a feeling I shouldn’t leave it in Pyoder’s hands! I realize the fellow’s phenomenally able, but still, he isn’t me, after all.”
Then he continued toward the rear of the church.
Bunny was typing a text now. Tap-tap-tap, as rapid as the telegraph keys in old movies, using both her thumbs and hardly needing to look at the screen.
Eventually, Uncle Theron reappeared. “So…” he called from the doorway. He walked toward the pew where Bunny and Kate were sitting, and Dr. Battista reversed course to join them.
“So, does Pyoder have to come from very far away?” Uncle Theron asked.
“Just my lab,” Dr. Battista told him.
“Is he subject to a foreign standard of time?”
He was looking at Kate as he asked this. She said, “A foreign…? Well, maybe. I’m not sure.”
Then she realized from his expression that she ought to be sure, if they had been dating for long. She would have to remember that for their interview with Immigration. “Oh, he’s hopeless!” she would say merrily. “I tell him we’re due at our friends’ house at six and he doesn’t even start dressing till seven.”
If they ever actually got so far as an interview.
“Perhaps a phone call to find out if he needs directions,” Uncle Theron said.
It was silly of her, she knew, but Kate didn’t want to make a phone call. She was reminded of those obsessive discussions that girls had in seventh grade—how they wouldn’t like to be seen “chasing a boy.” Even if this was the boy (so to speak) who was marrying her, it felt wrong. Let him show up as late as he liked! See if she cared.
Lamely, she said, “He’s probably on the road. I wouldn’t want to distract him.”
“Just send him a text,” Bunny told her.
“Well, um…”
Bunny clucked and returned her phone to her purse and then held a hand toward Kate, palm up. Kate stared at it a moment before she understood. Then, as slowly as possible, she dug her own phone from her tote and passed it over.
Tap-tap-tap, Bunny went, without even seeming to think about it. Kate sent a sidelong glance toward what she was writing. “Where r u,” she read, beneath the last message Pyotr had sent Kate, which dated from a couple of days ago and said simply, “Okay bye.”
This seemed significant now.
No answer. None of those little dots, even, that meant he was working on an answer. They all looked helplessly at Uncle Theron. “Perhaps a phone call?” he suggested again.
Kate steeled herself and took her phone back from Bunny. At the same instant, it made a soft swooping sound, which startled her so that she fumbled and dropped it, but only in her lap, luckily. Bunny gave another cluck and picked it up. “ ‘A terrible event,’ ” she read out.
Their father said, “What!” He leaned past Uncle Theron and grabbed the phone out of Bunny’s hand and stared at it. Then he started typing. Just with one index finger, it was true, but still, Kate was impressed. They all watched him. Finally he said, “Now what do I do?”
“What do you mean, what do you do?” Bunny asked him.
“How do I send it?”
Bunny tsked and took the phone from him and punched the screen. Peering over her shoulder, Kate read their father’s message: “What what what.”
There was a wait. Dr. Battista was breathing oddly.
Then another swooping sound. “ ‘Mice are gone,’ ” Bunny read out.
Dr. Battista made a strangled, gasping noise. He buckled in the middle and crumpled onto the pew in front of them.
To Kate, the word “mice” made no sense, for a moment. Mice? What did mice have to do with anything? She was waiting for news of her wedding. Uncle Theron seemed equally uncomprehending. He said, “Mice!” with a look of distaste.
“The mice in Father’s lab,” Bunny explained to him.
“His lab’s got mice?”
“It has mice.”
“Yes…” Uncle Theron said, clearly not seeing the distinction.
“Guinea-pig mice,” Bunny elaborated.
Now he looked thoroughly confused.
“I can’t take it in,” Dr. Battista was saying faintly. “I can’t seem to absorb this.”
Another swooping sound came from the phone. Bunny held it up and read out, “ ‘The animal-rights activists stole them the project is in ruins all is lost there is no hope.’ ”
Dr. Battista groaned.
“Ah, yes, that kind of mice,” Uncle Theron said, his forehead clearing.
“Does he mean the PETA people?” Bunny asked everyone. “Is there some rule that grown-ups aren’t allowed to abbreviate, or what? ‘PETA,’ you idiot! Just say ‘PETA,’ for God’s sake! ‘Animal-rights activists,’ ha! The guy is so…plodding! And notice how all