The first time she’d seen stars—actual stars, not the random sighting of Venus that managed to puncture New York’s omnipresent glow—she’d been six. Vacations had been nearly nonexistent when they were kids. There was always too much work at the family bar and too little money. But one year Uncle Vincent had rented a cabin upstate on Lake George and invited them up for the weekend. Her parents—that was back when her mother was still alive—had piled the kids into the family car and off they went.
The first night, her sisters and cousins had shrieked and laughed as they chased fireflies in the woods. Livie had wandered to the end of the dock, lay down on the worn wood, still warm from the day’s sun, and stared up at the sky, at the overwhelming sight of thousands of stars. Even the Milky Way was visible—a magical, cloudy sweep across the sky, looking just like it did in books. It was like peeking into a world that had been hidden in plain sight all her life—a world that stretched into infinity.
These days, as she pursued her PhD in astrophysics, she was no longer dependent on a clear night sky. She stargazed through computers, with a telescope orbiting thousands of miles above tiny earthbound complications like clouds and light pollution. But there was still something special about just looking up and seeing the stars, silently burning away for millennia.
Livie glanced up when she reached the street corner. Nothing but a low-hanging wall of clouds tonight. You’d hardly even know the universe was up there. But it was, waiting for her with its mysteries to be unraveled, if only she could figure out how.
She dropped her eyes from the blank sky to a more comforting glow—the golden light of the front window of Romano’s Bar, and the electric Michelob sign that was older than she was. Just like the Milky Way, Romano’s lights seemed to burn on for eons.
The poorly oiled hinges on the front door shrieked to announce her as she entered. Her older sister, Gemma, glanced up from a stack of credit card receipts.
“Livie, you’re ten minutes late. Were you mugged? Kidnapped? Did you fall into an open manhole? You’re never late.”
She hurried across the bar and ducked under the pass-through, banging her elbow on the edge of the bar as she did. “Sorry, slow train.” She hated being late, and anything less than ten minutes early counted as late.
“Ugh, don’t get me started on the MTA,” her younger sister, Jessica, growled from behind her laptop.
“What are you doing here, Jess? I thought I was covering Dad tonight.”
“You are. I’m filing the quarterly taxes.”
Thank God Jess handled that odious task. Gemma was hopeless at math and Livie hated accounting. She could use numbers to explain the bending of time and space, but forget about finance.
“How was the first day of classes?” Gemma asked. “You’re teaching this semester, right?”
“Campus opened this week, but classes don’t officially start until next week. My section of Astronomy 200 starts next Tuesday.”
Hard to say who was less enthusiastic about starting classes, Livie or her incoming students. Standing up in front of a room full of undergrads was her worst nightmare come to life. But since it was required as part of her grad student stipend, she was just going to have to suck it up and do her best to avoid eye contact.
“Why were you at school all day if there were no classes?”
Livie turned to face her sisters with a triumphant smile. “Because I have big news.”
Jess and Gemma both looked up expectantly. Livie had been bursting to share this with someone—anyone—since she’d left campus an hour ago. And the fact was, she didn’t have many people besides her sisters to share good news with.
“We got the Skylight grant. Well, Finch got the grant. Which, since I’m working on her research for my dissertation, is like me getting the grant.”
Jess grinned. “That’s awesome, Livie!”
“The what grant? You’re getting money?”
“I told you about it, Gem.”
“Livie, I love you, but you know I don’t understand half of what you tell me.” Gem waved her hand, miming information flying over her head. Livie wished she wouldn’t do that—that flippant dismissal of her lack of education. Gemma might not have gone to college like her younger sisters, but she was one of the smartest people Livie knew.
“Professor Finch—”
“Your thesis advisor,” Gemma said. “See? I remember some things!”
“Anyway, Janet applied for this big grant from Skylight last year. You know, the telecommunications company?”
“I remember you helped her with the grant application,” Jess said. “It took you forever.”
“Thanks for proofreading it, by the way.”
“Anytime.”
“Well, she found out over the summer that she got it. Which means her research is fully funded. Which means I can work on it with her for my dissertation. Working on this with her is the whole reason I chose Adams. And now we’ve got the money to do it.”
“I can’t wait to see how her research pans out. It’s amazing that you get to be a part of it, Livie.” Jess was the only person in the family who understood even half of what Livie’s work entailed. Everybody supported her, but Jess really got it.
“It is, but it means I’ve got a lot of work to do. Janet wants to start purchasing as soon as possible, which means I’ve got to start pulling together ordering info.” She sighed. “I love research, but this administrative stuff is so boring.”
“Agreed,” Gemma said. “Why do you think I make Jess do the bookkeeping?”
Jess made a face at her.
“I also need to find a programmer, and I have no idea where to start with that one.”
Gemma held her hands up. “Don’t look at me. You know I can’t even reboot the cable box.”
“But, Livie,” Jess said, “I thought you had a programmer listed as part of the grant proposal.”
“We just included a line item for it. Janet had someone in mind when we drew up the budget. The guy is good. One of the best. But he’s so expensive. It’s going to eat up a huge chunk of the money before we even get started. If I can find someone to do it for less, then the grant money will go so much further.”
“Isn’t there someone at Adams who can do it?” Gemma asked. “They must have a computer department. Then it’d be free.”
Livie didn’t say so, but she doubted anyone in Adams’s computer science department could program their own smartphones. There were a few academic bright stars at Adams, like Janet, but it was not a powerhouse university.
“This is beyond some college programmer. This is like, NASA-level coding. People who can program at that level aren’t just wandering around looking for a part-time gig.”
“You need help with your computer, Livie?” Frank, one of Romano’s die-hard regulars, had been listening in on their conversation, as usual. Outside of football season, Mondays were quiet at the bar. Romano’s was mostly empty, just the handful of regulars, like Frank. “Dennis, you remember that DeSantis kid? Gloria DeSantis’s nephew? He was some kinda computer whiz, wasn’t he?”
Dennis Mulchahey, another old-timer, rolled his eyes and set his beer down. “A troublemaker, that’s what that kid was. But yeah, he was all into computers and stuff.”
“No offense, Frank, but a kid who’s good at video games isn’t what I need.” Although that’s what she loved about their regulars. They felt like family, and, like family, were always ready to pitch in when there was a problem.
Frank ignored her, because, well, he was like family. “He went to some fancy college, didn’t he?”
“He went to Jess’s college,” Dennis confirmed. “When he was just sixteen. Full ride, too. Those DeWitt guys were desperate to get him in there.”
“He went to DeWitt at sixteen?” Jess interjected. “He’s gotta have something going on if he graduated from DeWit
t, Livie.”
DeWitt was Ivy League, one of the best universities in the Northeast. A computer programmer who went to DeWitt sounded promising.
“Don’t think he graduated, though,” Dennis said. “He got into some trouble.”
“Trouble?” Gemma asked. “What kind of trouble?”
Dennis and Frank looked at each other as they searched their memories. “He got mixed up with the law, I remember that,” Frank finally said.
“What, like a drug bust or something?” Gemma, ever protective of her younger sisters, had taken over the interrogation.
If he was some drug dealer, then Livie wasn’t interested, computer genius or not. This research was too important to risk that way.
“Nah, not NYPD,” Dennis replied. Dennis and Frank, like many of Romano’s patrons, were both retired cops. “This was FBI, I think. The kid was mixed up in some serious stuff. Left college and disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Livie’s tiny spark of hope snuffed out. It sounded like the guy was a dead end.
Frank turned to Livie. “You want me to get his number from Gloria for you?”
She didn’t have the smallest hope that Gloria DeSantis’s nephew was the person for this project, but if what Dennis said was right, and he worked in computers at that level, then he might be able to help her find the right person. And a tiny lead was better than no lead at all.
“Sure. Thanks, Frank.”
Don’t miss Love and the Laws of Motion by Amanda Weaver, available wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
www.CarinaPress.com
Copyright © 2019 by Amanda Weaver
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Melissa Senate for her contribution to the Montana Mavericks: Six Brides for Six Brothers continuity.
ISBN-13: 9781488042133
Rust Creek Falls Cinderella
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