Page 115 of Touch of Class

“And yet you two keep finding each other again. I’m a hopeless romantic, and I believe that it means something. It hasn’t been an easy road for the two of you, but neither was my relationship with Brooke, and look at where we ended up.” Tegan beamed in a way that made Daphne suspect she’d just pictured her girlfriend.

“It’s not just up to me. What if an easier road is exactly what Gillian is looking for?”

“Then you’ll have to show her why she’s looking for the wrong thing. If anyone can win an argument with her, it’s you. And this is one worth winning, because sometimes the easy road isn’t the best road or the right road or the road leading to happiness, and I can say with certainty Gillian has been happier in the last few weeks than I’ve ever seen her.”

“She’d hate you having this conversation with me,” Daphne mused.

Tegan’s eyes went wide. “Don’t you dare tell her I did. I already told you, she intimidates me, but she doesn’t bowl you over, and I hope you’ll lean into that a little harder.”

Daphne sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

“Please do, because while you’re right, Gillian is a good and trustworthy person with a lot to offer, and so are you.” Tegan pushed herself up to standing and smiled down at her kindly. “And while you may’ve made her life more complex and chaotic, it doesn’t mean you haven’t also made it immeasurably better.”

Gillian strode confidently through the halls of the university. This place had been her whole world for a time that didn’t seem so long ago on some levels and yet a lifetime ago on others. She was supposed to have returned by now, and she supposed she was returning today, though not triumphantly, or even purposefully. She wasn’t even sure what she hoped to accomplish, but Daphne had thrown her for a loop … again.

She hadn’t expected anything that happened this morning, but a part of her had stopped trying to anticipate anything where Daphne was concerned. Getting to that point had taken considerable work on her part, but she’d finally found a way to accept what was happening between them and let it unfold naturally. Only the moment she did, Daphne did exactly the opposite and asked her to think about the future in rather sharp detail.

Normally, she would love such a request. Today, it left her reeling. There were too many unknowns and too many discordant aspects to consider at once, work, friends, romance, a family. There had been a time when it all seemed so much clearer, the time when she walked these halls with it all figured out. Maybe that’s why she’d come back, to remember that version of herself.

Then again, maybe she’d come for a contrast or to reset the hard boundaries she’d surrendered slowly until she couldn’t even tell which way was up, or where she wanted to go. And if she were looking for someone to juxtapose to Daphne’s easygoing and flowing slippery slope, there was no better foil than Dr. Maura Stroud.

“Gillian.” Maura looked up from her station at a computer desk at the front of a large lab. “You don’t have an appointment.”

She smiled at the greeting, completely devoid of warmth or social grace. If detached neutrality was the goal, she’d clearly achieved it.

“No, I’m not sure I’m here for the type of thing an appointment could provide.”

Maura regarded her over the rim of her reading glasses for a moment before lifting them up and resting them atop her auburn hair. “I see. Allow me to save my current dataset, and we’ll go to my office.”

Gillian nodded and took a slow lap around the room, unable to make sense of most of the equipment. Her natural curiosity rose. “This looks rather technical. Are you still working primarily in epigenetics?”

“As an overarching field of study, yes.” She clicked a few more keys, then rose. “Though in the last few months I’ve narrowed my interest to pertain more specifically to neuroplasticity.”

Gillian cocked her head to the side, not immediately following the connection, and Maura must’ve read it on her face.

“I spent most of my career studying the factors that forge who we are and why we behave the way we do. It’s only lately that I’ve begun to study the ways those factors or traits might be undone, and, honestly, whether or not they truly can be.”

“Ah.” Gillian got it now. “If we can understand the ways we’re made, can we figure out how to unmake them?”

“Precisely.” Maura nodded for Gillian to follow. “For a long time, we believed that once a neuropath was set and well-established, it would be hard to reroute, and the longer a pattern persisted, the more rigid it would become.”

“Right.” Gillian understood all this. “Which is why an ingrained childhood trauma would be harder to overcome in adulthood, than say, the effects of a car crash that happened last week.”

“And to go a step further, we believed the older a brain gets, the less flexible it becomes, like our limbs or our bones. A baby who breaks a leg can heal in a short time, whereas a seventy-year-old who suffers the same break might never fully recover.”

“Seems logical.” Gillian followed her into a smaller, darker office, walls covered from floor to ceiling in books, journals, and various credentials. It was the kind of space that inspired confidence, and as she sank into the leather office chair across the desk from Maura, she felt a few of her own neuropathways reactivate. How much of her life had she decided sitting right here?

She believed this door had always been open to her. Had she made a conscious choice to stop walking through it, or had she stopped being invited? There was one way to find out. “Why have you stopped asking me to take over for you?”

Maura’s brow furrowed, and her eyes narrowed. Then she steepled her index fingers in front of her lips and waited.

Gillian cringed internally. She knew the move. She’d perfected it herself by watching Maura, but that did little to make her immune. “I’m not saying I want to.”

“No, I got the sense you didn’t.”

“Because I sided with Sawyer when they returned?”

Maura sat back slowly. “In a roundabout way, yes, though I think the connection is more correlation than causality.”