Brendan Cody? The familiar music was clear and heartachingly sweet, and as if drawn by the music, fireflies sparked in the soft darkness beyond the porch.
Laurel steeled herself. I will not cry, she vowed, and immediately felt tears hot behind her eyes. She moved quickly back into the house so he would not see, swiping at her cheeks before she stepped into the light of the kitchen, where she swallowed hard and busied herself lifting take-out boxes out of the bags.
“No plates, either?” Brendan said behind her, and she jumped.
“I have plates,” she said, defensively, and found all four of them, the sole occupants of one cabinet. Brendan leaned in the doorway, swigging from his beer and watching her as she scooped rice and beans and heavenly smelling enchiladas onto plates. She could feel his eyes on her.
“All right, enough of this mysterious act. What are you doing here, Mickey? What made you bury yourself in Durham, North Carolina?”
She put down the fork and turned, bewildered. “Why do you keep calling me Mickey?”
He looked at her with surprise. “MacDonald? Mickey D?”
She stared at him. “You’re …”
“A nut, I know, thanks, you’re not the first to say so. You didn’t answer my question.”
“What are you doing here?” she countered.
“Ah, well. There was a little problem with a loan shark.”
She was wondering how to take that when he laughed. “Same as you, Mickey. The wait times for tenure track professorships in California are longer than the lines at Disneyland. You gotta follow the money. It hasn’t been a total loss, though,” he added, and eyed her in a way that made her warm and angry at the same time.
He held her gaze until she was breathless, then said “Dinner,” authoritatively. He tucked the six-pack under one arm, picked up the plates, and carried them out into the hallway, toward the front door. She had no choice but to take the rest of the food and follow.
The enchiladas were more than decent, more like divine, and the Coronas and the balmy darkness and the gentle motion of the rockers lulled Laurel into a dangerously comfortable haze.
They ate in almost silence at first, then Brendan leaned back in his chair to study her.
“So, Mickey D. Why are you resisting this so hard?”
“Resisting what?” she said, flustered. “What is this?”
“Only possibly the greatest adventure of your life.”
“Oh, only that,” she said, secretly charmed. And that’s the problem, she reminded herself.
He shook his head at her. “Please, it’s so totally obvious you’re just as into all this as I am. So what’s the holdup?”
She hesitated, not sure how to voice her thoughts about how badly the experiment might have turned out. She’d had no time to process her own thoughts yet.
Brendan pressed on. “First of all, what spooked you the last time we talked?”
Laurel felt her cheeks burn in the dark, remembering with humiliation how she’d run out on their last meeting after she’d realized Tyler had conned her with his phony stories of the haunted auditorium. But she wasn’t going to mention to Brendan that she’d been bamboozled by a student.
“I think a little too much of all this is just wanting to believe,” she said. “Researchers and subjects … they get excited and lose all objectivity. They miss the real life explanations that are right in front of their eyes.” The dream hovered … but she pushed it away hard.
“Absolutely agreed,” Brendan said instantly. “Absolutely no doubt. But doesn’t that make just as—well, almost as good a study? How desire and expectation influence perception?”
“It could,” she conceded. She’d had the thought herself. But that was before …
“And you’ve gotta admit that it’s all a hell of a lot more interesting than vocational testing.” And before she could protest, he barreled over her. “And don’t start in on your human potential speech.” He leaped up out of the chair, startling her. “This is exactly what we’re talking about: human potential! The farthest reaches of human potential.” He was suddenly on his knees in front of her, gripping the armrests of her rocker. “Psi doesn’t happen all the time. It might not ever be scientifically quantifiable. But it happens.”
She could feel the excitement vibrating off him, like magnetism, like heat. He slowly released the rocker and stood, then sat back against the porch railing in front of her.
“So what’s the problem, Mickey? What’s bothering you so much that you’d turn away from an opportunity like this?”
And so she said it. “I told you. I think something