Lost in Time(79)

Hiro slid a page across the table.

“Why?”

“I have a sickness.”

Adeline studied him. She knew what his sickness was. And she knew he would feel better once he told her. She waited as he spoke slowly, staring at the floor.

“It’s the same reason I don’t have a wife or a family.” He looked up quickly. “It’s not that kind of sickness. It’s a compulsion I’ve never been able to control. I gamble.”

*

The confession from Hiro wasn’t the only one Adeline received that week. She woke the next morning to an email from Constance, requesting a meeting at her home.

Adeline arrived that afternoon, and she was reminded of that day she had visited her in Absolom City, of how terrified she had been back then, of what she had seen.

This meeting started in the same way, with the two of them sipping tea in the living room, the doors to the backyard open.

“If we’re going to be partners, I think it’s only fair that I tell you something you should know about me. About my health.” Constance set the mug down on the glass table with a clink. “I’m sick. I have been for a few years. And I’m getting worse.” She opened her mouth to continue but seemed to reconsider. “Actually, I think I should show you.”

She rose and made her way upstairs, to a room on the front of the home.

The hairs on Adeline’s arms stood on end. It was as if she was reliving the scene from her past—and Constance’s future.

The woman reached out a skinny hand and turned the handle to a bedroom with no bed, only pictures on the wall and notes. Adeline had seen these very pictures and notes before, in the bedroom in Absolom City. Only here, there were fewer pictures, as if Constance was only now beginning to build the tableau.

She walked close to the wall and studied a photo of a young man in his twenties, holding a large glass full of beer in a pub.

“After college, I took a year off before going to grad school. I was restless and wild back then. My father had just died. I was mad at the world. I had enough money saved up to travel, to not work, and simply indulge. And I did. I spent a hedonistic summer in Europe. A downright shameful fall in Hong Kong. A winter full of debauchery in Australia. I arrived home in California that spring out of money and ready to live a normal life again.”

Constance turned and clasped her hands together. “But time and money aren’t all that reckless interlude cost me. I didn’t know it until years later, but somewhere along the way, I contracted HIV. And I very surely passed it along to others during my romp around the world.”

Constance inhaled. “I thought you should know. That’s my interest in Absolom. The treatments for the disease have come a long way, and I want to get the best care possible—but it’s more than that. I want to use the money to find whoever I might have infected. To notify them and offer to get them care as well.”

Adeline stepped deeper into the room, scanning the pictures. It all made sense now.

“I hope that doesn’t change anything,” Constance said.

“It doesn’t,” Adeline whispered. “The past is the past.”

But she wondered if it did, if Constance’s secret was the piece she was looking for—if it somehow connected to Nora’s murder in a way she didn’t yet understand.





FIFTY-FOUR


With the founding of Absolom Sciences, Adeline moved to Palo Alto. She bought a small home a block away from her parents’ house and Elliott’s house.

For a while, her life was solely focused on work. At the Queen Anne-style mansion on Cowper, the small team refined the design for the Absolom prototype. They worked late most nights, kicking around ideas and running computer simulations.

Adeline got to see a side of her father and the Absolom founders she had never known—what they were like in those early days, at work, behind closed doors.

Hiro easily logged the most hours. He even slept in his office some nights. When he was in the midst of a technical problem, it dogged him like a ghost haunting his mind. And it was a brilliant mind.

When his work came to a logical stop, he would take two days off. Sometimes it was the weekend. Other times it was the middle of the week. He simply disappeared and returned, not exactly looking refreshed but ready to work again.

Adeline knew where he went. She had seen it in the future.

Sam and Elliott worked closely together, like two physics detectives working a case, sharing notes, and drawing on a whiteboard. Both men looked stressed, and Adeline knew it was not because of the load at work but because of the challenges at home, the problems they couldn’t solve.

Nora and Constance worked together on the machine’s hardware, trying to integrate Sam and Elliott’s theoretical ideas with Hiro’s software. They were the bridge between those two islands, and in a way, they were their own island, working away from the group most of the time.

That was fine with Adeline. Whether it was conscious or not, she had avoided Nora. She knew what would happen to her and that getting close would only make it tougher for Adeline to see that her murder occurred.

One night, at 2 a.m., Adeline’s phone vibrated on her bedside table. She had always been a light sleeper. The stress of starting Absolom and ensuring things happened exactly as they had before had only made her more restless.

She answered the call and heard Hiro’s voice on the line, sounding agitated. “I need an advance on my salary.”