by M. J. Lowell
I was on my second cinnamon roll when Nico cleared his throat. He was nervous, I realized. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
He slid a large buff-colored envelope across the table. The corner bore the blue-ringed seal of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “I found this a couple of days ago. I guess I could have just sent it to you, but I wanted to give it to you in person. And in private.”
I knew what it was. What it had to be. And a quick glance at the letter inside only confirmed it. My dad's application for a patent for CF-64 had been denied.
“It was shoved between two books on the shelf over by his desk, like he’d been hiding it,” Nico said.
I stared down at the words on the paper. We regret to inform you that your patent request has been denied. And the date, October 23rd. So my father must have received it well before Halloween, October 31st. The day he died.
“Nico, why did CF-64 mean so much to my dad?” I asked.
He stood and went to refill our coffee cups. “I’m not sure, but.…” His voice trailed off.
“But what?” I pressed.
He set the fresh coffee down on the table and ran a hand through his thick chestnut hair. “I thought maybe it had something to do with your mom.”
And suddenly a puzzle piece fell into place. CF-64. CF for Claire Flannigan. And 64 for my mother’s birthday, June 4th.
My mother had been a painter, incredibly gifted. But when I was eight she was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease. It progressed quickly, and by the time I was ten she was nearly blind. One day as I left for school she’d pressed my lunch into my hand and gave me an extra-long hug good-bye. We’d stood bathed in the pool of morning sun streaming through the open front door. “I can feel it, but I can’t tell the light from the shadows anymore,” she said. She killed herself that afternoon.
I thought back to my last conversation with my father, when he’d said CF-64 would change lives, save lives. “Does it help people see?” I asked Nico. “Is that what it does?”
He nodded. “That’s what your dad hoped. He thought he could use the polymer to create a kind of contact lens that would be like Google Glass – but on steroids. You could blink and an image would appear before you, or a video, but with no distance between you and the screen. The ultimate virtual reality. And because you could tailor the level of enhancement, it would be a huge advance for people with degenerative conditions like your mother. The medical potential was huge.”
“But it didn’t work?”
Nico sighed. “He did the initial tests without me – I was busy on a project of my own. I didn’t realize he’d even applied for the patent until I found the rejection letter. I guess the letter was why he was rerunning all the tests before he died.”
I flashed back to my last conversation with my dad. “Except the new tests weren’t adding up.”
“No,” Nico agreed. He hesitated, and his brow furrowed. “Your father was convinced it was the tests, not the results that were wrong. He couldn’t seem to accept that the formula must have been flawed. Lulu, I’d never seen him like this before. He ran test after test after test. But I think he finally realized it wouldn’t work. And when he did….I think that’s when he lost hope.”
I thought about what Nico had said. Now I could understand why my dad been so wild to make CF-64 succeed, why he’d been unable to move on when it didn’t. And maybe Nico was right. Its failure could explain why, when he couldn’t fix it, he’d decided to follow my mother instead.
Could explain it. But somehow I still didn’t believe that’s what happened.
“My father never lost hope before,” I said to Nico. “When one of his inventions didn’t work, he’d always just pick himself up and start over. Giving up— it wasn’t what he did.”
“Well he did this time. He gave up on all of this. Gave up on me,” he said with sudden anger. “If he’d been less selfish—”
I stared at him.
He took a deep breath, tried to collect himself. “It’s only— here you are, barely making ends meet. And half of your father’s inventions could have been sold for a lot of money if he’d bothered. But he always just gave all his research away.”
“He didn’t give it away. He made it available for others to build on. He believed that was how great scientific problems got solved – through sharing knowledge. And that’s why he wouldn’t have killed himself over CF-64. He would have reached out to other scientists, to see if someone else could help him make it work.”
“Right,” he said, but he wasn’t convinced. He looked away and then back at me and took another deep breath. “Have you ever considered that the reason you don’t want to believe your father killed himself is because you feel responsible? Like if you’d been here, done more, it wouldn’t have happened?”
The words were like a slap to the face. “You have no right to say that.” I abruptly pushed my chair away from the table, the legs scraping against the floor as I stood to leave.
Nico moved to intercept me. “I’m sorry, Lulu. That wasn’t fair. I just— at the end, your father was jumpy, paranoid. He kept misplacing things. One morning I came in and he screamed at me, accused me of having left the lab unlocked. Something I haven’t done a single time in the years I’ve worked with him, something I would never do. This project made your father crazy.” He paused. “I worried about him, and now I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to get around him.
“No, you’re not. You’re shaking.”
“It’s cold.”
“It’s not,” he said pulling me into an embrace. “It’s okay. I understand.”
But even in the warm circle of his arms, I couldn’t stop shaking, and I couldn’t feel safe. What he’d said had hit me hard, at my very core.
Because it felt true.
Maybe I was doing all of this to distract myself from the fact that if I’d been around a little more, if I’d come home that weekend—
No. That wasn’t it. My father would not have given up. Not like that.
I pulled away from Nico. “I need to go.”
He looked stricken. His arms dangled awkwardly at his sides. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
His puppy-dog eyes locked on mine. “Have you ever thought of moving away from here?”
I was relieved by the change of subject. “What? Why? Where would I go?”
“I’ve been offered a position in San Francisco. A great opportunity. I was thinking you— you should come, too. A change might be exactly what you need. Berkeley has a great music school.”
“Berkeley?” I laughed. “I can’t go to Berkeley. My whole life is here! The apartment I grew up in, Val….”
“Yeah.” He paused. “She doesn’t like me much, does she?”
“Val’s just protective.”
“I’m glad there’s someone else looking out for you. Besides me.”
Suddenly he seemed closer than before, and there was something about how he looked at me. I felt the familiar panic swell in my throat as he bent toward me. No, I thought, wanting to back away.
But he only pecked my cheek. “Take care of yourself.”
I was stopped at a traffic light a few blocks from the lab when it hit me: why would my father even have submitted for a patent if the test results on CF-64 weren’t completely solid? He was always so meticulous, so thorough. He prided himself on that. It didn’t make sense that he’d do anything sloppy, or jump the gun.
And no wonder he’d seemed so distracted, so troubled the week before he died. How could the new round of tests yield such different results? But maybe he’d been testing a variation on his original formula, in response to something the patent office had told him. Maybe there was more to it than was captured in the brief text of the letter.
I needed to call Val, but she beat me to it. Before I could dial her number, my phone started playing The Weather Girls singing
“It’s Raining Men,” which she’d set as her ringtone one night when we’d had far too much sangria at a tapas bar.
“How was Nico?” she asked. “I assume nothing untoward occurred?”
“Only that we spent half the time talking about you,” I said, trying to tease out an admission of how Val really felt about him.
“Lying is a sin, Lucy Aileen Flannigan,” she said, but I thought I detected a note of surprised pleasure in her tone. “What was so hush-hush that he had to get you alone to tell you?”
“It was about a patent my father applied for.”
“That sounds anti-climactic.”
“It was, especially since the patent was rejected,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” she said, her voice filled with sympathy.
“Val, your firm does intellectual property law, doesn’t it?” I asked.
“IP is Olivia’s specialty. IP and the fifth floor of Bergdorf Goodman. And the shoe department at Saks. And pretty much all of Barneys. Why?”
“Is there a way to find out why a patent was not granted? To get the details, beyond just that it was accepted or rejected?”
Val didn’t even pause to think it over. “I’ll look into it.”
“Are you sure? I know you have a lot to do and—”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, cutting me off. “I’m on it. Text me the application number.”
“You’re the best.”
“So true,” she agreed. “And you’re going to think I’m even better when I tell you why I called in the first place. Guess what was outside my office building when I arrived just now?”
“The life-sized Barbie Dream House you’ve always wanted?”
“A silver Bentley. Sound familiar?”
Rhys’s car. My throat went dry and my hands felt suddenly shaky. All of the warring emotions I’d been trying so hard to suppress since the previous afternoon flared back to life. Had he come looking for me? Did he want to see me again, after all?
Distantly, I heard a car behind me honk. The light had turned green. I pulled the Vespa over to the curb so I could concentrate.
“What was he doing there?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level, even as I told myself not to be an idiot. Countless businesses besides Val’s law firm had offices in that building. Rhys probably had an appointment with one of them. Unless—
“If by he you mean Rhys Carlyle, then he wasn’t doing anything because he wasn’t there,” said Val. “But when I walked in a guy in a chauffeur’s uniform was dropping off an envelope at the front desk for one Tuesday Granite.”
“Davies,” I breathed.
“Is that his name? He looked more like a Rocky or Sluggo to me. Anyway, I told security Tuesday Granite was my after-hours name and they gave the envelope to me.”
Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have passed up the opportunity to tease Val about telling people she had an “after-hours” name, but now I was way too curious about the envelope. “What’s inside?”
“I was hoping you’d ask. It’s a note. The card stock is lovely. And his penmanship is excellent. Boldly masculine, with a soupcon of—”
“Tell me what it says!” I ordered.
“‘Today. Same time, same place. R.,’” she read.
Today. Same time, same place. R, I repeated to myself, newly giddy.
“I thought you said you blew it,” Val commented dryly.
I’d called her on my way to Le Bungalow last night – she’d sent nearly a dozen texts demanding a debrief – but I hadn’t told her everything about what happened at the Plaza. I’d only said I hadn’t been able to find out anything about the phone calls my father made, and that Rhys Carlyle had been so uninterested in me he hadn’t bothered to say good-bye. And Val, sensing how upset I was, had known better than to press.
“I guess I was wrong,” I said slowly.
She shifted into her I-will-brook-no-nonsense-from-you mode. “Please tell me I don’t need to convince you to go this time.”
“No, I’m going,” I assured her. I wouldn’t be playing his game, but I’d still go.
“Good,” she said. “When can you come by the office to pick out a dress? I’ve already got two in mind.”
“Thanks,” I told her. “But I think maybe I’ll go in another direction today.” I needed to figure out whether what I’d felt yesterday was part of the role I’d been playing or whether it was real, and the only way to do that was to go as myself. At least, myself under a different name. I wasn’t quite ready to relinquish all protection, and I still needed to find out what, if anything Rhys Carlyle knew about my dad – I’d hang on to Tuesday Granite for now.
“Another direction?” said Val. “That sounds ominous.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
“To dress yourself? No.”
“I’m sorry, you’re breaking up. And the light changed. And a big truck is honking at me. And the zombies are coming after my phone—”
“Fine, forget the dress. Just promise me one thing, okay?” There was a sudden and rare note of anxiety in her voice.
“What?” I asked.
“That man. Buster or Butch or whatever his name is.”
“You mean Davies?”
“There was something about him that made me…nervous. You’ll be careful, won’t you?”
“Yes, Mom,” I said.
“Good. Because I wouldn’t want to have to train a new BFF.”
I laughed and hung up. I felt light and exhilarated and— happy. Happy in a way I couldn’t remember feeling in a long time.
Because you now have another chance to get information from Rhys Carlyle, I reminded myself. But I knew there was more to it than that. A lot more.
I pulled back into traffic, the hum of the Vespa’s engine almost – but not quite – drowning out the echo of Val’s words. Be careful.
Chapter Ten
I surveyed my reflection in the mirror, wondering if I’d made a mistake refusing Val’s offer of a dress. Nearly everything I owned was black, and none of it sported any of the elegant designer labels a sophisticated woman of the world would wear.
Instead I’d pulled on my standard cold-weather uniform of black jeans and a black knit top, brushed on some mascara and a touch of lip gloss, and slid my feet into my ankle boots. I was wearing nearly twice as much clothing as the day before but I felt even more exposed. This was me. Just me.
But Rhys Carlyle doesn’t know that, I reminded myself. You can still be Tuesday Granite.
My gaze moved from the mirror to the corkboard hanging on the wall. Before leaving for Le Bungalow last night, I’d added the discarded rose petal I’d pocketed at the Plaza, tucking it next to the phone bill and the articles Val had printed for me about Rhys Carlyle. Now I pulled the letter from the patent office from my messenger bag. I didn’t need to read it again – I already knew its few short lines by heart – but I took a pushpin and found an empty space for it alongside everything else.
I took a step back and studied the board for what must have been the millionth time, to see if the letter added anything new. I just couldn’t shake the suspicion that CF-64 had something to do with my father’s death. But if there were any answers hidden in this ragtag collection of items, a pattern that would lead me to the truth, I couldn’t see it.
I glanced at the clock. Quarter past three. Time to go. I grabbed my keys and headed for the door.
Traffic was heavy over the bridge into Manhattan and then up to midtown, and the first spot I found to leave the Vespa was a few blocks from the Plaza. It was several minutes after four as I hurried up to the entrance, and the harried feeling only added to the nervous anticipation already pulsing through me.
Two expensively dressed middle-aged women were blocking the sidewalk out front, oblivious to the doorman’s attempt to usher them into a waiting Town Car. Instead they were gazing intently across the street. I turned to look for myself, curious as to what had captured their attention so completely.
; Rhys Carlyle was leaning against his black Tesla, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of the dark cashmere coat he wore over jeans and a plain black pullover. The sun glinted off his golden hair and the chiseled planes of his face.
Maybe it was the distance, or the slanted afternoon light playing tricks with my vision, but in the moment our eyes met I thought I caught a glimpse of that sweet vulnerable boy I’d seen the day before. One hand came up to rub his chin, but then he drew it back. The self-contained mask fell over his features again, and he waved me over in the same offhand way he had the previous afternoon.
Concentrate, Lucy, I told myself firmly, crossing the street to join him. Keep it together. But the sight of him sent the blood rushing more quickly in my veins, and my cheeks flushed with heat despite the cold.
“No tea today?” I said as I reached the Tesla, hoping I sounded more breezy and confident than I felt. I caught the spicy scent of his cologne, and it sent a tremor through me. Stop it, I ordered myself, but it was futile. Especially when the brilliant blue of his eyes met mine.
“I had a better idea,” he said with the barest hint of a smile. He opened the passenger door for me. “There’s an errand I need to do, and I could use your help.” I moved past him, careful not to touch him, and lowered myself onto the smooth leather seat. He gazed down at me before closing the door. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
I was disappointed, I realized, even though I knew I shouldn’t be. After all, I’d told him I didn’t play games – the only interaction I could expect now would be something less…intimate. Impersonal. He had no further physical interest in me.
Which is better, I told myself. Since you have an agenda of your own. Much better. Not that I could begin to imagine what kind of errand would require both his personal supervision and my help.
He walked around the front of the car and slid behind the wheel, starting the engine with the press of a button and pulling away from the curb.
He handled the Tesla with the same smooth confidence I’d noticed when I tailed him, but it was an entirely different experience sitting here beside him. There was a console separating us, but I could sense the heat radiating from his body, and as I watched his palms on the steering wheel I found myself imagining them on my skin, sliding over my body the way they slid over the—
