Darling Girl: A Novel of Peter Pan(82)

“What the fuck, Barry!” She takes a breath, lowers her voice, tries to match his impossibly reasonable tone. “Look. Elliot’s the best at what he does. I need him. We need him.”

Jack and Eden need him.

“I’m sure that’s true, but there are other people out there who are almost as good,” Barry says placatingly. “Dr. Harper is one of them, and she could take this company in a new direction. Why don’t you give her a chance, see if she works out?”

“Barry, I—”

“Look, I know you two were close,” he interrupts. “But you have to trust me. Elliot was becoming a liability.”

“I don’t care what he was becoming,” she says, glaring. “You had no right.”

Barry sighs again. When he resumes speaking, his voice is barely a whisper, so soft Holly has to lean in to hear him.

“Elliot came to me and said you were using untested, unapproved human components in some of the samples. He found them in your lab. He raised the possibility of contamination in the actual products. He said you were . . . I believe his word was sloppy.”

The blood drains from Holly’s face. For Elliot, sloppy is the worst insult. Code for not following protocol. For working outside of ethical guidelines. For manipulating data.

In short, for everything she’s been doing.

“He must have misunderstood,” she says desperately. “He didn’t realize what . . .”

Barry raises his hand. When he speaks, his voice is so calm he might as well be discussing the weather. “He showed me the samples, Holly. I don’t know what you’ve been doing, and I don’t want to know. Dr. Harper is in charge for now, and she’s been warned to watch out for any irregularities. I sent Elliot away with a fat settlement, a strict nondisclosure, and a noncompete clause.” He shrugs. “If you prefer, you can think of it as an early retirement—that’s how I spun it. He can spend the rest of his life researching the life cycle of the purple sea slug or whatever the hell he’s into, sitting on a beach in Tahiti. I hear it’s a magical place.”

“Elliot’s a scientist,” Holly protests, but the fight has gone out of her. She can’t look at Barry. “He won’t be quiet for long.”

“He just has to be quiet for now, that’s all that matters. If he opens his mouth, if he reaches out to anyone, I’ll find a way to discredit him. It’s his choice. He can fund his own lab or he can lose it all. And Holly, keep in mind he came to me. Not you. He was all set to throw you under the bus. I saved you.”

“But why . . .” She trails off. It’s not the magnitude of Elliot’s betrayal that stops her, as terrible as it is. It’s the look in Barry’s eyes. It’s one she’s seen a hundred times before, an expression he wears when he’s facing down a particularly knotty problem and thinks he’s discovered how to make it go away. Always before, seeing that look has been a relief—it means whatever obstacle she’s facing is about to disappear. Now it scares her because it’s clear the problem he’s trying to solve is her.

“Why did he come to me? Whatever you were working on, it shocked him. He told me he didn’t know who you were anymore.” He passes a hand over his bald head, briefly closes his eyes. “And I have to say, there’s a lot of that going around.”

Not for the first time, she wonders what would have happened if she’d told Barry the truth from the beginning, when they’d first met.

If she’d told him, even if he’d thought she was crazy, her life might have been so different. To have her secrets out in the open would have meant having someone in her life besides Jack, besides Eden. Someone she could lean on. But the secrets she carried had become so much a part of her by then they had formed a hard exoskeleton, a barrier between herself and the rest of the world. She’d never thought anyone could believe her.

If anyone could have, it would have been Barry.

“I’m sorry,” she says at last. “You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

He looks at her for a long moment, his eyes probing hers. But the exoskeleton holds. He doesn’t see beneath it. Or maybe there’s nothing left to see.

“Look, Holly, I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” he says, softening. “But right from the beginning, we were a team. What happened to that? If you were having trouble, why didn’t you come to me? Why jeopardize everything we’ve worked so hard for? And if you don’t want the company anymore, if it’s all too much, why not talk about selling it?”

Holly thinks of the new faces around the table, the new receptionist. Is that what Barry’s preparing for? A Darling Skin Care without her? “But I don’t want to sell,” she says.

He exhales and swivels his chair away, then back again. “You could have fooled me. Look, let’s take some time and think about it, okay? We used to run this place like it was a family and Darling Skin Care was our child. But maybe it should just be business from now on. I handle the day-to-day operations and you supply the famous last name, that beautiful, mysterious Darling cachet at launches and special events.”

Barry settles behind the table again, shuffles the papers in front of him. “Let me know if you run into any problems with the launch this week and I’ll do the same. I’ll have my assistant schedule a meeting before you leave to debrief. And Holly?” He glances up. “Don’t dismiss the idea of selling out of hand. The company could be worth millions in another year or two. It might turn out to be what you want after all.” He pauses, gives her a level look. “Besides, if you keep on this way, we might not have a choice.”