by Rula Sinara
“Dr. Miller, with all due respect, I’m not trying to be unappreciative. I love my work, which is why I’ve been killing myself to produce data that will not only have my name on it, but this institution’s. Your name. Your support has always been appreciated, more than you know, but don’t you imply it was given for free. I earned it. I’m still earning it, but this has become bigger than one study or our reputations. This is about saving a sentient, extraordinary and loving species from inhumane killings and suffering. Those orphaned elephants need us there. It doesn’t matter if there are others supporting the cause. It’s not enough. If you cared enough to fund research on them, then care enough to continue your support. Please.”
Dr. Miller picked up a pen from his desk and studied the engraving on it before pointing it at her.
“You will have earned it when the paper is complete, as is required by your permit to conduct research in Kenya. I won’t have my reputation as your sponsor marred. Anna, you’ve done a fantastic job, but this needs wrapping up. Our efforts to secure funding and grant money need to be concentrated elsewhere.”
Elsewhere meant his joint study with Jack. She wasn’t getting anywhere with him. Dr. Miller swiveled his ergonomic chair left and right and propped an ankle on his knee.
“Things happen for a reason. I needed to revamp our expenses. My meeting with Jack helped to solidify the board’s decision, and it’s too late to change it.”
Jack hadn’t said a word about meeting with Dr. Miller. Of course, she’d known his initial purpose in Busara, but surely after his visit and all that had happened since, he hadn’t gone behind her back to undermine her work.
“However, if you want a lab position, I can get you one. In this department or any of your choosing,” Miller said, splaying his hands as if all he had to do was wave a wand.
Anna stood. “A lab position? I’m a wild-animal veterinarian. All these years...your advice and mentorship...I thought you respected that.” She bent and grabbed her purse. “I’m not working in a lab. In fact, I’ll finish things up with the paper. After all, I have my own reputation to uphold. But after that, I’m done, Bob. Consider this my notice. I’ll find a way to keep Busara going on my own.”
Anna left the room and walked briskly toward the elevator. How it was possible to feel empowered, free, depressed and let down all at once, she hadn’t a clue. Nothing made sense. No amount of planning would fix the mess her life was in. Everything had changed, and change was scary. She had no idea what she was going to do to save her sanctuary, but what hurt more was that Jack had sided against her.
His car was parked at the curb in front of their department building. Anna stormed past it and toward the campus exit. She caught him craning his neck and heard him start the engine, but she kept going. She needed to cool off. Pippa didn’t need to witness her parents arguing, and Anna didn’t trust herself not to blow it.
The situation was sinking deeper by the minute. Of all the things Jack could do... She’d trusted him. Let her guard down. Used the tickets to come see him. The email she’d gotten from Kamau said that everything and everyone was fine and that he hadn’t heard anything from Miller. Miller hadn’t emailed because he’d planned to meet her face-to-face. And Jack had handed him a way. I’m so stupid.
Her eyes stung. Each stride hit the ground like a rhino on the attack, only here there was no soil to absorb the shock. No dust to kick up. Just unrelenting, manmade sidewalk. Men.
Jack’s car slowed next to her and she heard the whirring sound of the passenger window rolling down. Pippa called to her from the backseat and Anna’s steps faltered. She didn’t want to ignore her, but sometimes a parent needed a time-out. She longed for her observation platform under her acacia tree.
Anna set her jaw and pushed back the wisp of hair that had escaped her ponytail. She couldn’t let Pippa see her so out of control. She glanced sideways, just to be sure her baby seemed all right. Jack looked as white as a lab coat. He grabbed a manila envelope off the front passenger seat and stashed it between his seat and his door.
“Get in the car, Anna,” he said, leaning to the side. She heard the click of the door unlocking.
Forget it. She ignored him and kept walking.
“You can’t walk all the way back home,” he insisted. He didn’t even ask what was wrong. He knew.
“Ha! First of all, your apartment is not my home. And secondly, I can walk a lot farther than you can imagine,” she said. If it sounded like a threat, good. He was playing dumb. He knew exactly why she was so angry.
“Anna, please get in. You’ll upset Pippa and she’s sick.”
“Don’t you dare pull a guilt trip on me. You...you traitor.”
A car switched lanes and passed Jack, honking once. Good thing it wasn’t a high-traffic road.
“Drive normally. You’re endangering our child,” Anna said.
“Then tell me what I’ve done. And I am driving carefully. You’re the danger.”
“You stole my funding. He’s not sponsoring an extension on my research permit, and you gave him what he needed to do that. Kenya won’t let me stay without one. I only have enough funds and permission to stay for two more months, and then it’s over. I can’t stay unless I can find a job there that needs an expat to fill it. Do you know how long that could take? What happens to Busara in the interim? What happens to our orphans? Seems I’ve overstayed my welcome everywhere.”
“There are other jobs around here, Anna.”
“That’s what Miller said. Were you banking on that? Did you two have an agreement? Decide that would appease me? Force me back here with Pippa and solve all your problems?”
“I didn’t tell him to do that,” Jack said. “Get in so we can talk.”
“No.”
“Fine.” Jack stepped on the gas and drove ahead.
Anna stared, wide-mouthed. He had not just done that. And now Pippa had heard a fight and witnessed her father abandoning her mother.
It was a good twenty minutes before Anna reached the apartment. She knocked, but no one answered. Great. She plopped down on the step to wait. She smiled, muttered a quick hello and agreed to something about enjoying the fresh air when one of his neighbors needed to pass. She scooted over, then resumed her wait. Sitting here was nothing like sitting on her platform at Busara. There she found peace and could think with clarity. Here her senses were overloaded with fumes, traffic noise, other people...and her emotions. Forget her emotions. She was a mess.
Jack pulled into his parking space fifteen minutes later. He grabbed a manila envelope, slammed his car door and climbed the steps two at a time. Alone.
“Where’s Pippa?” Anna looked back at the car.
Without a word, he unlocked his apartment and went in, leaving the front door ajar for her.
He was mad at her? He had no right to be mad. That was the problem with men. They could flip any situation upside down and make it seem like they were the ones having to tolerate things. If men had to process every practical and emotional detail women micromanaged, they’d go extinct. Anna counted to ten before she got up and followed him in.
He was pulling coffee and a box of filters out of a cabinet. He didn’t look up as he filled the coffeepot with tap water.
“Where’s Pippa?” she asked again.
“What, you don’t trust me? Don’t worry. I dropped her off at my mom’s house. She has plenty of experience with sick kids. She had soup on the stove before I made it out the front door. I figured Pippa could do without hearing her parents argue or make a scene.”
Another point against Anna. She’d made a public scene and set a bad example for her daughter. She waited for him to finish with the tap, then washed her hands before grabbing a bottle of springwater from the fridge and taking a long drink.
“I told my mom that Pippa and I would go see her for dinne
r. I need to give her a bath and change her clothes,” Anna said.
“We can go get her before then,” he said without looking up.
Fine. Anna folded her arms at her waist and tapped her foot.
“May I borrow your laptop?” she asked. He motioned to where it was on the kitchen table. She took that as a yes and went to boot it up. She needed to send Kamau a warning email. It would still be a few days before she got back to help figure things out. He needed the heads-up. He’d asked for it, warned her, and she’d assured him this would not happen. That she had things under control.
Anna squeezed her temples, then propped her elbow on the table and covered her eyes with one hand, blocking everything out but the electronic chatter of the computer waking up. She jerked up at the thud of ceramic on wood.
Jack had set a mug of coffee next to her and was headed to his armchair. A peace offering? Or an indication of how long the peace talks would take? Well, she wasn’t at peace and didn’t see any in their future. Let him simmer a little. Maybe the caffeine would jog his brain and conscience. If only he could grasp what he’d done and what the consequences would be.
She opened the laptop and used a guest log-in to email Kamau, taking her time to hit Send. She needed to make sure Kam understood what was happening. The walk had certainly cooled her temper, but she was still trying to come to terms with Jack’s role in everything. Closing the computer was like closing a chapter in her life. This could not be the beginning of the end of Busara. She cradled the warm mug in her hands and joined him in the living room.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she said. Jack didn’t look at her.
“I didn’t tell him to shut you down,” he finally said, after she sat on the end of the sofa closest to his chair. The lines on his forehead had deepened in the last few days. He looked troubled. She had to give him that. Who was she kidding? Jack wasn’t a bad person at all, just...misguided, and totally clueless at times. He could handle the most complex scientific questions and calculations, but hand him a basic, simple concept—raw life—and it was like he couldn’t whittle his brain down enough to handle it. But that wasn’t her problem. Jack was a big boy. He didn’t need saving. Busara did.
“If you didn’t advise him to shut me down, then who gave him the idea to save on expenses by making arrangements with larger rescue facilities to take my animals?”
Jack wiped his face with both hands.
“I thought so,” Anna said.
“He demanded ideas. You’d done everything right with the bookkeeping, but he wanted a way to cut back. He wasn’t giving me an option. Don’t you see? He’d planned on this all along. He was being manipulative. I warned you.”
Anna set down her mug. “If you thought that, then why would you help him do it? Why give him the idea? Why give him freaking options? He ran with it. I mean, why should he bother paying for anything if he figured I’d been there long enough and there were others who could take care of the elephants? It’s nothing but paperwork to him. He’s never been there. You have.”
“Anna, it was the lesser evil. You send those calves to transition at a bigger reserve when they reach a certain age, anyway. I tried talking to him, but he pretty much had his mind made up, if you ask me. The man has weight to throw around. This project I’ve committed to with him is huge. It’s a career catapult. It means I won’t ever fall short on providing for Pippa. And you have to understand, when I left him my findings, I had just gotten back from Nairobi. None of...this...had happened,” Jack said.
“This? This what? Friendship? Is this what you do to a friend? No amount of trying to justify what you did will change things. Logic won’t work here, Jack. Busara isn’t about numbers and test tubes and assays and analyzing. For once—just once—could you think without your head?” Anna folded her own head down onto her knees. She felt sick with frustration, but after what she’d done, keeping his child from him, she had no right to pull that one on him. Betrayal of trust and friendship. Which one of them was guiltier?
“Forget I said that. Forget everything,” she said, her head still down.
“I’ll figure out a way to fix this,” Jack said. “What about asking your dad for help? The man could fund ten Busaras if he wanted to. If anything, he could donate money to whatever reserve your elephants get moved to. They’ll be covered and you could have a choice of where to be. I mean, it doesn’t really matter where you are, as long as you’re saving animals, right? Isn’t that all that matters?”
“No,” she said softly. “It’s not that simple, and I won’t ask my dad for help. He didn’t even want me going to vet school. Medical school was more prestigious. Gave a better return on the money. He’s all about investments, not charities and research, or saving animals’ lives.”
Her dad invest in saving elephants? He hadn’t even cared enough to save her mom from suffering. And it would be just like him to demand a say in how Busara was run if he put money into it. She wasn’t about to give him that power. Not after she’d spent her life building endurance, proving she could take care of herself and her mother and every living thing that crossed her path since her brother died.
She raised her head and rubbed her palms along her thighs. “I’ll figure something out. I still have a few months.”
Jack reached out and took her hands in his. Anna started to pull away, but his hands felt warm, secure, all-encompassing. If only he could see her as more than a friend. More than an option. If only he could have loved her the way Ben loved Zoe. But he didn’t. Not then, not now. As with her father and Miller, it was every man for himself.
“Anna, there’s always a way. I know I can help, but I need to know if you believe that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” Jack said. Anna looked at their joined hands and didn’t answer. Saying yes would be a lie. A second passed, then he let go and she slipped her hands between her knees, but it didn’t help. She felt cold, inside and out. More isolated than at Busara.
Jack rose.
“I, um, I’m going to take a quick shower and change before we go get Pippa. That way you can use the bathroom for her,” Jack said. Anna frowned. “To give her a bath. You said you needed to do that before going to your mom’s.”
“Oh, right. But there are two bathrooms.”
Jack’s nose turned red and his forehead scrunched. He pointed awkwardly toward the hall leading to the bath and bedrooms.
“I’m just gonna save time,” he said. Anna nodded and waited until he’d disappeared down the hall, then collapsed back against the sofa. She waited until she heard the water turn on, then pressed her hands against her cheeks and willed herself not to break down. This wasn’t happening. Maybe there was a way. Or not. She couldn’t think straight.
She got up, grabbed the mug off the table and downed the cooled coffee like water, then went to wash out the mug. A plan. That’s all she needed to start with. They had a few months worth of funds at most. They’d contact everyone they knew, for starters. No doubt Kam was already on that. Miller would want his equipment back, or its value. She needed to make a note of that before she forgot. One more thing to consider, but she didn’t care how many she got bombarded with. She wasn’t going to let everyone at Busara down.
Jack’s cell phone started ringing and dancing against the kitchen counter near the fridge. She ignored it. Then it hit her. What if his mom was calling? What if Pippa wasn’t doing well? Anna lunged for the phone and looked at the caller. Lake Real Estate? Jack was barely moved in here. The phone went silent and she set it back down, relieved it wasn’t about Pippa, but kind of curious. Kind of. Jack’s life and where he lived was his business, just as hers was hers.
Five seconds hadn’t passed before the house line started ringing. Anna could hear the shower still running. She went to the living room, thought twice and picked up the phone.
“Hello?...No. Can I take a message?...One s
ec.” Anna propped the phone against her shoulder. She grabbed the notepad and pen—both imprinted with a lab supply company logo she recognized—that sat perfectly aligned with the phone base. “Okay.” She put the pen tip to the pad and listened. Her feet went ice-cold and she set the pen down. “Of course. I’ll tell him to call you back right away.”
Jack. What have you done?
Anna put a hand to her stomach. She was going to puke. Pretty close to where Pippa had graced the carpet, too. Why that struck her she didn’t know. Because it had been the first day she’d woken up here? Because in some ridiculous, subconscious, repressed way, at the time she’d let herself believe in possibilities? What have you done?
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, Jack stood there, hair still wet and disheveled and his shirt unbuttoned and hanging loose over his jeans. The corners of his eyes sank with the tension of his clamped jaw. The only movement was the repeating glide of his neck muscles as he swallowed, and the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
Anna licked her lips and squeezed them together. She hugged herself and shrugged her right shoulder.
“Your Realtor just called. He said it was important and he was afraid you wouldn’t check your cell phone messages.” She smirked and cocked her head. “You must’ve been working with him for a while if he knows you that well. He tried to be cryptic, but I don’t know, Jack, how many ‘sellers’ would ask to up a closing date because their parents out West took a turn for the worse? Tell me it’s just a coincidence.”
Jack scrubbed his jaw and looked toward the patio door.
“Jack!” Anna paced like a caged lioness. “The animal park? What in the world were you thinking?”
“I was thinking it’s the perfect chance—the best way—for both of us to be with Pippa. You could do amazing things to that place. Run an endangered breeding program or something.”
“Or something? Are you insane? What in the freaking universe makes you think I’d want to leave Busara?”
