Leaving Time(129)

Virgil hasn’t responded to me, either. When I ask Desmond and Lucinda about it, they say that if Virgil’s crossed over, he may not yet understand how to visit the third dimension again. It takes a great deal of energy and focus. There’s a learning curve.

“I miss you,” I say to Virgil, and I mean it. I’ve had colleagues who pretend they like me but are really just jealous; I’ve had acquaintances who wanted to hang out with me because I was invited to Hollywood shindigs; but I have never really had many true friends. Certainly not one who was such a skeptic yet still accepted me unconditionally.

Most of the time I’m in the cemetery alone, except for the caretaker, who walks around with a weed whacker and a pair of Beats headphones. Today, though, there’s something going on near the fence line. I see a small gathering of people. A funeral, maybe.

I realize that I know one of the men at the grave site. Detective Mills.

He recognizes me immediately. It’s one of the perks of having pink hair. “Ms. Jones,” he says. “Good to see you again.”

I smile at him. “You, too.” Glancing around, I realize there are not as many people here as I first thought. A woman in black, two more cops, and the caregiver, who is patting down the freshly turned earth on a tiny wooden casket.

“It’s nice of you to come today,” he says. “I’m sure Dr. Metcalf appreciates the support.”

At the sound of her name, the woman turns around. Her pale, pinched face is framed by a lion’s mane of red hair. It is like seeing Jenna again, in the flesh—a bit older, with a few more emotional scars.

She holds out her hand, this woman I tried so desperately to locate, who has literally landed in my path. “I’m Serenity Jones,” I say. “I’m the one who found your daughter.”





ALICE




There is not very much left of my baby.

I know, as a scientist, that a body in a shallow grave is more likely to decompose. That predators will scavenge away bits and pieces of the skeleton. That the remains of a child are porous, with more collagen, and more likely to decay in acidic soil. Still, I am not prepared for what I see when I view the tangle of narrow bones, like a parlor game of pickup sticks. A spine. A skull. One femur. Six phalanges.

The rest is gone.

I will be honest: I almost did not come back. There was a part of me waiting for the other shoe to drop; a niggling feeling that this was a trap to walk into, that I would be handcuffed when I stepped off the plane. But this was my baby. This was the closure I’d been waiting for, for years. How could I not go?

Detective Mills took care of all the arrangements, and I flew in from Johannesburg. I watch Jenna’s coffin being lowered into the screaming mouth of the earth, and I think, This is still not my daughter.

After the brief interment, Detective Mills asks if he can get me something to eat. I shake my head. “I’m exhausted,” I say. “I’m going to get some rest.” But instead of heading back to the motel, I take the rental car to Hartwick House, where Thomas has lived for ten years now.

“I’m here to visit Thomas Metcalf,” I tell the front desk nurse.

“And you are?”

“His wife,” I say.

She looks at me, astonished.

“Is there a problem?” I ask.

“No.” She recovers. “It’s just that he rarely has visitors. He’s down the hall, third room on the left.”

There is a sticker on Thomas’s door, a smiley face. I push the door open to see a man sitting by the window, his hands curled around a book in his lap. At first I am sure there has been a mistake—this is not Thomas. Thomas doesn’t have white hair; Thomas isn’t hunched over, with narrow shoulders and a sunken chest. But then he turns around, and a smile transforms him, so that the features of the man I remember ripple just beneath this new surface.

“Alice,” he says. “Where on earth have you been?”

It is such a direct question, and such a ludicrous one given all that has passed, that I laugh a little. “Oh,” I say. “Here and there.”

“There’s so much to tell you. I don’t even know where to start.”

Before he can begin, however, the door opens again and an orderly walks in. “I hear you’ve got a visitor, Thomas. Would you like to go down to the community room?”

“Hello,” I say, introducing myself. “I’m Alice.”

“I told you she’d come,” Thomas adds, smug.

The orderly shakes his head. “I’ll be damned. I have heard a lot about you, ma’am.”

“I think Alice and I would prefer to talk in private,” Thomas says, and I feel a knot in the pit of my stomach. I had hoped that a decade might dull the sharp edges of the conversation we need to have, but I had been na?ve.

“No problem,” the orderly says, winking at me as he backs out of the room.

This is the moment when Thomas will ask me what happened that night at the sanctuary. When we will pick up from the awful, electric spot where we left off. “Thomas,” I say, falling on my sword. “I am so, so sorry.”

“You should be,” he replies. “You’re second author on the paper. I know your work is important to you, and far be it from me to curb that, but you should understand better than anyone the need to be the first to publish before someone else steals your hypothesis.”