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“What is it like?” he says. “Being in another place? Earlier this evening, we talked about what it is like to be in another body, but I presume this is much the same. Uncomfortable and foreign.”
“Foreign, yes. Uncomfortable…? There’s a saying, and I don’t knowif you have it, but in my time, we’d say that I’m a fish out of water. Out of my natural environment. That’s not exactly true. A fish can’t breathe out of water. I can breathe here just fine. I can survive just fine.”
“Survive,” he says. “Life at the most basic level. As one might survive very difficult circumstances.”
I shake my head. “It’s not like that. It can be a difficult situation, because I’m lost, in so many ways, my brain overloading trying to figure it out. Like being in another country where I don’t know the customs and I know just enough language to get by.”
“Also difficult because it’s not your home. You cannot take an ocean liner back to your family and friends.”
Here is the elephant in the room. The part about me being here that makes others uncomfortable—the knowledge that I’d rather be somewhere else.
Does he want me to say that isn’t so bad? Does he want me to lie?
Time to get this conversation over with.
I turn to face him. He’s still looking out.
“Dr. Gray?”
It takes him a moment to pull back from the view and meet my gaze, and even then, his eyes are hooded and unreadable.
“I know this is difficult,” I say.
He opens his mouth, as if to protest.
I hurry on. “I’m asking you to train me as your assistant. I’m asking to be considered part of your investigations with Detective McCreadie. Yet if I saw the way home, I’d take it, and leave you in the lurch. Like an employee who pretends they’re in for the long haul just to get training they can use somewhere else. Which is why I need to be honest and admit that, if I get the chance to leave, I’m taking it.”
He starts to turn away, but I zip into his path, making him bump into me and back up fast.
“I won’t leave without saying goodbye,” I say. “I won’t leave without finishing whatever I have to finish. I know it’s still shitty, and you’re not only concerned that you’ll be left in the lurch but that others will be hurt. I’m spending a lot of time with Isla, and then I’m going to disappear from her life, and that feels shitty, too, and I start to think maybe I should keep my distance from everyone.”
“No,” he says. “Isla would not want that. She understands the situation.”
I turn back to look out at Calton Hill, rising to my right. “I know it’s inconvenient for you. It would be easier if I were happy to leave that life behind. If I didn’t have the sort of family or friends or career or home that I wanted to return to.”
“I would hardly call having a good life there ‘inconvenient,’ Mallory.”
There’s a warmth in his voice, and when I look over, a faint smile plays on his lips.
“You know what I mean,” I say.
“I would not ever want for you to have had a worse life,” he says softly.
Heat rises in my cheeks. I don’t know why, only that I pull my gaze away and busy myself gazing on the night city.
After a moment, I say, “My life wasn’t perfect. I worked too hard. I let everything else slide. Hobbies. Friends. Even my family. I tucked it all aside, temporarily, until I hit my goal. But the goalpost kept moving. Finish my degree. Get a job. Rise to detective. Earn a spot on major crimes. And each new goal was harder to reach, needing more of my time and concentration, everything else falling by the wayside. I’d tell myself I’d start dating again next year. I’ll go camping with my friends next year. I won’t skip every other Sunday dinner with my parents next year. I’ll visit Nan longer next year.”
My voice cracks on the last, and I lean farther over the railing as if that will hide it.
Gray says nothing, and my cheeks heat more as I realize I’ve overshared.
I straighten and clear my throat. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, and I didn’t mean to vent.”
“While I am not certain what ‘vent’ means, I believe I can decipher it in context. I’m quiet because I’m listening, Mallory. I’m listening because I want to understand, and perhaps, because I am uncomfortably seeing myself in what you’re saying.”
“I think you’ve struck the balance better.”
A one-shouldered shrug. “Perhaps somewhat better, but there is so much to do, so much to learn, so much to accomplish, and the clock seems to be ever ticking, reminding me that time is running out. Only it is also running out on everything else.”
