Will doesn’t care about her dad. And whatever he’s doing here, it isn’t a coincidence.
She could text James. He’d come barreling out of the store, possibly in the act of tearing off his shirt to reveal a tight spandex superhero outfit underneath. Except that Will is definitely the kind of asshole who’d grab a woman’s phone while she was calling for backup.
“What do you want, Will?”
In the next row of vehicles, the wiry rancher stops loading sheets of plywood into his F-150.
Will tempers his smile. “I don’t blame you for holding back, Ripley. We both made mistakes. It’s really too bad we fell out of touch.” His impeccably sincere gaslighting reminds her of the bad old days.
“We didn’tfall out of touch,Will. You broke up with me, then tried to take credit formypaper.”
“Hmm, agree to disagree,” he says, grabbing a sack of plaster so she has to either take it from him or let him load it into the car. “You know what your problem was back then? You had no idea what it’s like to be unlucky. My projects weregood.Better than yours, most of them, but science is a game of chance. You won; I lost. Meanwhile, my grant money was running out. Ballard kept hinting that I should consider other careers.”
She keeps loading bags. “Maybe you should’ve taken the hint,” she says humorlessly.
“Fuck you, Ripley,” he says, but without much venom. “You weren’t the only one who loved dinosaurs. Ideserveda chance to be a paleontologist. You knew I had a pile of student loans and my parents wouldn’t pay for anything but a business degree. IfBallard had given me the boot, I would’ve had nothing to fall back on. Ineededthat paper. And when I asked you to put my name on it, you said no, so what was I supposed to do?”
Ripley presses the heel of one hand to her forehead. “Will.Ihad nothing to fall back on. And the paper wasn’t yours to take.”
“It was my idea, though. You said so in your acknowledgments.”
Done with the other bags, Ripley grabs the one in Will’s hands. He doesn’t let it go.
“I was trying to find myhat,Will. If you recall, you were being a dick about it because we had an intramural softball game with phys ed, and you wanted to get there early so those smug jackasses couldn’t hog the diamond during warmup. You said, and I quote, ‘If you can’t find your fucking hat, it’s because you’re looking in the wrong place. Pick another hat and let’s go.’ That’s when I—I—had the idea, it’s true. But there is no universe in which you mansplaining headgear is the same as you having an original idea about the migratory and evolutionary history of bird ancestors in Pangaea, Will! It wasn’t your idea!”
His expression slides into something cold and greasy. “It wasenoughof my idea. You wouldn’t have had it without me. You could have taken second author, and everything would have been fine.”
“Oh my God,” she breathes, yanking the sack out of his hands and slamming it into the trunk. In the next row of cars, the rancher looks up from scrolling on his phone—or pretending to scroll?—and sends her a questioning look.
She feels a burst of gratitude for this town. It has its flaws, but it’s full of good people. She nods:I’ve got this for now.
She glares at Will. “Why don’t you tell me what you want so we can wrap up this conversation.”
“I guess I want answers, Ripley,” he says, impatience leakinginto his tone. “Maury said you’d found something—ah, you didn’t think I knew about your little discovery,” Will says, pursing his mouth with the pleasure of serving her an unpleasant surprise. “I mean, it’s one wing. I didn’t think much of it until I heard you were asking questions about me. You and—this is where it gets really weird—James Smithson,” he says, lingering over the name.
“Unfortunately, nobody who mattered had heard from you for years. And Maury didn’t know where you were—Montana, the Dakotas, they’re all flyover states to him. So I went looking for Smithson instead.”
It bothers her to hear Will use that name. She turns and shoves her cart too forcefully into the return slot, drowning him out with the clang of metal on metal.
Will gives a single hard laugh. “Oh, so it’s likethat.Same old Ripley, falling into bed with every guy she works with.”
The pleasure in his voice grates up her spine. She hates herself for not being able to keep a secret even when her mouth is closed. “Don’t be disgusting. And don’t think I don’t know it was you who started those rumors about me sleeping with you so I could steal your work.”
He shrugs. “It’s not my fault that people found those rumors very believable, Ripley. In any case, Smithson was almost unfindable. Oxford said he was at Berkeley. Berkeley said he was working remotely. But luckily, when the author of the most important paper at the APS meeting had some crucial documents for the director of the theropod stream, the admin was more than happy to give me his PO box number in a little town called Hercules.”
Will gestures grandly at the mountains. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to find someone in such a small town. I was about to give up when I spotted your dad’s car. I thought,What are the chances?And here you are.”
He winks broadly. “I’m up for a promotion this year. Lot of pressure to publish something big. Ballard’s never gotten over that paper you killed, you know. He wants a piece of scholarship based on that idea but unique enough that we don’t have to credit your work. That is not very fucking easy, Ripley.”
Will takes a step forward, trapping her between his body and the car. “But I’ve been lucky for a change. And I don’t intend to let anyone mess with that.”
Ripley puts her hand on the side of the Charger. It’s warm from the sun, solid like her dad’s love. NobodyletsSteve Adams’s daughter do anything.
She raises her voice: “Leave, Will. Right now.”
Will’s eyes narrow. “I forgot how you like making a scene. That won’t work this—”
“I believe,” says a voice dark with unspeakable intention, “the lady asked you to leave.”
