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“Hello?” someone answers in a polite tone.
Silence.
“Hello? This is Brookdale Assisted Living. Can I help you?”
I immediately cover my mouth with my hand as I slide the phone away from my ear and hang up.
I can’t do this. I can’t invade her life like this. No private investigator. No leaving messages for her at her dying grandmother’s nursing home. Fuck. Oh fuck.
What do I do?
What can I do?
“Ben? You okay?” Anthony asks sometime later when he finds me sitting on the edge of the bed, right where he left me hours ago.
No.
I’m not.
Part Two
Chapter Twenty-Four
Raelynn
There are four of us crammed inside the tiny office on the third floor of the research lab. They’ve given us this one corner of the building to designate as ours, and we’ve really done our best to make it feel like home. Julia strung heart-shaped twinkle lights from the ceiling for Valentine’s Day and never took them down. The massive cutout of Jamie from Outlander (kilt and all) we gifted Kayla for her birthday last month lives here too, taped to the wall beside a headshot of Kayla puckering her lips at him.
I can’t turn my chair completely around without bumping into Ryan, and he has to ask me to scoot back and stand up if he wants to leave. I don’t think the space actually qualifies as an office, more of a broom closet, but as lowly graduate students, we’re lucky to have it. The others might begrudge this stuffy office inside the Cahill Center at Caltech, but I don’t. I could be back at Dale’s, delivering pancakes at this very moment.
This is where I dreamed of returning to when I was stuck in that trailer back in Texas.
That dream sustained me during the long hours waiting tables and cleaning houses.
And that dream was realized much sooner than I thought it’d be. Sooner than I wanted it to be.
I wasn’t prepared for how quickly Nan passed. How suddenly she was struck with a bad case of pneumonia. I was by her bedside for a week straight, missing my shifts at Dale’s, asking for time off from the cleaning company. When they fired me, I couldn’t blame them. I was too caught up with Nan to worry about getting a paycheck. I was so laser-focused on her treatments, worried when they said the medicine wasn’t helping like it should, worried that my time with her was getting cut short. Sure, I wanted to chase my dreams, but not at the expense of Nan. I would have stayed with her forever. I would have lived in that trailer and worked at Dale’s for years if only it meant I could keep her alive.
She passed a mere three weeks after Ben left. He was still in Tokyo for the Games, winning a gold medal, carrying the American flag for his country, highlighted on every magazine cover at the supermarket. Meanwhile, I was standing at a gravesite, burying the only person who ever truly loved me. The only family member I’ve ever known.
My stomach hurts just thinking about that time in my life—that depression I might not have escaped from if not for Professor Olmsted. She’s the one who came to Texas and convinced me to leave after Nan had passed. She was the one who helped me pack what meager belongings I had into boxes and helped me move back across the country. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t bothered to care about me, if she hadn’t continued to call even though I never answered. She never gave up on me, and with her help, I finished my undergraduate degree and applied for this master’s program.
Somehow, things have worked out, but even now, today, I would trade it all to have Nan.
I push all those memories aside and swivel in my chair to face the others.
We’re quite a crew of misfits, stuck in this astronomy and astrophysics building under the tutelage of Professor Olmsted. We each have a different role in her research lab, but right now, mine consists of getting everyone to focus on lunch.
“Have you guys made a decision yet? I’m starving!”
“I would kill for some pad thai from that place down the street,” Ryan says with an audible groan.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately, it’s like $20 a plate,” Julia says, thumping Ryan on the head with her pencil.
“Can’t we all split it?” Kayla suggests.
“Four ways?” Ryan scoffs. “We’d end up with like two bites each.”
Kayla lets her head drop to her desk. “Oh my god, it sucks being a poor grad student. Remind me to come back pretty instead of smart in my next life.”
I laugh. “Right, okay, pad thai is out.”
“Surely we can find free food somewhere,” Ryan suggests. “This is a college campus! There’s always some weird organization trying to draw unsuspecting undergrads into their clutches with the promise of pizza and soda.”
