennifer to yell out the window to beg passersby for a chocolate bar, and how she had to sleep under the kitchen table that night as punishment. She told me how she and Jennifer would take turns wearing one pretty dress in a single evening so that they could both go out on dates with soldiers on leave. She watched over her sisters when her father went to jail and her mother worked the night shift. It was a childhood beyond my imagining.