“Ew.” Skylar made a face.
“Really? You’re going to be a vet, huh?” Ronnie said.
Skylar shrugged and blushed at her own immaturity.
“Answers we need are buried in that pair of panties,” Ocean said with a straight face. “We need some detective work done on the blood samples. Problem is, my contacts at Cruft have all disappeared in recent years, and I’ve done a poor job of cultivating new ones. I don’t know any good geneticists these days.”
“I do,” Skylar said reluctantly.
“Back so soon, pumpkin?” Joel asked. “Everything okay?” He and Rachel were drinking wine by the fire. He loved a roaring fire and refused to squelch the ritual despite the warm temperatures. If Skylar had to guess, Rachel was already on her third glass of wine.
“All okay,” Skylar said, trying to sound upbeat. “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour, but I had classes all day . . .”
“What’s going on?” Her dad got up from his fireside chair and followed her into the kitchen. Rachel barely looked away from the TV.
“Dad, this is going to sound crazy, and I swear I’m not in any trouble,” Skylar said.
“Okay,” he said, looking skeptical.
She pulled out a Ziploc bag from her purse and laid it on the kitchen island.
Joel grimaced. “What is that?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I need your help.” She stared at him, trying to assess his stress level. “There’s no good way to tell this story, so I’m not going to tell it at all. I’ll just tell you what this is,” she said. “This is a pair of underwear with genetic tissue on it. The tissue was once alive but now is not. I was hoping you could do what it is you do and tell me if you see anything . . . weird.” She stopped talking, hoping her father would accept what she said and not ask any questions.
He remained still, staring at the Ziploc bag. Then he snapped out of his paralysis and without a word opened a kitchen drawer, pawed through it, and returned with the tongs he usually used to flip chicken. He picked up the bag with the tongs and stared at the underwear inquisitively.
“Oh, and I need you to take a blood sample from me, too,” Skylar said. “And . . . tell me what you see.”
His focus waffled between the bag and his daughter for what seemed like forever. Finally, he took a large breath in and nodded. “Okay,” he said.
Skylar was thankful her father was not much of an inquisitor when it came to her personal life. He held fast to “don’t ask, don’t tell.” She was a perfectly preserved eleven-year-old in his eyes. Asking him to analyze fetal tissue on her underwear should have been the catalyst to unravel a decade of delusion, but instead it seemed to propel him deeper into disconnect.
Joel made her wait while he brewed some coffee. When it was done, he carried the entire pot with him down to his lab, Skylar following behind with the Ziploc. Once she handed it over, she beat a hasty exit back to the kitchen. She couldn’t bear to be in the room when her father examined her underwear.
After spending twenty minutes filing her nails down to nubs, her curiosity got the best of her. “How’s it going?” she yelled down.
“Can you come down here, please?” her dad called back in response.
Skylar was more frightened than she had been while watching Joshua eat a human heart. She tiptoed slowly down the stairs, stopping on the last step. Joel had one eyeball attached to something resembling a microscope from the mid-nineties.
“This is fetal tissue,” he said, still focused on the sample. “But fetal what? I’m not sure. And certain cells on the sample are still alive and . . . vibrant. When was this . . . expelled?”
“Three weeks ago,” Skylar said.
He looked up from his microscope. “And it’s been kept in this bag, at room temperature?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Not possible,” he whispered. “These cells are living without an incubator.” He stared at Skylar for a moment with a worried look on his face. Then the easily excitable scientist in him kicked in. He jumped up from his seat and raced around, preparing to take her blood. “You next.”
Skylar blanched. “When was the last time you cleaned down here, Dad?”
“I’ll make sure it’s sterile,” he said.
Five minutes later, he was all done, and Skylar had barely felt a thing.
“When did you learn to take blood?” she asked, impressed.
“I had duties at the infirmary at school. Then I was a medic in the army and drew blood quite often, actually,” he said. He patted her knee. “Why don’t you go on upstairs. I’ll need a half hour to spin this sample and extract what I need.”
Joel was back at his microscope when she returned to the lab after a visit to the horses. When he heard her on the stairs, his head snapped up, eyes full of something she couldn’t quite identify.
“You,” he whispered.
“What? Tell me, Dad, please,” she pleaded. “My whole world is falling apart, and I need to stop it from getting worse.” Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Your DNA strand is a triple helix, not double. I’ve heard about this in splashy articles trying to sell big ideas, but I’ve never come across anything like it in the lab,” he said. “This indicates that you are . . . not quite like the rest of us.”
Skylar heard a noise at the top of the stairs. Rachel was hovering in the doorway, listening in on their conversation.
Joel continued to speak slowly, choosing every word carefully. “That fetal tissue . . . was your baby,” he said, as if just now putting the puzzle pieces together.
Skylar was surprised he hadn’t caught on sooner. Who else’s underwear would she be carrying? “Yes,” she said.
“What was it?” he asked slowly.
She breathed in. “A demon, for lack of a better word.”
“Dad, are you okay?” Skylar asked. He hadn’t spoken for several minutes.
“No,” he said. “Not okay.”
“I know you read a lot of science fiction, Dad. Can you pretend that’s what this is?”
“No.” He kept staring into the invisible void in front of him.
“Okay, then,” she said. “How about we look at this like a job. I need answers. You can help with that.”
Joel came out of his funk to stare at his daughter. “What do you need from me, exactly?”
“You’ve already helped with the triple helix thing. And the fact that the other sample is still living is unexplainable, I get that. What else is different in the sample from normal DNA? And what is different about mine?” she asked. “Are the two different in the same way, or are they different from each other?”
He started to take notes. “Okay, pumpkin,” he whispered. “I will do some analysis. I need a bit of time.” He sighed. “Are you staying over?”
“Yes, of course I’ll stay the night. I just need to be back at the barn at noon tomorrow, but I can be here until then.”
“Give me a few hours. Dinner must be getting cold. I can get this done after we eat,” he said.
As they climbed the stairs together, Rachel scurried away from the door and busied herself with dinner plates. Just before they stepped into the kitchen, Joel took Skylar by the shoulders.
“I’m glad you came to me with this,” he said. “I’m sure it was hard for you.”
She wrapped her arms around him in a huge hug. “I knew I could turn to you, Dad.”
The sun had been up for hours when Joel came running into the kitchen. “I’ve got it!” he said, waving a long, ticker tape–like paper. He was still wearing last night’s casserole-stained clothes and had obviously skipped brushing his teeth. “The findings are remarkable!”
Skylar had hoped the scientist in him would override the father and he would be able to do this work objectively, at least to some degree. It seemed that had proved to be the case, at least for now.
“Let’s start with your triple helix,” he said. “Like I said, three-strand DNA has been synthetically con
structed in labs in different corners of the world. It’s even been used to repair fragile organisms suffering from degenerative diseases. But that’s still in lab rats. We’ve also seen quadruple strands in test tubes, but not in people. Your genes are presenting with the third strand in all of your cells, not just a percentage of them. And another miracle under the microscope was that your cells were replicating as I was observing them! Outside of your body in a sixty-degree room!” Joel was running his hands through his hair, bursting with enthusiasm. “That is where the similarity to the fetal tissue comes in. It was not only surviving but thriving with no constant temperature.”
“Did you test your blood?” she asked. She knew from her conversation with Ocean that he wouldn’t find much in his own blood, but he didn’t know that.
“I did!” Joel’s volume increased. “How unbelievable would it be if all this time, I was special? But it turns out I’m just as boring as the rest of humanity.”
“So that leaves Mom,” Skylar said.
Joel quieted unexpectedly and started to pace. “Cassie was adopted. Well, at least that’s what she called herself. Her heritage was always a mystery. I wanted to research her lineage, learn all we could—it’s important to know what you’re up against genetics-wise, you know?”
“I remember,” Skylar said. “She used to say, it’s better not to know. That you would be looking for problems where there weren’t any. To her, it was always a matter of the mind.”
“And look where that got her.” Joel winced. “Sorry, pumpkin. But had she known about a family history of cancer, she could have detected it early and—”
“She’d still be here.” Skylar’s eyes burned, but she didn’t let herself succumb to tears. “Well, if she is the one with the mystery blood, it appears cancer doesn’t limit itself to humans.”
“Did you ever ask her about her family?” Joel asked, pouring himself a freakishly large glass of orange juice. “Want some?” he asked, realizing he was taking the last of it.
“No thanks. I only asked Mom once about her family,” Skylar said. “I was young, probably eight or so. I asked why she left her real parents when she was a teenager. And all she said was that her mother only liked small children and once she got older, things in the house got tough. She made it clear I shouldn’t ask any more questions. And I never did.” She gazed at her dad. “What about you? You guys were married. You never knew her history?”
“It’s amazing what spouses don’t know about each other. I tried once or twice but got the stiff arm as well, so I stopped asking,” Joel said. “If I were you, I’d ask Beatrice a few questions. But do it fast—she is ninety-four.”
“I’ll consider it,” Skylar said. She knew he was right, but she was scared to see the woman she called her grandmother. “She wasn’t happy the last time I visited.”
“I know. But I’m sure she can give you more information than what we have right now.” Joel brightened, switching gears. “Do you mind if I take the samples to work? I have better equipment there.”
“Sure, Dad.” Skylar kissed her father on the cheek.
Skylar had thought about calling her grandmother a dozen times since her mother’s death, but she’d always distracted herself with idle nothings to avoid making the call. Cassie’s reluctance to open up about her family history had long squelched Skylar’s curiosity on the subject. Now, however, she needed to know the truth.
The following Saturday, she got behind the wheel and made the three-hour drive to Valhalla. She had stayed away for too long. She’d told herself it was because she was too busy with college, but the truth was Beatrice hadn’t been able to handle any part of Cassie’s illness, and Skylar had never understood her absence.
When she arrived, she got out of her car and stared at her grandmother’s house. How can something remain so changeless for half a century? Someone was clearly taking care of it, as it had a fresh coat of paint and some of the windows had stickers indicating they had recently been replaced. She walked up and knocked on the door.
“What do you want?” Beatrice barked when she swung the front door open.
“Nice to see you too, Nana,” Skylar said, keeping a smirk at bay. Her grandmother’s orneriness always made her laugh—obviously, not Beatrice’s desired reaction. This only fueled her anger.
“You probably want to come in,” Beatrice said.
“Is that an invitation?” Skylar asked.
Beatrice said nothing but stepped aside for Skylar to walk into the house.
“I thought I would surprise you.” She handed Beatrice a bouquet of yellow roses. They were her favorite. “Surprise!”
“Vases are under the sink.” Beatrice walked into the living room. Skylar could hear Pat Sajak loudly congratulating someone on their big winnings.
Beatrice had remained youthful right up into her nineties; it seemed she had done most of her aging in the last couple of years. Old age had melted away the extra fifty pounds she’d always complained about, but her skin wasn’t so forgiving, hanging off her arms and legs like a paper shmata.
After tending to the flowers, Skylar followed Beatrice into the living room. “The house looks great,” she said, hoping to thaw her grandmother a bit.
“Al’s fixing it up to sell,” Beatrice said. “He’s showed up here at the end to make sure he’s in the will, I’m sure of it. I told him after he wheels me out on a coroner’s stretcher, I don’t care what he does with the place.”
“Okay,” Skylar said, careful not to show any emotion. She didn’t like to feed into her grandmother’s guilt trips about the family. Beatrice’s biological daughter, Emily, had died in her sleep in her early sixties. A heart attack was the cited cause, although there was much debate about it within the family. Beatrice was now left with an ungrateful son who’d stopped talking to her in his thirties when he ran off, certain he would make his fortune in the illegal snake trade. Only in the last few years had he resur-faced, eager to accept any inheritance coming his way.
“Nana, I wanted to ask you some questions . . . about Mom.”
“Well, get to it. I am sure you have better things to do. I figure it’s important or you wouldn’t have come all this way.”
“Nana, what can you tell me about Mom’s childhood?” Skylar asked, and all of the fear of her mother’s anger rushed at her as if she were eight years old again. Skylar had no idea if her question would cause the same reaction in her grandmother.
Beatrice got up.
“Where are you going?” Skylar asked.
“Out to the porch,” Beatrice said over her shoulder.
“Wait! I came all this way for an answer to my question. The least you can do is answer me!” Skylar had never yelled at her grandmother before and she wasn’t sure this was a good time to start, but there was no turning back now.
Beatrice spun around and came at Skylar with more force than she would have expected from a gal in her nineties. “Listen here, miss, I don’t hear from you for ages, then you show up at my door and expect me to pour my heart out to you before I croak so you can live out the rest of your life with a clear conscience? I don’t think so.” She retreated back to her covered porch.
Skylar followed immediately. “Nana, I’m sorry I haven’t been here or called.” She hesitated, unsure if she should be completely honest with her grandmother, then plowed ahead. “But you were nowhere when Mom got sick. And then she died. If there was anyone on the planet I needed, it was you. You were the only other person that loved her like I did. You were the only one who could have understood what I was going through.”
Beatrice stared at Skylar with intense sadness and anger in her eyes. Tears welled for a moment only to be blinked back, not allowed to fall. She rose from her seat and walked to a window overlooking a postage-sized patch of green. A tall maple stood on it, the culprit for all the leaves caked on the cover of the pool to its right.
“Your mother used to ride her bike over after dark,” Beatrice said. “I used to leave our b
edroom window open, and she would climb that tree to come in. She was probably fourteen at the time, but she was like a child. She would crawl into bed with me and Gramps and just want to be held. We knew something was going on in that house, something she didn’t have the words to explain. But no one said anything in those days. You just found ways to get out. It started with a night or two a week but quickly turned into every night. On her sixteenth birthday, she packed a bag and moved in. We never discussed it. She just showed up, using the front door this time, holding her bag, asking where she should sleep.”
“You were wonderful to take her in like that,” Skylar said, her voice cracking.
“Oh, of course,” Beatrice said. “It was short-lived, though. Her mother came a few weeks later and dragged her back home. Cassie didn’t have a choice. So I used some pull I had to get her into a good school out of town. Her mother couldn’t stand in the way of such an opportunity. She left, and we didn’t see her for two years. And then one day she returned . . . with you.” Beatrice smiled at distant memories. “She was eighteen and legal, so she didn’t have to go back to her mother’s house. Your parents were married on the Fourth of July at city hall. Gramps and I stood up for them. They were so young for such responsibility. But we all did it in those days.” She cleared her throat. “You be smarter, okay? Wait till your thirties to tie yourself to family.”
Skylar raced to Beatrice, still standing at the window, opened her arms, and gave her the tightest hug she had ever given her. “Thank you . . . for saving her,” she whispered.
Beatrice pulled away, trying to recover her guard. “Lot of good it did. Her life still ended too soon. I shouldn’t have outlived her.”
“Nana, I’m learning the word should is a curse we hold ourselves prisoner to,” Skylar said. She looked into her grandmother’s eyes and saw the pain of Cassie’s death staring back at her.
“Hmmm.”
Skylar looked down at Beatrice’s hands in her own. “How ’bout I paint your nails?” she asked. “Like old times.”
“I seem to recall it was the other way around,” Beatrice said. She withdrew her hands from Skylar’s and went to a cabinet to retrieve her nail kit. “What color is in style this year?” She handed Skylar the box.
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