Relief isn’t immediate, but the pressure in her head lessens, and her leg no longer aches as much. Even better, when she enters the kitchen a few minutes later wheeling her suitcase, Jack is there, eating a peanut butter sandwich. He takes the bag from her and brings it to the front hall. He’s not wearing the new sneakers, but she lets it go.
“What about you?” she asks. “Are you packed?”
“Yeah,” he mumbles.
“Well, bring out your bag. We need to go—the driver will be waiting for us.”
“I’ll pick it up after school,” he says. “I don’t want to have to carry it around all day, and it won’t fit in my locker.”
“Fine.” She picks her purse up off the counter, slings it over her shoulder. “But I want you to run in and get it and then go directly to Barry’s house, understood?”
He nods.
“All right then. Let’s go.”
They ride down the elevator in silence. The driver loads her bag into the trunk while Jack and Holly slip into the back seat.
“You’ll be able to reach me on my mobile anytime,” she says to Jack. “And I’ll call you when I land.”
“Okay.”
“Anything you want me to bring you?”
He shakes his head. “Will you see Grandma?”
“I don’t know,” she says. Jane is hard to reach at the best of times. And the thought of explaining to her what’s happened makes the constant pain in Holly’s stomach even sharper. But . . . “I suppose so.”
They’re a block from school when Jack points to the window. “Look, there’s Brett.” Holly leans forward, but she can’t find Jack’s friend in the scrum of khaki-and polo-wearing teens milling toward the building.
“Could you let me out here? Please?”
Holly hesitates. “But I won’t see you for a week. Maybe longer.”
“Mom, it’s one block. Please!” He looks at her beseechingly, his expression almost identical to when he was younger. But back then, he was always begging her not to go. Her pocket baby, she called him, because he always wanted to be in her lap, snuggled under her arm. When she traveled for business and couldn’t take him, he cried every time she left. Once he’d even tried to pack himself in her suitcase as a surprise.
“Mom!”
“Sorry. I was thinking.” She hesitates a second longer, but that little boy is long gone, so she relents and tells the driver to pull over. As soon as the car is stopped, Jack opens the door, but she pulls him back so she can kiss him. She inhales, trying to capture his scent. He squirms away.
“Bye,” he says. He slides across the seat and swings his backpack up in one easy move. In three steps, he’s caught up to the edge of the crowd. She watches, but he doesn’t look back.
* * *
“The airport, Dr. Darling?”
“Yes, please,” she says, leaning back against the seat. She debates calling the cottage again. Starts to punch in the numbers, hangs up. If there was news, they would have called. Tries Jane. The phone goes to voicemail. Holly doesn’t leave a message.
To distract herself, she scrolls through her emails, finds the one from Elliot Benton, and scans it. It’s hastily written, but shows promise. Like Holly, Benton came to the beauty industry from the outside. A biologist with an interest in mollusks, of all things, he can see the big picture and make connections most people can’t—he’d caught her attention at a conference years ago when he told her a quahog clam could live up to five hundred years.
When Barry balks at Elliot’s salary, she points out that Darling Skin Care is one of the few beauty companies to have a biologist. It’s an advantage not many other companies have, and plays into the current trend for products heavy on natural elements. Already Elliot’s work on the Pixie Dust line has paid for itself.
She emails Elliot back, telling him to pursue the modifications in trial form. She hesitates, her fingers poised over the screen. Elliot might know a way to stabilize the proteins in the blood she gives Jack. He could help her synthesize the serum. Could possibly even help her find a way to cure Eden. Slow her growth, wake her up. But bringing anybody in on that is too risky. As tempting as it might be to have someone to work with, to talk with, she has to go it alone.
She shakes her head to clear it. Her days of collaboration with scientists like Elliot are over. The handful of people she’s kept in contact with from before the crash can’t believe she’s happy manufacturing lotions and creams that cheekily promise to defy time. But they’re not in on the irony. And they never will be.