The Rosie Project (Don Tillman #1)(49)
This was a useful exercise. The project status was clearer in my mind, I had added some minor insights and I was certain that my journey was justified by the probability that Geoffrey Case was Rosie’s father.
I decided to drive until I was tired – a radical decision, as I would normally have scheduled my driving time according to published studies on fatigue and booked accommodation accordingly. But I had been too busy to plan. Nevertheless, I stopped for rest breaks every two hours and found myself able to maintain concentration. At 11.43 p.m., I detected tiredness, but rather than sleep I stopped at a service station, refuelled and ordered four double espressos. I opened the sunroof and turned up the CD player volume to combat fatigue, and at 7.19 a.m. on Saturday, with the caffeine still running all around my brain, Jackson Browne and I pulled into Moree.
21
I had set the GPS to take me to the nursing home, where I introduced myself as a family friend.
‘I’m afraid she won’t know you,’ said the nurse. This was the assumption I had made, although I was prepared with a plausible story if necessary. The nurse took me to a single room with its own bathroom. Mrs Case was asleep.
‘Shall I wake her?’ asked the nurse.
‘No, I’ll just sit here.’
‘I’ll leave you to it. Call if you need anything.’
I thought it would look odd if I left too quickly so I sat beside the bed for a while. I guessed Margaret Case was about eighty, much the same age as Daphne had been when she moved to the nursing home. Given the story Rosie had told me, it was very possible that I was looking at her grandmother.
As Margaret Case remained still and silent in her single bed, I thought about the Father Project. It was only possible because of technology. For all but the last few years of human existence, the secret would have died with Rosie’s mother.
I believe it is the duty of science, of humanity, to discover as much as we can. But I am a physical scientist, not a psychologist.
The woman in front of me was not a fifty-four-year-old male medical practitioner who might have run from his parental responsibilities. She was totally helpless. It would be easy to take a hair sample, or to swab her toothbrush, but it felt wrong.
For these reasons, and for others that I did not fully grasp at the time, I decided not to collect a sample.
Then Margaret Case woke up. She opened her eyes and looked directly at me.
‘Geoffrey?’ she said, quietly but very clearly. Was she asking for her husband or for her long-dead son? There was a time when I would have replied without thinking, ‘They’re dead,’ not out of malice but because I am wired to respond to the facts before others’ feelings. But something had changed in me, and I managed to suppress the statement.
She must have realised that I was not the person she had hoped to see, and began crying. She was not making any noise, but there were tears on her cheeks. Automatically, because I had experienced this situation with Daphne, I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped away the tears. She closed her eyes again. But fate had delivered me my sample.
I was exhausted, and by the time I walked out of the nursing home there were tears in my own eyes from lack of sleep. It was early autumn, and this far north the day was already warm. I lay under a tree and fell asleep.
I woke to see a male doctor in a white coat standing over me and for a frightening moment I was taken back to the bad times of twenty years ago. It was only momentary; I quickly remembered where I was and he was only checking to see that I was not ill or dead. I was not breaking any rules. It was four hours and eight minutes since I had left Margaret Case’s room.
The incident was a timely reminder of the dangers of fatigue and I planned the return trip more carefully. I scheduled a five-minute break every hour and at 7.06 p.m. I stopped at a motel, ate an overcooked steak and went to bed. The early night enabled a 5.00 a.m. start on the Sunday.
The highway bypasses Shepparton, but I took the turnoff and went to the city centre. I decided not to visit my parents. The extra sixteen kilometres involved in driving the full distance to their house and back to the highway would add a dangerous unplanned increment to what was already a demanding journey, but I did want to see the town.
I drove past Tillman Hardware. It was closed on Sunday, and my father and brother would be at home with my mother. My father was probably straightening pictures, and my mother asking my brother to clear his construction project from the dining table so she could set it for Sunday dinner. I had not been back since my sister’s funeral.
The service station was open and I filled the tank. A man of about forty-five, BMI about thirty, was behind the counter. As I approached, I recognised him, and revised his age to thirty-nine. He had lost hair, grown a beard and gained weight, but he was obviously Gary Parkinson, who had been at high school with me. He had wanted to join the army and travel. He had apparently not realised this ambition. I was reminded how lucky I was to have been able to leave and reinvent my life.
‘Hey, Don,’ he said, obviously also recognising me.
‘Greetings, GP.’
He laughed. ‘You haven’t changed.’
It was getting dark on Sunday evening when I arrived back in Melbourne and returned the rental car. I left the Jackson Browne CD in the player.
Two thousand four hundred and seventy-two kilometres according to the GPS. The handkerchief was safe in a zip-lock bag, but its existence did not change my decision not to test Margaret Case.