by Gwenda Bond
“I know,” Terry said, almost dreamy. Her eyes were red, but not as puffy as the day before. “I remember from my folks’ accident. You think it’ll never get better, but days pass and you make a space to carry it with you.”
Alice nodded to Terry’s stomach. “Maybe you just don’t have the room yet. That’s already full.”
“There’s always room to carry your family.”
“Heartwarming as this is,” Stacey interrupted, “you better get going or you’ll be late.”
Alice dutifully escorted Terry to the English building, as indicated on Gloria’s note. It had a small classics library in the lobby and so, while Terry took her test, Alice hung out reading sections of books by flipping to a random page number she decided on beforehand.
Andrew had been a good man. When Gloria called to tell her, Alice took it hard. But apparently it was Ken who’d taken it hardest. Well, besides Terry. She hadn’t even realized Andrew and Ken knew each other well. It was sweet, but Ken couldn’t help in any way except taking on diner shifts, since he wasn’t allowed on and off Terry’s dorm floor. Besides, this was only for a couple more days, and then they’d be moving her home to live with her sister in their parents’ house.
Alice regretted that she didn’t get to say goodbye to Andrew. But not as much as she hated him not knowing he’d have a child. Terry had decided not to tell his family, at least not yet—her reasoning was that it might put them in danger from Brenner. Alice could guess part of her skipping the lab this week was a test to see what he’d do.
She shivered, considering it.
“Cold?” Terry asked behind her.
“You’re done already?” Alice slid the book in her hands—The Three Musketeers—back into place on the shelf. “Let’s get this paper turned in and then you can rest.”
“I don’t need to rest.” Terry paused. “I need to run an errand. Alone. I’ll make it back on my own to the dorm, I swear.”
Alice considered. Terry was as clear-eyed as she’d been in days.
“Stacey will murder us all if anything happens to you,” Alice said.
“Nothing’s going to happen. I just need to stop by the library.”
What trouble could Terry get into at the library? “How about I walk you there and then leave?”
“Deal.”
“But we’re turning in the paper first, per Gloria’s orders.”
Terry hesitated. “You’ll check on Kali tomorrow if you can? Am I doing the right thing not going?”
Alice had no idea. “I’ll let you know when I think you’re getting it wrong.”
“Thank you. That’s probably the best promise anyone can make.”
She wished she could do a lot more. “Fellowship of the Lab.”
“Fellowship of the Lab,” Terry repeated. She had her hand on her tummy again. “We’re family, too.”
“Yes,” Alice agreed. “We are.”
“Come on, kid sister.”
5.
Terry hadn’t been alone in three days or nights. Someone was always with her. Stacey didn’t do things by half-measures, when she bothered doing them.
And Terry wasn’t going to have very long alone here. She wandered through the library until she spotted the reference librarian she liked. Not so long a line today, and so Terry got into it and waited. There was no one else around, and the people who were in the library were busy with books spread across tables, finishing up projects.
Terry felt like she carried a different world with her wherever she went now. These everyday concerns—the finals, politeness, tying her shoes, not crying in public—they all seemed meaningless in the face of her problems and the ache of losing Andrew. She wished she’d gotten to tell him he was going to be a father. She wish he’d gotten to be a father.
But she had to think about the future.
The librarian looked past her at first. “Yes? What can I help you with?”
“Uh, hi,” Terry said. “You helped me out once before. I was wondering, maybe you could again. I have a, well, it’s sort of an odd request. I don’t know where to start.”
“My favorite kind of request.” She waved her fingers to bring it on. “Go ahead.”
Terry swallowed. Then: “Say there was a young woman in trouble and she needed to disappear. How would she go about it? Do you have anything about that?”
The librarian considered her, taking in her shapeless garments, her puffy face and its dark circles. “We don’t have any books, but I do specialize in information.” She paused. “Is this young woman in immediate danger?”
One of many questions of the moment. “That’s unclear.”
“And does she need to disappear forever or just a short time?”
Terry hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Let’s assume forever.”
“Money is the big thing, the more the better, and she’d need a way to make it once she got away.” The librarian kept her voice down. “If someone is likely to look for this person, it’d be best if they thought she was, well, dead.”
Terry had already gotten that far in her head. People didn’t search for the dead. Though she couldn’t figure out how to accomplish faking her own death. And besides that, who were you, if you did that? “How would that work, though? You need a name to live…”
“It’s quite interesting, isn’t it?” The librarian spoke conspiratorially. “I read a novel once where a man took the name of a boy born roughly at the same time as him but who died in childhood. Got away with it until he died. You’d just have to leave the area where the name would be likely to get recognized.”
Terry absorbed that. “Where would I be able to look through obituaries from the early 1960s? See if there are any childhood deaths?”
“This way. I’ll help you pull a couple of years of newspapers. Childhood accidents…you may want to look for news stories, too. Might get a name there. For your purely hypothetical inquiry.”
Terry wondered if something awful had happened to the librarian that made her so willing to help. She wasn’t going to ask.
Ken arrived a handful of minutes after she’d told him to. He pulled out the chair at the table she’d taken up residence at, and looked over at the newsprint in front of her. “Dark,” he said, eyeing the rows of obituaries. “Or are you working on his?”
Terry hadn’t even thought about it. She supposed his parents would write up his obituary for their town paper. Tears stung her eyes.
The librarian circled by the table. “Miss,” she interrupted. “Everything okay?”
Terry’s head darted up as she realized the implication. The librarian was asking if Ken needed to be removed. “Oh yes, it’s fine. He’s a friend. Not…the problem.”
Ken gave a sad smile. “The problem is a person, though.”
The librarian nodded and moved on.
“Terry…,” Ken said.
She hadn’t seen him since the news of Andrew’s death, but Stacey had told all her new friends and all Andrew’s old ones. Ken had apparently taken it hard.
“I didn’t realize you and Andrew knew each other much,” she said.
“We didn’t,” Ken said. “But we talked about you before he left…”
She’d had no idea. “You did?”
“I meddled. It was my idea for you to be officially broken up—I just felt like something was going to happen that would separate you, and maybe it would make it easier. I should’ve left it alone. My mother told me never to meddle in big things.”
“Ken, that didn’t matter. It was for show. It did help. But he’ll always be with me.”
“In more ways than one.”
Terry barked a laugh. She figured the librarian would let it slide, but quieted down anyway.
“What is all this?” Ken asked
. “Why’d you want to see me?”
“I’m figuring out how to disappear. But I can’t leave it all unfinished…I’m working on how we do this, get away from Brenner for good. Shut down what he’s doing. I just wanted you to know that you can tell me, if you get a…certainty that I should know about. I can’t lose anyone else.”
“I’ll try,” Ken said, “but remember, there’re a lot of people who don’t want to lose you either.”
“They may have to,” she said. “I may have to go. And if it keeps everyone safe, that’s fine. Understand?”
She could tell he didn’t. But Terry had already started gathering what money she could. What she’d accumulated from the lab since the bail, and from the diner. She’d fill the Fellowship in once she had the details worked out. They might toss her a few bucks.
The baby kicked and she touched her stomach.
“Can I feel?” Ken asked.
Terry glanced around, but they were alone in this corner of the library. “Go ahead.”
She placed Ken’s hand on the center of her mildly swollen tummy and the baby kicked again. “I came up with a name,” she said. “I read this National Geographic article at the doctor’s in the waiting room. It was about this woman, Jane Goodall, who studies chimpanzees in Tanzania.”
“Not another science experiment,” Ken said with a groan.
“She’s different. She doesn’t use numbers for her subjects. She names them. I’m calling the baby Jane.” Terry paused as little Jane kicked again. It was like she’d been hiding, and now that her presence had been revealed she was determined to make herself known. Constantly. Terry didn’t mind. “I like the name Jane, too, so you better be right about the sex.”
“Feel that,” Ken said, and then removed his hand. “That’s a brave spitfire girl just like her mama in there. She can’t wait to get out into the world. How could I be wrong?”
6.
Dr. Brenner’s day had been frustrating. Visiting Eight wasn’t helping.
He’d brought a packet of Hostess cupcakes for her and not even made her work for them. And still she sulked.
Children were maddening.
And, well, so were adults. Just in entirely different ways.
“I want to see my friend,” she said.
“Terry didn’t come today.” He quietly fumed about that, her nerve at not showing up. He’d have to get her back on track—after he’d received the call about her doctor’s visit, he assumed she would be panicking and he hadn’t been altogether taken off-guard by her weak attempt to buck his authority. Even he had been surprised to hear about the boyfriend.
Ah, well. One less complication to worry about down the road. He supposed he should’ve seen that coming when he arranged the draft solution. He knew just the leverage to apply now.
“I don’t mean Terry!” Eight said. “The one like me!”
Who was she talking about? “There’s no one like you,” Dr. Brenner said. “Not yet. I’m working on a friend that will be. Terry is.”
“Not her. I haven’t seen the monsters, but I bet they’re here. I need to talk to her.” Eight was in a mood. The kind where she wouldn’t give up.
The monsters? Brenner searched for why that rang a bell. Oh, yes, the mechanic subject who responded with such interesting panache to her electroshock treatments. Alice…Johnson. Numbers were so much easier to keep track of than names.
“Eight, have you talked with someone here besides Terry?”
The girl studied the ceiling, sucking chocolate frosting off her index finger. “Dr. Parks and Benjamin and…” she listed the other orderlies and staff members. “And you, Papa.”
He hid his true reaction. “No one else?”
“I won’t tell. I promised.” She whispered the words and he sensed fear within her. Good. He could work with that.
“We’ve been over this. The only promises that matter are the ones you make to me.”
She shook her head, tossing her black hair from left to right. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Let me be the judge.”
“Papa, no!”
She ran for the door and out into the hallway.
He followed her, walking fast. There was no escape for her here. No need to worry.
His feet clicked across the tile as he steadily pursued her. Past the empty room where Terry Ives should be, incubating what was to be his finest achievement. Then they passed the room with the flaky man Ken, followed by the most promising of their interrogation research subjects, Gloria, and, finally, Alice. Eight stood in front of Alice talking fast and gesturing wildly.
So that was who she meant.
He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it.
Alice’s mouth fell open as Kali disappeared again.
“I know you’re in here, Eight,” he said, entering the room. “Come out now…”
“Eight?” Alice asked.
He raised his eyebrows. The irony of these women and their concern over names. “Kali, I’m not angry…”
What was it Eight had said? That her other friend was “like her.” Was Alice hiding secrets? Were her monsters…real?
“You’re friends with Terry Ives, yes?” Dr. Brenner asked, instead of his actual questions.
“Yes,” she said, and the words rushed out. “She’s going through a hard time, you shouldn’t worry about her not being here. You should just…leave her alone. Let her live in peace.”
How sweet.
He took a step further into the room. “Eight, come out now.”
“Honey, you’d better do what he says,” Alice said, spooked.
“Are there monsters here now?” he asked her.
Alice only nodded. She means me. He laughed. No wonder Eight liked her so much; she’d probably told the girl he was a monster.
“I’m not a monster,” he said. “But if you want to think of me as one, go right ahead. Kali, come out now, we’re going.”
“Bye, Alice!” Eight sang as the door opened once more. But she reappeared and turned in the threshold, hesitating. “You’re sure the monsters aren’t here now?”
Alice didn’t seem to want to answer. But when Eight refused to leave, she did at last. “I’m sure.”
“How long has she been coming to see you?” Dr. Brenner asked Alice.
She held her chin high. “Not long. I won’t say anything…about what she can do.”
“Oh, I know. And we would know the moment you did. We’ll be going now. Bye, Miss Johnson.” Dr. Brenner caught Eight and took her shoulder, so she couldn’t give him the slip again that easily. In the hall, he asked her, “So that’s your friend?”
“She’s like me. She sees things. But she says they’re not now. They’re from the future.”
Monsters in the future? He wasn’t sure he believed it, but suddenly he knew exactly how to get Terry Ives back where she belonged.
And he’d keep the mechanic close enough to learn if any of the secrets she’d been keeping were of value.
7.
Terry hefted a last box of clothes to carry up the stairs at home, only to have Becky pluck it away from her. “You need to stop lifting so many heavy things,” her sister said.
It wasn’t that Terry actually wanted to carry the box. It was the principle of the thing. “And you need to stop fussing. I’m pregnant, not mortally wounded.”
Becky frowned at her. “Come on, you’re taking a nap. But I want to talk to you first.”
“Oh, no. A talk. Help, someone, help.” Terry’s spirits had marginally improved. She’d managed to pass her finals, and Stacey had overseen her packing and moving so efficiently that Terry barely lifted a finger. Instead she just carefully curated a box or two, which in her mind she called the Disappearing Boxes.
Why pack twice in close succession? It comforted her to have a worst-case-scenario contingency plan. Not that she’d figured out the making money part of it. She had a fake name picked out if she needed one: Delia Monroe, who died of TB at age six. Running might have to be enough.
Becky lugged the second of the Disappearing Boxes up the sturdy wooden stairs without even knowing it. Terry trailed her, taking her time on the steps. Now that she knew she was pregnant and couldn’t chalk being tired or achy or cranky up to life, she seemed more aware of all the nuisance pains.
“Sis,” Terry said, “I never told you how grateful I am you didn’t lecture me. And I’m not just saying that to stave off a lecture, if that’s about to happen.”
They reached the top of the landing. Becky kept walking and put down the box with the rest on the floor in Terry’s room. All her comforting pictures from childhood, the family portraits, the patchwork quilt her aunt had made when her mother was pregnant with her. She’d already transferred the Polaroid of her and Andrew to the vanity, right over her jewelry box with its tiny ballerina. Becky had already started decorating the nursery. It was set to be across the hall.
If we’re here and not gone.
Once they’d been gone long enough, she could chance coming back for Kali.
Becky turned and put both her hands on Terry’s shoulders so she could look her in the face. “Terry, you’re my sister. What am I going to do? Turn you out on the street? I’m not going to lecture you. Andrew was a good man. I didn’t expect you to wait until marriage, and…” She hesitated.
“And?”
Becky swiped a sweaty hair back from Terry’s forehead. Terry returned the favor.
“We need iced tea,” Becky said.
“That’s not what you were going to say. Spit it out.”
“And it’s probably good you didn’t. Wait. You were in love. I know you’ll treasure this child. You’ll be a good mom. I’ll help you. You don’t have to do it all on your own.”
