math: both Margaret and Morgan would have been at Duke in the early sixties, so surely they had anecdotal knowledge of the parapsychology lab. It had been too famous by the 1960s—the entire world had known about Rhine; as Duke students, they must have been acutely aware of the lab. She tried to keep her tone light, to diffuse the strange tension.
“I’m not sure exactly. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was here, at Duke. I’ve heard so much about it… .” She laughed slightly. “Well, it’s almost mythic, isn’t it?”
“Mythic,” Margaret repeated, tonelessly.
Laurel pressed on. “I was wondering why it was closed. So abruptly. I haven’t been able to find much about that.”
Margaret set down her glass with a thud.
“It was closed because people came to their senses. Balderdash. All of those years—all of those resources squandered on something purely unprovable. People wanting to believe and making up facts to support it. Gullible people buying into a fraud. I’m surprised you’d waste your time on something so silly.”
Her aunt was near trembling with anger. Laurel was stunned into silence. Morgan had not once raised his gaze from his plate during the entire exchange.
“I was only … curious,” Laurel stammered.
“Curiosity killed the cat.” Margaret stood, and lifted her plate. Suddenly the storm had passed and her face assembled itself into something more dignified. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get dessert.”
As Margaret left the room, Laurel could have cut the silence with the silver butter knife she still held limply in her hand.
Morgan had raised his head and was looking at her from across the table. “I did it,” he said quietly, conspiratorially.
Laurel looked at him, startled that he’d even spoken. She had no idea what he was confessing to.
He nodded solemnly. “I did the tests. Dr. Rhine tested me. I did it.”
Margaret’s steps clicked in the hall, approaching, and Morgan went back to mopping up gravy on his plate as if nothing had happened at all, leaving Laurel stunned speechless.
After dinner Morgan promptly disappeared for the rest of the evening, which didn’t last much longer beyond dessert. Laurel helped Margaret clear the dishes and load the dishwasher; they talked of her house purchase and of reliable plumbers and yard services, and steered far clear of the Rhine Laboratory. Morgan had retreated to the dark-paneled study; when Laurel stopped in to say good-bye he rose vaguely from a large leather armchair, book in hand, and bowed graciously. His blue eyes were so hazy Laurel had no idea if he was even aware of who she was.
At home in bed, with the still-unnamed cat purring like a diesel combine on the pillow beside her, Laurel tossed restlessly and pondered the chances that she would be related to an original Rhine test subject.
Not so entirely surprising, is it? Rhine and his researchers had conducted their experiments for thirty-eight years and had used hundreds, maybe thousands of student volunteers. Morgan had been attending the university at the time. Why wouldn’t he have participated?
She rolled over, resettled her pillow, stared up into the dark.
But why is Aunt Margaret so angry about it? Not even just angry …
Laurel lay still for a minute, trying to identify what she had felt from her aunt’s reaction.
Frightened.
What Aunt Margaret was, was frightened.
CHAPTER TEN
She is at a table, a round breakfast table, in a sunny room, arched glass windows on three sides. She is tall but small, not just small, in a high chair, a child, a toddler giggling through wisps of red-gold hair. The sun is dazzling through the windows, warm on her cheeks.
At the side of the table, a beaming man with a round, ruddy face laughs with her, blue eyes sparkling …
… as the forks and spoons dance by themselves on the table in front of them …
Laurel’s eyes flew open. Her cheeks were warm … as warm as if she’d been sitting in sunlight.
But the electronic shrilling she was hearing did not belong in that sunny breakfast room. She moved under the blankets, shaking off sleep, and realized her cell phone was jangling on the stand beside the bed.
To her vast and groggy surprise the caller was her mother. Adrenaline shot through Laurel and she bolted up in bed. “Mom? Is everything okay?” Meredith never called two days in a row, and it was shockingly early in West Coast time.
“Of course,” Meredith’s voice was gravelly, irritable. “I was just calling to see how it went.”
Laurel wrested her co-opted pillow away from the cat and