Double Helix (25 page)

Kayla and I read the notes together, in silence, a couple of days after our time in the subbasement. Even though Dr. Wyatt's hard drives had been taken away by the federal authorities, we had one of the backup CDs, and so we were able to find the answer to the question that Kayla had flung at Dr. Wyatt in the elevator:

This is what the notes said:

This is of course little more than a stab in the dark. I wish I had enough eggs to make only one change at a time; three alterations done together is terrible science. But I don't have material to spare, and I must take the risk. I will remember that every time I lose an egg, I also learn
.

Maybe someday, I think, I will show the notes to Dr. Fukuyama. Maybe she will be the one to help us find the words to describe how it felt to read them.

Right now, I don't have those words, and neither does Kayla.

But we do have the data. We have each other. We have two healthy little sisters, in Chicago and in Edgecomb, Maine. And, in Clearwater, Florida, and in Los Angeles, we have one little brother, and one infant sister, who have all sorts of problems.

It's a funny thing. Kayla doesn't discuss her situation with me. But she'll talk about the kids. I think the kids—getting to know them, understanding that they will need her—are what keeps her from despair right now. In time, I must believe, there will be other reasons. Maybe medical reasons. Or maybe just life reasons.

“And it's not like there isn't medical hope,” Viv says. “It's not like scientific advancements are
all
suspect or evil. Far from it.”

She's right, of course. There is ongoing work in gene therapy. There might be a way, one day, to instruct the extra C-A-G repeats on chromosome four to lie quiet. I pray there will be. It is one of the areas I am determined to study myself. That, at least, is in my control. So much is not.

But—we do have Dr. Wyatt's data. I stole one of the backup CDs before the police arrived in the subbasement, and simply walked out, cradling a thoroughly freaked-out Foo-foo, with the CD hidden securely beneath her bottom.

We have the data, then, and I will learn how to read it and I will learn what it means. Chromosome by chromosome, gene by gene, I will learn who and what we are. But no matter what I learn, no matter what the gene map says, I don't believe it predetermines who we—who anyone—can be. I don't believe it.

I have only to look at my father, after all. We don't know the exact nature of our genetic relationship, my father and I—or even if there is one. We don't know the extent of Wyatt's tinkering with me. But that most profoundly does not matter. Jonathan Samuels is my father. I am his son.

We chose.

I fight my way through the snow and the wind and then I am home.

Certainly, I write alone, but on the other hand, I have good company the whole way, and this is where I get to tell those companions how grateful I am for their presence in my life and in my work.

For their careful reading and critique of the entire first draft, my warmest thanks go to Melissa Wyatt, A. M. Jenkins, Anita Riggio, Pat Lowery Collins, and Ellen Wittlinger.

Toni Buzzeo, Jennifer Jacobson, and Franny Billingsley taught me to have faith in reading aloud again. I am in particular grateful to them for encouraging me to read the last chapter of
Double Helix.
“This is a structural mess, and I don't have a clue how to make it work,” I said, when I finished reading, and Toni replied, “Don't worry, I do.” Toni's, Jennifer's, and Franny's discussion of and then emailed notes on that last chapter were invaluable to me.

I am grateful to Don and Charlene Schuman of Cod Cove Farm Bed & Breakfast in Edgecomb, Maine, where I officially both began and finished this book. Don and Charley create an atmosphere that I can only describe as magical. I am grateful also to my fellow writing retreaters at Cod Cove Farm (the aforementioned Toni, Jennifer, and Franny, along with Deborah Wiles, Jacqueline Briggs-Martin, Jane Kurtz, Joanne Stan-bridge, and Dian Curtis Regan). I'm not sure I would have had the courage to begin this book at all—I'd been stalling for months—if I hadn't been able to do it in their company.

I feel great relief as well as gratitude in thanking Dr. Curtis Deutsch, of the Shriver Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, for reading my final draft with an eye toward scientific accuracy. I was pretty much on tenterhooks until I heard from him.

With each book, it gets harder and harder to find adequate words for my gratitude to my longtime editor, Lauri Hornik at Dial Books for Young Readers. She remains my most important creative and business partner, from initial idea through final draft.

Finally, I would never even have attempted this book were it not for Conrad O'Donnell, who discussed the current state of genetic research and its implications with me, who chose and hauled in dozens of books for me to read, and who never tired of talking about the story as it unfolded. I share Conrad's unshakeable belief in the equality of all human life.

Thank you all.