Galileo

by Ann McMan

  “Maybe.” He dropped his eyes. “It’s complicated.”

  “You already said that.”

  “I don’t know what else to say.”

  “All right.” Evan thought about her options. “How about we make a deal?”

  He looked up at her with narrowed eyes. “What kind of deal?”

  “You don’t quit anything until things are uncomplicated enough that you can talk about them—in real sentences with verbs.”

  “Evan . . .”

  “Hey.” She raised a hand. “You came out here to talk with me and promptly realized you couldn’t, or weren’t ready. Therefore, I, as your oldest and best friend, invoke executive privilege and demand a stay on any actions or reactions until such time as a full and complete disclosure can occur.”

  “Those are some terms.” He slowly shook his head. “What makes you think I’ll agree?”

  “I know you. You’re still the same little candyass who was always afraid I’d let go of your hand and leave you stranded in a strange land full of falafel stands and tattoo parlors.”

  “I now love falafel. And you always led me back home.”

  Evan saw something strobe and roll in the distance behind him. It wasn’t lightning—it was more like a phosphorescent gurgle creeping along the horizon . . . an eerie green gurgle.

  Holy shit. Here it was. Right on cue.

  There was another rolling flash—higher and broader. There were traces of deep lavender mixed in with the glowing green. Tim saw it this time, too.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” He swiveled around on his stump to gawk at the sky. “I didn’t think it would happen.”

  Evan smiled at him. “Kind of an odd stance for someone whose job it is to believe in miracles.”

  Tim laughed but didn’t disagree.

  The cosmic light show continued. The way the colors undulated and swirled reminded her of the used lava lamp Sheila had given her for her tenth birthday. She and Tim would daisy-chain it to a couple of extension cords and watch it for hours—usually on hot summer nights, while they sat on the front steps of her row home, waiting on Evan’s mother to roll in from . . . wherever she’d been for the evening.

  Sheila hadn’t been all that keen on keeping regular hours—or anything else usually attached to the word “regular.”

  “It’s like old times,” Evan observed.

  Tim seemed confused.

  “You. Me,” she explained. “In the dark, watching fancy colors and waiting for our lives to change.”

  He gave her a sad smile. “They did.”

  “Yeah,” Evan said. “And in my case, not a moment too soon.”

  “Change can be a good thing.”

  “Absolutely true. But as a wise friend of mine pointed out, change is a process, not an event.”

  Tim raised an eyebrow. “A wise friend?”

  “He has his moments.”

  Tim looked back at the horizon.

  Evan watched him against the backdrop of the blazing night sky. Both of them were full of charged particles. The aurora might last another few hours before dissolving back into darkness. Tim’s internal disturbance was sure to last a lot longer.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  It was well past midnight when Evan finally turned off the lights and trudged up the steps to bed. Tim had stayed on long after the aurora faded into the deeper recesses of the night sky. They continued to sit huddled together at the edge of a snowdrift, even though Evan suggested they head back to the house and the warmth of her living room.

  Tim had deliberated.

  “I can’t stay much longer,” he’d said. Even though he did stay longer. A lot longer.

  Evan figured if it were easier for Tim to talk with her—or not talk with her—in the dark, she’d just have to roll with it. After all, turnabout was fair play. In the end, he didn’t reveal much more than he had initially, although he promised not to make any final decisions until they had more time, and he had more inclination, to sort through and lay bare his nebulous issues.

  When he had finally checked his watch and got to his feet, it was nearly 11:45. Evan walked him back to his car and made him promise to text her when he reached the safety of his digs at St. Rita’s. They hugged good-bye.

  “Let me know when would be a good time to visit with Stevie while she’s home for Christmas break?” he’d asked.

  “Of course.” Evan nodded. “She’ll want to see you right away. You’re her soulmate when it comes to the finer arts of reality TV and junk food.”

  Tim nodded and climbed into his ancient Subaru before slowly backing out her driveway, taking care to keep within his own tracks through the snow.

  Evan had watched his slow progress along Ring Road. It was a mess, with only a narrow lane traversable. But I-95 back to Philly should be in better shape than it had been when he’d made his way to Chadds Ford earlier. It always amazed her how fast the highway crews got busy after these winter storms rolled through.

  Her cell phone had vibrated about twenty times while she sat outside with Tim. When she reached the solitude of her bedroom, she sat down to scroll through the messages. There were two from Julia. Those made her smile.

  She glanced over at the small, framed photo on her nightstand. It had been taken just over a year ago. Tim had come over for brunch and to help them decorate for Christmas. Julia posed with Evan and Stevie out back, in the snow piled up along the perimeter of the house. They had all been drinking mimosas and hanging white Christmas lights along the eaves of the porch. Since Julia was, by far, the tallest of them, she stood on the second rung of an ancient wooden ladder. Evan was wielding a staple gun like a six-shooter and Stevie was draped with strands of tangled lights.

  She stared at Julia.

  God. The woman was so damn gorgeous.She was nearly half a foot taller than Evan—even without the ladder. Her mane of dark hair was loose and blowing around her face, but her million-watt smile was easy to make out. Evan and Stevie were both staring up at her with goofy adoration.

  Evan frowned at her own image. She was wearing her grandfather’s wool barn coat and a clunky pair of glasses. Her short, sandy hair was sticking up at odd angles.

  She looked like a myopic pygmy . . . with bed head.

  Whatever.

  She also had five voicemail messages and ten missed-call notifications from Dan.

  What the hell?

  Her panicked, first thought was Stevie—but none of Dan’s messages mentioned their daughter.

  “Evan, it’s Dan. I need to talk with you tonight. It’s about a job. Call me ASAP.”

  “Evan, it’s me again. Pick up. I need to talk to you.” A sigh on the line. “Call me when you get in.”

  “Where the fuck are you? I’ve been trying to reach you for two hours. Call me.”

  “Don’t you carry your damn phone with you? Call me back. It’s important.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Evan. Good thing I don’t need a fucking organ transplant.”

  Evan punched the callback option on her phone. Dan answered on the first ring.

  “Where the fuck have you been? It’s fucking midnight.”

  “Relax, Dan. I have a life. I was out.”

  “Out?” He sounded incredulous. “Without your phone? Since when?”

  “Will you calm down? I was outside watching the aurora.”

  “For three fucking hours?”

  “You know, Dan, a little stargazing might actually help improve your vital humors.”

  He scoffed. “I doubt it.”

  “I do, too, as a matter of fact.” Evan sat back against the pillows on her bed. “What’s the job?”

  “We got word tonight that POTUS is nominating Cawley to the court tomorrow.”

  “Cawley?” Evan took a few moments to let that sink in. The high court’s tenuous balance of liberal and conservative ideologies had been knocked off-kilter when its moderate-voiced justice, Abel McIntyre, had died suddenly from a massive brain hemorrhage. Everyone knew the Republican-
controlled administration was salivating at this prospect to tip the high court’s balance—and bias—and lists of constructionist judges were circulating in the back rooms of Congress before McIntyre’s body was cold. But Cawley? Cawley was a judicial lightning rod—a polarizing poster child of the far right. He’d never make it through the confirmation process. His appointment to the Third Circuit had nearly torn the Senate apart.

  “Are you still there?” Dan’s impatience had not abated.

  “Of course. I’m just taking it in.”

  “No shit. This is one helluva curve ball.” Evan could hear Dan rustling papers. “We have to move fast. This guy has a paper trail that’s nine zillion miles long. But most of the stuff was already vetted during his circuit court appointment hearings, so it’s old news. We need you to go deeper to find anything not already in the public domain. And you gotta do it at light speed. Already, dark money PACs are lining up to pump big bucks into PR campaigns to short-circuit any efforts to block his nomination.”

  “Dan? There’s no way this guy will make it through the judiciary committee. He’s a relic—not to mention a homophobe and a bigot.”

  “Do you read the fucking papers, Sleeping Beauty? Welcome to the reboot of Huxley’s Brave New Nightmare.”

  “Okay. Whattaya got to get me started?”

  “A couple of random leads and about ten thousand reams of paper.”

  “Great.” Evan said. “I’m gonna need some extra help on this one.”

  “I know. Spool up your usual geeks. We’ll pick up the tab.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “The DNC.”

  Evan thought his answer was too simple. That got her antenna up. “And?”

  Dan didn’t reply.

  “Dan? I’m not taking this job until you tell me who else is paying the freight.”

  “Some outside donors who choose to remain nameless.”

  “Is the money clean?”

  “Yeah.” She heard him laugh. “Squeaky clean.”

  Dan made her crazy, but she knew he’d never lied to her before—not knowingly, at least.

  “Okay.” She said. “Send what you’ve got to my Signal account. I’ll get started tomorrow.”

  “Great.”

  Evan started to hang up, but Dan wasn’t finished talking.

  “When’s Stevie getting home?”

  “The thirteenth. I sprang for a plane ticket. I didn’t want her spending eighteen hours on the train from Albany.”

  Dan laughed. “Tell the truth. What you didn’t want was her dragging two hundred pounds of dirty laundry home.”

  “No. I pretty much rely on you to keep my life filled with that—as our previous discussion would indicate.”

  “Touché. Let me know when she’s settled so we can iron out holiday stuff.”

  Evan was curious. “You and Pippi Longstocking staying in town this year?”

  Dan had remarried a year ago, and his new bride was an upstart millennial who worked for Media Matters. Evan enjoyed reminding Dan that his ebullient wife was all of six years older than his daughter.

  “Will you cool it with this shit?” He lowered his voice. “Kayla really likes Stevie. They get along great.”

  “I don’t doubt it. They probably go out for Mochalatta Chills after their hot yoga classes.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  That was unusual. Dan normally just hung up without tele-graphing his intentions. She attempted to make amends for her sarcasm.

  “I’ll look over the files in the morning and let you know what I need. And I’ll have Stevie call you as soon as she gets home so you can work out your times with her.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

  He hung up.

  Before Evan had a chance to call Julia, she got a text message from Tim.

  Back at the Big House and safely locked into my cell.

  She texted him back.

  Come over on Friday night for dinner with us?

  Sure. He wrote back. What can I bring?

  Clarity, she typed. And if that’s not possible, then pick up a bottle of something wonderful. She reconsidered. Make that two bottles.

  Done. Thanks for tonight.

  I didn’t do anything.

  I know. That’s what I’m thanking you for.

  I always strive to do the least I can do.See you Friday.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Julia was just about to give up on hearing from Evan, and turn in for the night. She’d been up since 5:30 that morning and had been sequestered in back-to-back meetings all day. She’d also been doing some long-distance crisis intervention by trying to talk one of their marquee authors off a contractual cliff.

  Correction. Another cliff. If those negotiations went south, she’d probably be looking at a trip to Boston as soon as she got home.

  She felt tired and cranky and just wanted to get the hell out of Albuquerque. The winter storm that had rolled through Pennsylvania today had dumped nearly a foot of snow on New Mexico earlier in the week. Public transportation in the Duke City ground to a halt for two days, forcing Julia to extend her stay. Enough was enough. She was tired of the meetings and tired of this hotel. It wasn’t that the room was spartan or unattractive. As far as hotel accommodations went, it was downright swanky. But after several nights, even the world’s plushest mattress and panoramic views of the Sandia Mountains couldn’t curb her homesickness.

  Two more days. Then she’d be back in Philadelphia.

  Unless she had to head to Boston.

  It was increasingly clear to her that this job was becoming . . . onerous. After Andy’s death, it hadn’t taken her long to realize that the vacuum once filled by her work was shrinking. Most days, she wondered why she still did the job at all. She didn’t have to. After her father’s death last year, her mother, who had never had much interest in the family business, had pulled up stakes and moved permanently to Paris. That meant Julia no longer had anyone sitting in constant judgment of her job performance—or her life choices.

  No one but Evan, who seemed determined to question and second-guess everything—especially things that related to their fledgling relationship.

  Fledgling. That was a ridiculous misnomer. As far as Julia was concerned, they’d long since blown past the last off-ramp en route to Something Serious. It was Evan who continually slowed them down by dragging her Allbirds-clad feet and insisting that Julia wasn’t ready for anything more . . . consequential.

  Hardly. By Julia’s calculation they’d crossed the relationship Rubicon the moment she opened the door to her parents’ flat in London and saw a haggard and uncertain Evan standing there. That had been her personal epiphany—the moment she knew there was no going back on going forward with this cranky, angst-ridden, expletive-spewing bundle of contradictions. But Evan?

  She couldn’t speak for Evan.

  Evan was a tough nut to crack.

  So, Julia did what she did. Or what she could do. She moved her office from New York to Philadelphia and took up temporary residence in her grandmother’s ridiculously opulent townhouse on Delancey Place. The company maintained the coveted, Rittenhouse Square digs as a “guest quarters” for VIP authors and visiting board members. To Julia, that simply meant the asset remained on the Donne & Hale balance sheets as a high-dollar tax dodge—one of many she’d discovered since undertaking the mercurial process of unraveling her father’s estate. Her plan was to sell the place—along with three other properties in the Northeast—as soon as she could secure her mother’s required sign-off. That task would entail a trip to Paris, so Julia resolved to wait until she had financial matters sorted to a point that the arduous process of commandeering her mother’s attention long enough to entice her to sign the paperwork could be maximized.

  Julia’s mother had little in common with the modest refinements of her Quaker ancestors. She loved her creature comforts just fine. Julia knew that getting her mother to agree to let go of the luxury properties would be a hard sell
.

  No pun intended.

  She checked her watch. Nine forty-five. She had to be up and out by 6 a.m. It was unlikely Evan would call her back tonight. She opted to turn in. Ten minutes later, after she’d turned out the lights and climbed beneath the covers, her cell phone beeped. She retrieved it from the nightstand. It was a text message. From Evan.

  Are you still awake?

  Julia smiled and typed back. Of course. The question is, why are you?

  Long night. Evan replied. Tim was here. Then Dan called with a new job.

  Julia began to type her response, then thought better of it and called her.

  Evan answered on the first ring. “We don’t have to talk about it tonight. I don’t want to bore you with the details.”

  “Please,” Julia entreated. “Bore me. It’ll be a nice break from the rest of my day.”

  “Things not going well?” Evan asked.

  “I’m just tired. Up at 5:30 and stuck in meetings all day.”

  “I know you. That’s not all.”

  Julia debated about whether or not to tell Evan she’d be stuck in Albuquerque two extra days. She bit the bullet and chose to get it over with. “You know the winter snowstorm that hit Chadds Ford today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it originated here. And unlike the hale and hearty types who populate southeastern Pennsylvania, high-desert folk aren’t as adept at snow removal.”

  “Which means?”

  Julia could detect the flicker of suspicion in Evan’s voice.

  “Which means,” she continued, “I’m going to be stuck out here until Wednesday.”

  Silence on the line.

  “Are you still there?” Julia asked.

  “Yeah,” Evan mumbled.

  “Don’t pout. I can’t help it.”

  “I know.”

  More silence on the line.

  “You’re pouting,” Julia observed.

  “Sorry. It’s not you. I had a shitty night. This is just a fitting finish.”