Constance (Constance #1)(3)
It was why she couldn’t get out of bed some mornings and why her friends had run out of patience with her. After the crash, people had respected her grief, indulged it, even admiring its spiky resilience. Their hearts and thoughts and prayers went out to her. But the luster of any tragedy eventually wore off. The narrative changed. It wasn’t as if she and Zhi had been married. Three years was long enough to mourn. Too long, some whispered. She needed to quit milking it and move on. She’d felt herself being reclassified from grieving to depressed. And depression, unlike grief, was treated as a character flaw. Not that anyone said it aloud, but who wanted to deal with some sad girl and her bum knee? Con didn’t blame them. She didn’t much want to deal with herself either.
“Merry Christmas, Zhi,” she said and put her head down and cried.
The band had played a show in DC that night and were on the way to North Carolina at the time of the accident. Con had been curled up asleep in the back, no seat belt, and woke in a hospital bed with no memory of the crash. No one could say for certain what had happened. Not even Stephie, who had improbably walked away without a scratch. All that was known was that the truck had hit them head-on and their van had been totaled. Hugh had died instantly. Tommy hung on for two days before succumbing to his injuries. Zhi had never regained consciousness. Her Zhi. Con was in the hospital for two months recuperating from multiple surgeries and missed both funerals. She hadn’t spoken to Stephie, her best friend in the world, in years.
Without noticing that she was doing it, she put her hand on her right knee and rubbed the scars beneath her jeans.
Zhi had been driving that night as he had throughout the tour, clocking unhealthy hours behind the wheel. Without discussing it with anyone first, he’d bought the band a self-drive ’27 Chevy van. The new laws required vehicles to be auto-drive but had grandfathered in older models. It was an expensive hobby. Parts were harder and harder to find, and the cost of a self-drive insurance policy was stratospheric. None of their families had that kind of money, except for Zhi’s parents, who could afford to underwrite their only child’s reckless flight of fancy.
Before leaving Texas, Con had been nominated by the rest of the band to try one last time to convince Zhi to trade in the van and get something newer. Something reliable. She was the band’s chief negotiator and had done her best, but no one ever won an argument with Zhi. Not when he dug in his heels and got that look in his eyes, talking about how a band being driven around America by computer would never truly understand where it came from. It was all soulful bullshit, but it sounded so good when Zhi said it. Everything always did. That had been Zhi’s gift. The reason Con had fallen in love with him in the first place, why she loved him even now, though it didn’t feel good anymore, and she wished that she knew how to make it stop.
Her LFD chirped with yet another reminder of her appointment. Con wondered what Zhi would think if he knew that she had a clone waiting for her at Palingenesis or that the crash was the reason she kept these monthly appointments. Death had always been an abstraction, but after the crash, nothing frightened her more. The clone was cowardice, pure and simple, cowardice that had seeped into her groundwater like a toxin.
She would give anything for him to sit up and remind her that she didn’t have to be afraid every minute. He’d once told her that she was the bravest person he’d ever known. Where had that woman gone?
CHAPTER TWO
Only ten in the morning, but already it was on the mean side of ninety. Con fought her way through the scrum of grim-eyed protesters chanting their defiant, rip-cord slogans outside Palingenesis. She’d scheduled the appointment for the day after Christmas hoping it would be quiet for a change, but the protesters were out in force. There had to be three times as many as she’d ever seen before. Maybe they didn’t have anywhere to spend the holidays either.
The protesters were a permanent fixture, rain or shine, huddled beneath the black umbrellas that had become the unofficial symbol of their cause. These were the shock troops of the CoA—the Children of Adam—the single largest anti-cloning organization in the United States. They picketed every Palingenesis clinic in the country, but the headquarters here in Washington, DC, held a particularly intense fascination for them. In their minds, this was the point of origin. The birthplace of human cloning. Where the species had begun to disentangle itself from its humanity.
The umbrellas pulsed excitedly as word filtered through the crowd—the front doors of the clinic had opened. Everyone knew what that meant. A client was arriving. Two white security guards emerged into the sunshine. Both wore ballistic vests and didn’t venture far from the doors as they scanned the crowd for Con.
She didn’t dare call out to them. Not yet anyway. Not until she was much, much closer. She knew exactly how the protesters would respond if they realized that the enemy walked among them. The main entrance was rarely used, so these protests were a frustrating, thankless vigil; they would be eager to put a face to their rage. Con pulled the brim of her cap low over her eyes. Not that anyone was likely to recognize her, but the possibility scared her enough to keep photographs of every outfit she wore to her monthly appointments, careful never to wear the same thing twice.
The crowd surged forward, lifting Con off her feet and knocking the wind out of her. She’d been in enough mosh pits to know better than to fight against the tide. Safer to be carried along, conserving energy, and wait for an opportunity to swim for shore.