Six pairs of eyes, all clad in plastic safety glasses, watched her walk in.
Zartar lifted her chin in a silent “what’s up.” Roselyn chirped “Maggie!” and waved energetically.
Jon Baumgartner, a balding man with a beaklike nose who was the senior project manager for her lab group, rose from his stool. “Maggie, I’m glad you’re here. I want you to meet some people.”
He stepped out from behind the counter. His right leg was twisted like the gnarled trunk of a windblown tree. He leaned heavily on a cane.
He had told her that he’d had polio as a child (she hadn’t asked), that his Christian Scientist parents believed God would cure him. Evidently, God was busy that week.
“We’ve been doing some human resource reallocation,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back.
Maggie swallowed. Somehow this did not sound like the beginning of good news.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Jon said, reading her face. “You still have a job.” Maggie released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. “We’re just moving teams around, a shuffling of the deck chairs, if you will. Tommy, a lead statistician, will be joining us.”
A man with bleached surfer-dude hair grinned and nodded. “Hey there.” Maggie smiled and stopped herself from quoting a line from Tommy Boy.
“Miles, one of the company’s star biochemists, has also been reassigned to our team.”
Maggie offered her hand.
Miles stared at her unblinkingly from behind safety glasses, arms stiffly at his sides. He was short with a rhomboid bodybuilder’s physique. Thick shoulders and a veined neck supported a tiny square head with an equally square jaw. He was impeccably groomed with a tailored lab coat. Aloof and handsome in a country club gym rat kind of way.
Miles finally extended a gloved hand and grasped hers, giving it a single pump.
“Nice to meet you,” Maggie said.
Miles held her hand another moment, tightening his grip. Her fingers pressed uncomfortably against her ring, a simple circle of turquoise-embellished silver, a gift from her mother. Maggie could feel Miles watching her face, his eyes hooded by a Dodgers ball cap that struggled to hide thinning hair and failed. “Same,” he finally replied, releasing his grip.
Maggie pulled her hand back uncertainly. Miles smiled at her. Her finger throbbed where her ring had cut into flesh. He was clearly a graduate of the School of Firm and Manly Handshakes.
Jon made his way back behind the counter and consulted a notebook. “This new team will work on the development of an acne drug.”
Maggie’s heart sank. Jon’s team was known for its work in developing therapies to attack cancer cells. She was thrilled to learn he was her project manager and hoped she’d be invited to join the crusade. After all, it was the vendetta against her mother’s killer that had driven her to pharmaceuticals in the first place, the steady drumbeat of grief that had provided the soundtrack of her ambitious climb from mediocre student to scholarship winner.
The old feeling rose again. Maggie mentally clamped down, but it was too late. Wisps of memory seeped around the stoppers she’d so carefully positioned.
The cool smoothness of her mother’s hand on Maggie’s face.
The smell of Neutrogena lotion on her mother’s skin as she tucked Maggie in.
The half-full commode near her mother’s bed.
The piles of vitamins and dishes of organic food when the chemo and radiation had stopped working.
And perhaps worst of all, the excessive niceness from her friends’ moms. The compliments about what a good daughter she was, the promises that her mother was watching her from heaven, the comments about how brave she was to take care of her dad—as if she had a choice.
They had always been sweet. Concerned. Caring.
No matter how much of a shit she was being.
The school counselors had called her mother’s death transition. The word sickened Maggie in its impotence. It was so passive, so clinical, so unlike the monstrous grief that seemed to be eating her from the inside out.
They could keep their transition. To Maggie the loss would always feel like eating broken glass.
Jon went over the discovery parameters and gave Maggie some homework: reviewing the pharmaceutical company’s previous work in developing a herpes treatment. Some researchers believed that the compounds developed for herpes had properties conducive to ameliorating other skin conditions, he told her. He doubted it would affect acne, but didn’t want to leave any stone—or compound—unturned.
Tommy and Miles retreated to their desks, giving Maggie a chance to better familiarize herself with Rx’s equipment and procedures. Roselyn jumped at the chance to play teacher and seemed to relish showing Maggie where to find extra gloves, which unguator worked best and how to order additional test supplies. Maggie usually hated when people helped her. She could figure things out on her own, thank-you-very-much. But Roselyn’s enthusiasm quelled Maggie’s knee-jerk “no” to any offer of help.
Zartar, on the other hand, hid behind the autoclave, occasionally reappearing to retrieve or replace tools, her nude-lipsticked mouth set in a hard straight line.
“Is she okay?” Maggie whispered to Roselyn, nodding at Zartar.
Roselyn chanced a glance in Zartar’s direction. Zartar had moved from the autoclave to the counter and was fiddling with the sifting deck, her dark hair a curtain that obscured her face. “I don’t think she’s happy about the new research assignment,” Roselyn whispered back.
That makes two of us, Maggie thought reflexively, then silently chastised herself.
She was happy, damn it. Happy and grateful for the job, now more than ever. Who cared if she didn’t save the world? At least she could save what was left of her family.
Chapter 4
The days were long, but the week was short. Maggie racked up hour after hour in the lab, breaking for a lunchtime shopping trip with Zartar and Roselyn only once and leaving at dark every night, begging off invitations to happy hour at The Office with excuses about piles of paperwork that rivaled the Himalayas.
Saturday morning, Maggie rose early. She grabbed her keys and stood at the door, surveying her apartment, calculating which of the remaining belongings waiting for her at her father’s restaurant would fit in her small one-bedroom flat.
She sighed deeply. Her apartment had all the appeal of a Department of Motor Vehicles lobby.
In the process of converting the gracious (albeit timeworn) Victorian home into six individual apartments, the landlord had spared no expense to make each space as nondescript as possible. Neutral walls dissolved into neutral floors. Drapes drooped under the weight of stiff, institutional fabric. The smell of disinfectant floated through the air.
Yep, home sweet home.
The sun was still low on the horizon as Maggie eased the Studebaker onto the street, the hilltops pinking as if embarrassed by the sun’s lingering touch. Traffic was thin, the streets nearly deserted save for the occasional lone jogger and the thickets of coffee-seekers clustered outside the Starbucks that seemed to sprout on every corner.
Clumps of industrial complexes and chain restaurants gave way to bus benches and low-slung strip malls. Soon the rolling hills of concrete and steel flattened into a vast prairie of green and brown.
Ninety minutes later, Maggie pulled into O’Malley’s parking lot.
She walked to the mint-colored building, then pulled open a rusted metal door. O’Malley’s Pizzeria was exactly as Maggie had left it: garlic-scented and unapologetically dated.
The restaurant was fifteen hundred square feet of battered wood flooring with a brass rail bar, well-worn tables and mismatched chairs. A chalkboard sign with a handwritten menu of daily specials (linguica-stuffed calzone and Emerald Isle cheesy bread) stood beside a display case that showcased desserts that appeared to be from the Carter A
dministration. A mural of St. Patrick streaked the wall above the men’s bathroom.
She spotted Constantine behind the bar introducing a tray of pint glasses to a tap of Guinness. “Gus!” Maggie cried.
It was a common nickname for Constantine, an etymological jaunt from Konstantinos (the Greek form of the name) to Kostas to Gus, and the name of the crankily funny patriarch in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But only Maggie was allowed to use it.
Constantine whooped, then set down the tray and jumped over the counter, his six-foot frame neatly clearing the napkin holders and parmesan shakers. He wrapped Maggie in a bear hug, his whiskers prickling her cheek. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
Maggie and Constantine had been best friends since seventh grade when they met in the cafeteria line loading chicken or fish (it was impossible to say which) onto their plates. He was the new kid at St. Cecilia’s, the sole Papadopoulos in a sea of Murphys, Rossis and Hernandezes. Different. Alone. The proverbial square peg. Just like Maggie who always felt different, awkward, half-orphaned not just by death but her peers’ accidental indifference.
They were immediately joined at the hip. Even during college, they’d never been apart for more than a week. Maggie often thought about those studies documenting twins separated at birth. Divided by ocean or land, they remained tethered by an invisible umbilicus, choosing the same career path, marrying partners with identical names, hurting when the other fell. Sometimes it was hard to tell where she ended and he began.
She hugged him tightly around the neck. “It feels like I’ve been gone for a month.”
“Well, you know what they say. Time flies when you miss someone so much you feel like your arm’s been sawed off and you’ve been beaten with it. Or something like that.”
Maggie dropped onto a bar stool and looked around. “So where’s Pop?”
Constantine inclined his head toward the office upstairs. “On some kind of conference call with Fiona.”
Maggie’s stomach clenched. “Oh.”
Constantine didn’t seem to notice the crack in her voice or the sudden vigor with which she began trimming her cuticles with her incisor. Just as he didn’t seem to notice her father’s gaunt face and worried eyes. Was he clueless or in denial?
“Anyways,” he said, throwing a bar towel over his shoulder, “tell me everything. How was your first week?”
Maggie took her pinky out of her mouth and stuffed it into her pocket. “Good. I was asked to help administer a trial for a new acne drug.”
“Saving the world from zits. Noble, Maggie. Very noble.”
“Ha, ha, very funny.” Maggie hopped off her stool and skirted the bar. She grabbed a pint glass from a cupboard and filled it with a stout from an Oregon microbrewery. “Before you give me a scene by scene description of the fifty Dr. Who episodes you watched since I’ve been gone, can we please talk about my phone? I hold you responsible since you gave it to me.”
He had given her the phone the day before she left in typical Constantine fashion: a practical joke wrapped in relentless goofiness.
He’d hidden it in a box of Cap’n Crunch, then placed the cereal box inside one of her moving crates. She was unloading crates from her car when he called the phone. After pawing through several crates to find the source of the ringing, Maggie dug the slim black device from a nest of corn syrup-laden puffs and answered it.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he’d said.
“Constantine. What is this?”
“It’s called a phone. You use it to make and receive calls. And do important stuff like play Cat Piano. I slipped it in while I was helping you pack. I picked the Rockford Files ringtone. You’ve always reminded me of James Garner. I figured you needed the gear to go with the career.”
She recalled being unexpectedly, unreasonably moved by the gesture. There had been a sudden tightness in her throat, the warning pinprick in her eyes that came before the tears. She blinked rapidly, ramming her emotions back where they belonged. Away.
She was an accomplished feeling-stuffer, and she’d be damned if she was going to go all mushy over a stupid phone. “You can’t afford this,” she had said, trying to sound practical. “You’re unemployed.”
“Underemployed. I work for your dad, remember? And not to worry. I bought it secondhand from an old coworker who gave me a great deal. Consider it your housewarming gift. Plus the Cap’n Crunch. That’s the real gift, actually. The phone’s just gravy.”
Now she watched Constantine’s face as he formulated his thoughts. She could practically hear the gears turning. “I see a few possibilities for the reminder,” he said. “The most logical is that your phone wasn’t adequately wiped.”
“Um, ew,” Maggie said.
“What I mean is that since I bought your phone used, it had a previous life that left all kinds of digital breadcrumbs in its proverbial couch cushions. Phone numbers, texts, personal information. That kind of thing.”
He walked the tray of pint glasses to a booth upholstered in green pleather and distributed the glasses to three men who looked as if they’d been there since the restaurant had opened thirteen years ago. He pivoted, spun the tray, Globetrotters-style on his forefinger, then plunked down beside Maggie.
“You’re supposed to be able to erase all that stuff when you sell your phone,” he continued, “but sometimes people forget to wipe the internal memory. And even when they use built-in tools to erase it, remnants can be left behind.” He shrugged. “It’s more common than people realize.”
Maggie took a swig of beer. “There’s something else.” Constantine looked at her, eyebrows rising until they resembled a bushy McDonald’s logo. “The woman who I supposedly had a meeting with died less than an hour after I got the reminder.”
The eyebrows arched even higher. “What?”
Maggie nodded. “I saw it on the news. She’d been killed in a hit-and-run not long after her picture showed up on my phone.”
Constantine stared then grabbed Maggie’s beer and took a sip. “Seems kind of fast to announce the name of the victim, doesn’t it?”
“She’s in the media, a sister in arms. Plus the murder of a big wheel—even a reporter big wheel—means a big story. They must have been able to confirm her identity, reach next-of-kin and put together enough content to run with it. Anything for the scoop.”
Constantine handed the beer back. “You’re sure? I mean, like, sure-sure.”
Maggie took another sip of beer, trying to push down the uneasiness that seemed to be crawling up her throat. “I’m positive. Well, almost positive. I had already deleted the reminder, so I couldn’t double check. But I’m 99 percent sure.”
Constantine grabbed a towel from the bar and threw it over his shoulder. “That is beyond bizarre.”
“Think it’s just a coincidence?” Maggie watched him beneath her lashes.
“Absolutely. I’ll give you that it’s seriously strange. Maybe even creepy. But it’s not like you have the Grim Reaper on speed dial or something.”
Maggie laughed reflexively. Inside, she felt far from gleeful. As ridiculous as it sounded, she couldn’t help but feel that something more than chance was at play. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
Before he could answer, a voice boomed above them. “There she is. Rxcellance’s newest clinical researcher.”
Her father stood on the stairway’s landing, arms outstretched. The Pope in a golf shirt. He lumbered down the remaining stairs and gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek.
“Associate, Pop. Clinical research associate. It’ll be a while before I make researcher.”
He waved her off. “Associate. Researcher. What’s the difference? I’m surprised a company like Rxcellance would hire you, but I’m proud, sweetheart. Real proud.”
The compliment sandwich. Nobody made them like Jack O’Malley.
Maggie’s Aunt Fiona
sailed down the stairs clad in high-waisted pink polyester slacks and a filmy floral blouse, a wake of organza and Jean Naté billowing behind her. She gave Maggie a hug, then looked at her over the top of her bifocals, studying her face for signs of sleep deprivation, poor nutrition or illness. Satisfied that Maggie’s greatest affliction was the intermittent application of sunscreen, she smiled. “It’s wonderful to see you, dear. You’ll stay for dinner?”
“Aunt Fiona, it’s not even lunchtime. It’s barely brunchtime.”
Fiona waved off Maggie’s logic. “It’ll be dinnertime before you know it. You’ll stay. I’ll make something special.”
Maggie shook her head. “I’ve got to head back. It’s crazy busy at work.”
Jack put his arm around Maggie. “Oh, come now. You don’t want to rush back just to eat a TV dinner. Stay. I promise you’ll be home before bedtime.”
“Well.” Maggie looked back and forth between Jack and Fiona. Fiona gave a subtle head flick toward Jack and cleared her throat. “Okay. I’ll stay. After all, it’s only…” She checked her watch. “Eight and a half hours away.”
Maggie’s father clapped his hands together with an explosive laugh of delight. He twirled Maggie around, his blue eyes sparkling in his wide red face.
He was right about the microwave entrée that awaited her at the apartment. Truth was, she missed him, them, the noise and bustle of the pizzeria, no matter how many times she told herself she didn’t.
Fiona made good on her prediction. The day sped by and dinnertime arrived before Maggie knew it. Fiona prepared lamb stew and the four of them gobbled up conversation right along with the food, each hungry to know what had gone on in the short time they’d been apart.
Once the plates had been cleared and the kitchen tidied, they headed to Jack’s office. They unearthed the odds and ends Maggie had kept at the restaurant, which had been like a second home for the better part of a decade.
Fiona eyed a carton perched on Maggie’s hip. “Take this box, Jack,” she called out to him as he headed for the door. “It’s too heavy for Maggie. She’ll tip her uterus.”
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