Angel Falling Softly - By Eugene Woodbury Page 0,89
a shortsighted, impulsive child. Like Zoë. She’d acted the same way she had acted four hundred years ago. She hadn’t learned a thing in all the time since.
No. Her instincts hadn’t been proven wrong. She didn’t actually know what had happened to the child. She didn’t actually know what Kammy had figured out. Perhaps Kammy was simply curious. Perhaps the hospital had released Jennifer so she could die at home.
Wishing another child dead.
And if she was alive? Milada wracked her brains. For as often as Kammy had accused her of living in the past, she’d forgotten too much. What happens next? Jennifer would lose her incisors. She’d shed her palate. Her fangs and new incisors would erupt. Her hair and skin would change. How long did each step take? In what order?
Kammy would know.
Milada pressed her hands against her face. This was the same mistake she’d made as a child. She’d let her fears take hold and her imagination run loose.
Facts, facts, facts. Profit and loss. Earning per share. Return on investment. She didn’t wonder and worry while calculating worst-case scenarios. She acted on objective knowledge.
She reached for the phone on the seatback in front of her, rehearsing the script she would follow: Don’t react. Feign ignorance. It was only a test.
The phone rang three times. Then her sister’s voice.
“Who is she, Milada?”
So loudly that Milada cast a nervous glance at the forty-something businessman in the aisle seat. She switched the phone to her other ear and scrunched over next to the window.
“Kammy—”
“Who is she?”
“How did—”
Entirely the wrong question. She had indicted herself.
“Whenever I get my hands on a database like this, I always check the CCR5 data for additional markers.”
“Checking on me?” Guilty as charged, but still she felt offended.
“No, you idiot. Checking to see if there are any more of us out there. That time you weren’t asking hypotheticals. It was a real case! Dammit, Milly!”
“It was only a test.” Like that excuse was going to work now.
“Give me a break. It’s not your genome. What’s going on?”
Milada felt her own temper rising. “It’s not important, Kammy. I can handle it.”
“It’s not important? The invoice says the report was sent directly to Loveridge! So not important you had a courier deliver it? Yeah, don’t worry, I deleted the record. Damned lucky it wasn’t archived.”
Milada closed her eyes. What a mistake. “Kammy, leave it alone.” The tension gathered in her voice. “Leave it alone.”
“You’re always pulling crap like this, Milly. Same as in London.”
The line went dead. An arrow went through her heart. Milada had to exercise every ounce of self-control to keep from slamming the phone against the seatback in front of her. When she’d calmed down sufficiently, she snapped it back into its cradle.
The businessman glanced at her. “Family, huh?”
Inexplicably, Milada felt a small smile come to her face. “Yes. Worse, it’s my fault.” She somehow felt better confessing the truth.
The man shook his head in a gesture of empathy. “Don’t I know it. Been there, done that.”
She tried calling again. Kammy had turned off her phone, which meant she wasn’t talking to her or she was at the hospital. Or both. Milada cracked open the window shade and glanced down at the flat expanse of the northern Great Plains crawling by seven miles below.
For the next two hours, the entirety of the world was out of her control. That awful feeling swept through her again. Helplessness. She was helpless to do anything for those who depended on her without making their lives so much worse in the process.
Chapter 48
Fools and children tell the truth
Monday night Rachel sat at the computer composing the family newsletter. Laura and Jennifer were camped out in front of the television with their father exploring the ins and outs of the latest Nintendo game machine. David had easily been persuaded to make the purchase as a coming-home present for Jenny.
Rachel was brimming with good news to share with their friends and relatives. But she had long since stopped typing and instead sat and watched her husband and children. It was better than any movie. Laura and Jenny finally figured out the controllers and shouted and danced around playing a game of electronic tennis.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Rachel said. Nobody else noticed.
Sunlight streamed through the glass panels on either side of the front door, painting bright rectangles on the hardwood floor.
“Yes?” Rachel said as she opened the door.
The sun was almost even with the horizon, clipping the roofs and slanting through the