Break From Reality. Daily.
Pema stared hard at the results as if the numbers might change, might realize the error of their ways and correct themselves.
They didn’t.
She ran the analysis again, watched as nutrient levels, base saturations, and mineral ratios spread across her handheld’s screen, held her breath again. Shook her head again. Phosphorus, off target. Not by much, but by now Pema knew that’s all it took.
The pathogen had spread.
6:45 am. That’s when I get everybody up. Well, my sons at least. My nine-year-old daughter and I have an understanding. I don’t pester her, and she comes down when she wants. We leave at 8:10 am. She usually shows up around 8:03.
But it all starts at 6:45 am. My seven-year-old son is quick to rise. All I have to do is say, Good morning! Time to get up! and flip the light on. He jumps up like he was never asleep. He dresses quickly. The first one downstairs gets to pick the TV show. He really wants to pick the TV show. My almost-four-year-old son is slow to rise. He rolls around on his Hot Wheels sheets, moaning. But I’m sleepy, he says, over and over. Then the questions start. Why is it morning? Because the sun’s up. Where’s Daddy? In the shower. Then, then one I dread. “Is it a Mommy day?”
The benches were full today, the paths crowded. Kelsea flowed through, her rhythm unbroken, her eyes soaking up the reds and oranges and coppers and yellows. Her shoes crunched in the gravel, adding a new dimension to the rhythm of her strides, the count of her breaths. In, out.
Until her breath caught.
That guy was up ahead, again. Lurking, again, a haze of cigarette smoke clinging to the hood of his oversized sweatshirt.
Pema tiptoed through the amber morning light as fast as she dared, her feet silent on the titanium ground panels. She clutched her shoes to her chest to contain her clanging heart and kept her head down, as if this would make the passageway stay empty. Her mother’s voice filled her head.
We’re starting on Field 4-1 today.
Something about a generator down. Routine Maintenance. Pema didn’t hear the rest. Didn’t ask questions. She couldn’t. Panic had gripped her throat too tight.
“It’s just an hour drive inland,” he’d said to her yesterday at the resort’s buffet dinner, holding out the brochure from the front desk. “It’ll be fun.”
Trekking through the jungle sounded anything but fun, but she knew if she went along, it would be it easier to beg off tomorrow, or the next day, when he would undoubtedly have found some other tour to drag her along on. We did your thing, honey. Then she could zone out to the swoosh of the Caribbean Sea rolling turquoise over the white sand.
Any minute now, she knew, he’d grab his camera from his backpack, aim its bulky lens at the pile of rocks, seeing something she couldn’t.
She crossed her arms and tried again to picture what the crumbling limestone might have looked like fourteen hundred years ago.
All she saw was rubble.
Susan squinted down her nose at her phone. Smartphone, Michael had called it, when he’d sent it to her for Christmas. Too smart for me, Susan thought as she retyped her password again. The screen finally unlocked. No return call from Michael yet.
She dropped the thing back into her purse and stepped into her neon blue tennis shoes. A Christmas present to herself. Dan’s eyebrows had risen at the color, the first time she’d worn them, and he’d wondered aloud if maybe they were a bit young for her. But Susan had shrugged him off. The shoes, so bright they looked like they just might take a walk on their own, made her smile. She’d known the moment she’d seen them that they’d put a fresh spring in her step.
She tightened the hot pink laces and straightened up. “I’m heading out for my walk,” she called out.
Kasey plunged first into the turquoise water. White bubbles danced across her mask, her cheeks. Her clingy wetsuit relaxed its grip, and her air-filled BCD diving vest, weighed down by the heavy oxygen tank just seconds ago, floated around her shoulders. She took a deep breath through her regulator and pressed the button to release the air from her BCD.
She descended.
The harsh chop of waves at the surface calmed to gentle underwater currents, the bright sun mellowed into dozens of shades of blue. For a few precious moments, Kasey knew true weightlessness, all her worldly cares suspended at the surface as she drifted down into a world of shifting color and light. Her arms floated away from her sides, the bulky underwater camera weightless in her hand.
Twenty feet down.
Ellie bounced forward in her seat as her mom put the minivan in park.
“We’re here!” her mom chirped. “Thank god the lot is plowed.”
Ellie squinted out at the mountains of fresh snow blanketing the rolling landscape, a flutter in her chest. It was perfect.
“Look at those snowbanks!” shouted Aiden as he and Will leapt out of their booster seats, pushing and shoving, trying to be the first to hit the little black button to open the minivan’s sliding door.
“Seriously,” Ellie mumbled, rolling her eyes at her little half-brothers as she unhooked her seat belt.
Kate raised the hammer, hands shaking, eyes blurring.
She heard David shouting at her to stop. He sounded so far away.
With a ragged shout of fury, she brought the hammer down.
Crack.
Tears spilled down her cheeks as she dragged the hammer back up above her head.
And brought it down again.
Bits of glass flew everywhere.
David again. So far away. “Kate! What are you doing?”
Josie paused a few steps before the intersection and scanned the surrounding buildings, looking for a royal blue-tiled plaque with white lettering to tell her what street she was on. She found one.
Rue de la Chaise.
Josie’s brow furrowed. Was that the street she was looking for?
Sighing, she slid out of the stream of pedestrians and fished her map out of her bag. She unfolded it, accordion-like, and the streets of Paris appeared. Or rather, a jumble of little gray lines appeared, only the biggest of which were labeled. The Major Museums map she’d ripped out of the back of her France travel guidebook was far from exhaustive.
She put her finger on the black square that was her destination today. Musée D’Orsay. And the street that ran alongside it, the street she was looking for … Rue de Bellechase.
Josie’s stomach looped. Where was Rue de la Chaise then?
Nowhere.
Madeleine always found Cassiopeia first.
Her eyes knew where to go. To the right, over her shoulder. And there, dangling just above the eastern horizon, was the familiar zigzag of five bright stars. The queen on her throne.
From there, her eyes tracked northwest to Cepheus, the upside-down pentagon. Another step northwest to Draco. She followed the dragon’s curving tail of stars to its head—a squashed square—then hopped east to Lyra. She picked out Vega, shining boldly in the southwest corner of Lyra’s glittering rhombus. She drew a line from Vega to Deneb to Altair. The three stars of the Summer Triangle.
That brought her high overhead, to what she’d driven so far to see. The Milky Way, in all its summer glory. Bright, hazy, complex. The clearest view she’d had in years. She wrapped her arms around herself and opened her eyes as wide as she could, trying to take it all in at once.
You’re wrong, Drew.
Tara wiped beads of sweat off her forehead with one hand as she tugged Tommy with the other. “Come on, buddy.”
“Pool,” whined the toddler, pointing at the only open patch of clear blue in the packed kiddie pool.
“Mommy needs to find a chair first.”
Tara squinted at the curving line of sun-bright white plastic pool chairs snaking around the kiddie pool, desperately missing her sunglasses. But there was no way she was dragging three kids back to the minivan to get them.
Two young girls in neon bikinis shoved past Tara, unbalancing her bulging red mesh bag stuffed with towels, sunscreen, swim diapers, dry clothes, snacks, and treats. It crashed forward, and she only just stopped it from slamming into Tommy.
“Two manicotti, one minestrone. Ready to go to table seven.”
Gia dusted each plate with a pinch of chopped parsley as she loaded them onto a tray. “Where’s Pete? His table’s food is up. Someone find Pete.” She pulled the next ticket as the printer spat out two more in rapid succession. “I need two spaghetti and meatballs, two Italian salads, and a garlic bread. Come on, guys, pick up the pace.”
Pete walked through the swinging doors from the dining room. He had a half-eaten plate of lasagna in his hands. “The woman at table five said this is cold in the middle.”
Gia’s shoulders inched higher. “Okay. Take table seven’s food out and tell the woman at five that we’ll get her a new one and take it off her bill.” She turned back to the line, the tightly packed boiler, flattop, oven and fryer where her kitchen staff was scrambling to keep up with the orders. “Jim, fire another lasagna. Get it hot this time.”
“I think we should go back, Amanda. This doesn’t look safe.”
“Just a little further. I can almost see Manarola.”
Amanda eased around a bend in the trail. So far, so good. Then her left foot slipped, sending a cascade of mud and rock down the steep-angled cliff below. She threw her weight back into her right foot.
“Liz, back up!”
That’s when the trail gave out.
Heart in her throat, Amanda grabbed at what remained of the wooden railing. But it was now unmoored, and it tumbled down along with her toward the Ligurian Sea.
“You have a strong Heart Line, running from the Mount of Jupiter to the Mount of Mercury,” said Maria, her finger lightly tracing deep line stretching across the drunk girl’s palm. The drunk girl giggled. Maria continued. “That’s a sign of a warm heart and deep affection.”
“Ohh, you and Reece are going to get married,” giggled the drunk girl’s equally drunk friend.
Maria swallowed her next observation. The drunk girl’s Heart Line wrapped up and around the Mount of Jupiter. A sign of jealousy. She would love deeply, and hate just as deeply. Watch out, Reece.
“Jen! Hi! I thought that was you. Oh, it’s good to see you!”
“Carrie! Wow! I can’t believe it! How long has it been?”
“Oh, like two years at least. Not since I left the agency.”
“Has it really been two years since you left? I can’t believe it. How’s your new gig?”
“I love it, Jen. I love my accounts, the people I work with are great. It’s awesome. How’s things with you?”
“Great. I shifted roles a bit after you left. Now I’m working more on the creative side.”
“That’s awesome, Jen. You always wanted to do that. We totally need to grab coffee or lunch or something. We need to catch up.”
“Yes, as soon as possible. I’d love that.”
“Awesome. I gotta run, but I’ll text you and we’ll find a time.”
“Sounds great. Bye, Carrie!”
“See you soon, Jen!”
“I’m not doing it.”
“But you like Aunt Kat.”
Julia rolled her eyes.
“You’ll do as I ask,” snapped Julia’s mother. “Or no car this weekend.”
“That’s not fair,” shouted Julia. “She’s your sister. You take her.”
“I’m in meetings all day.” Julia’s mother shrugged into her black blazer and grabbed her computer bag. “Kat can’t drive herself. She’ll be too sick after.”
