The Better to Hold You (10 page)

I was so mad I could have slapped her. “You never stop, do you? Everything has to have a starring role for Piper LeFever.”

“Abra—” She reached out again, and I jumped back.

“Don’t touch me. I am so damned tired of your theatrics I can’t stand it. I’d rather go back to Hunter’s brand of abuse than have your poisonous comfort for one more minute. I hope you do a better job of mothering Grania, because you sure are not going to get another chance to get at me.”

It took me two hours to get home. When I walked in, Hunter was lying on the couch and smoking a cigarette, a dark cloud of smoke over his head. “How’s your mother?” He was still wearing his jeans and his cheeks were dark with stubble. There was a cup of cold coffee half spilled over some papers and on the wood floor.

“Fine.” I busied myself pulling off my coat so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I never know how to behave after a big fight. Should I be haughty? Conciliatory? I feared that in my indecision, I usually wound up coming across as vaguely schoolmarmish.

“Did you ask her advice?” Hunter pulled himself up to gaze at me, his chin resting on the wood back of the couch.

“No.” I fought the urge to look at him, fussing instead with the straps on the old backpack I’d been using since my handbag was stolen.

“Did she give it anyway?”

“Of course.”

Hunter continued regarding me. “You do realize that I didn’t know you’d taken the day off till someone named Offal called you from work.”

“Ofer. Oh, God, you didn’t tell him I was out, did you?”

“I said you were asleep and not to be disturbed.”

“Thanks.” My hand was on the doorknob to the bedroom. I was ready to just have a bath and get into bed, even though it was barely six o’clock.

“Anytime.” I went into the bedroom and put my backpack on the dresser along with the paper bag containing my mother’s gift. There was a woman’s handbag resting on the lace doily where I keep my perfume bottles. Expensive, supple leather, a shape so seductively elegant you knew it had to belong to someone who wore stockings instead of panty hose. I opened the bag up and saw a leather wallet, also expensive. I felt the beginnings of an anger white with fear.

“Hunter.” I came out holding the handbag as if it were a bomb. “I just found this in our bedroom.”

“Did you?” He was back on the couch, reading something again. A book on medieval wolves.

“Yes, Hunter, I did. Now, are you going to tell me whose wallet this is?”

“Why don’t you just look inside and find out.”

I opened the wallet and took out a driver’s license. Abra Barrow. Me. Hunter had gone and replaced all my cards. My eyes filling with tears for what felt like the hundredth time that day, I held the wallet to my face and sniffed the distinctive smell of new and expensive leather. Then I saw the designer name on the handbag and realized what it must have cost. This was more than a casual gesture; this was an engagement ring’s worth of caring. In that moment, flooded with unexpected hope, I knew that I would do what ever it took to make my marriage work.

“I have just one question, Hunter.”

“Go ahead.”

“Are you sleeping with the owner of this handbag?” Hunter finally put down his book and smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact,” he said, reaching out to me, “yes.”

Nobody would eat at the Animal Medical Institute’s cafeteria by choice. The room is dark as a basement, the food is greasy, and the long, grim picnic tables look ready for a fresh shipment of cadavers. But we interns work about ninety hours a week, and the residents don’t fare much better: It’s hard to believe there’s an actual city out there with restaurants in it.

“I’m starving, but the spaghetti looked like a breeding ground for bacteria,” said Lilliana, carrying two strawberry yogurts and an apple on her tray. “Where do you want to sit?”

“You choose.” I had selected two large chocolate chip cookies and a container of skim milk. Looking at my friend’s tiny waist in her chic straight black skirt, I wondered whether I should switch to yogurt, too. Not that it would really help; Lilli was the kind of woman who wore heels and matching French-bra-and-pan ties sets, and I was not. As much as I wanted to keep my husband, I knew I wasn’t capable of undergoing some dramatic transformation at this late date.

“I guess we might as well join the boys,” said Lilliana, searching the crowded room for a free table.

I looked around and spotted Sam, who waved us over, winding the spaghetti on his fork with sloppy enthusiasm. Ofer, who had brought his food from home, was using a toothpick to eat meatballs out of a little Tupper-ware container. Sitting a little apart from them, Malachy seemed to be lunching on tea and saltines while reading from a pile of files.

“I’ve heard a rumor,” said Lilliana while we were still out of earshot, “that the board’s trying to remove him from the Institute completely.”

I didn’t ask where she’d heard this; the unlikeliest people tended to confide in Lilliana. It was uncanny. If she’d been standing next to the chief of staff for two minutes at the cafeteria, she probably knew more about the man than his secretary did. Give her half an hour, and she’d know more than his wife. But Lilliana would never expose her sources.

“Do they want Mad Mal out because of his health?” I wondered aloud. “Or is his health getting worse because he’s on the way out?”

Lilliana shrugged. “I don’t know. Either way, he looks awful.” Lately, Malachy’s cheekbones were so prominent that he looked positively cadaverous.

“Shoot,” said Lilliana as we reached the table, “I forgot something. You sit, Abra, and I’ll be right back.” I put my tray down as Lilliana returned to the food servers.

“Ms. Barrow.” Malachy nodded at me. “Did you get the rads back on that golden retriever yet?”

“No, but the bloods are in.” I took a sip of my milk. “I don’t know where to go from here, though. The owner’s pretty much tapped out.”

Malachy tapped his chin thoughtfully. “So chemo’s not an option, regardless of the diagnosis?”

“Not with us. Maybe the dog’s regular vet can work something out.”

“You feel up to making the call?” His voice, I thought, was almost kind.

“I can do it.”

Malachy raised his eyebrows. “You do know it’s Mrs. Rosen? The lady who thinks we should give her a discount because we’re a teaching hospital?”

“I’ll explain it to her.”

“Well, then,” Malachy said, “I suppose that the only thing left for me to say is …”

“Say happy birthday,” said Lilliana, reappearing with a tiny, perfect chocolate cake on her tray. There was just enough room for the big 3 and 0 candles.

“Oh, Lilliana, thanks.” I blew out the candles, and Sam said, “What did you wish for?”

“What all women wish for—true love, happiness, a pedicure.”

“I can help you with part of that,” said Lilliana, handing me a beautiful print of an Impressionist garden, along with a gift certificate for a day spa.

“Of course, I’m tagging along,” she said, peeling her apple in the European fashion.

“With knife skills like that,” said Malachy, “you are truly wasted in social work.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, just stab him, Lilli.”

Ofer’s card featured a wolf wearing a woman’s dress, looking at Little Red Riding Hood with a kind of embarrassed smirk. The caption read, Really, Red, it’s not about the clothes.

“I was a little worried you might be offended by this,” Sam admitted. His card displayed the waxed chest of a muscular young male model, and contained an unfunny joke about older women.

“Very cute, Sam. Thanks.” I wondered why I had the reputation for being prim. For some reason, I thought of Red Mallin, Wildlife Removal Operator. He sure hadn’t thought of me as prudish.

Lilliana took a look at Sam’s card. “I’m sorry, but this is not a ladies’ man, if you catch my drift.”

“Yeah,” said Ofer. “Real men don’t wax and pluck and dress up in designer clothes.”

“Yeah,” said Sam, his voice dripping sarcasm. “They call those real men ‘bears.’ You know, big, lumberjack-style men. Very pop u lar in the gay community.”

Malachy handed me his card last. It was very plain, with just a pressed wildflower on the cover, and inside, he had scrawled: We need to discuss something.

I closed the card quickly and stared at him, a cold wave of fear hitting me. Was he going to suggest terminating my internship?

Then Malachy stood up, nearly dropping his files. I reacted quickly and caught them, but some of the papers still tumbled out. “Thank you, Ms. Barrow,” he said. “I don’t suppose I could impose on you to leave this little gathering a bit prematurely?”

Swallowing back my fear, I followed him to the elevator banks. We didn’t speak as we went down to the basement level, where Malachy had been given a small office when he’d lost his position on one of the major research teams. I hadn’t actually been inside his office since my initial interview last spring.

The elevator doors slid open and Malachy said, “After you.” I waited for him to precede me down the hall, noticing how unsteady his gait seemed as different scenarios played out in my head. Ms. Barrow, you are the only intern I can trust with the news of my imminent departure. Ms. Barrow, I have come to the realization that you are not really qualified to be on my team. The only thought that I instantly dismissed was that my austere boss might be coming on to me in some fashion.

As we walked past a number of offices and turned a corner, I began to realize that Malachy was taking me somewhere I hadn’t been before. This section of the corridor was darker, the fluorescent lights flickering over peeling paint and the occasional broken chair left in a corner.

“Dr. Knox,” I said, because we never called him Malachy to his face, “where are we going?”

“Here.” Malachy stopped in front of a door at the end of the long hallway. Handing me the files he had been carrying, he fumbled with a set of keys.

“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” I said. “Are you letting me go from the group?”

Malachy cursed under his breath as his trembling hands prevented him from inserting the key in the lock. Amazed at my boldness, I put my hand over his. His skin felt like ice.

“Please,” I said. “Are you kicking me out?”

Malachy turned to me with a scowl. “No, I’m not kicking you out, you foolish girl. I’m taking you in here to show you something that could get me kicked out if anyone knew.”

“But why me?” I said, almost too surprised to speak. “Why not the others?”

“Because they are not in close personal contact with someone who has been exposed to the lycanthropy virus. Damn,” Malachy said, dropping the keys to the dingy concrete floor.

Well, Abra, I just hope you’re not going to catch some disease from that man. The memory of my mother’s voice ringing in my ears, I bent down to retrieve the keys. “Which one is it?” My voice sounded strained and unnatural.

“The bronze.”

I opened the door, revealing what appeared to be a small, dimly lit laboratory. In one large cage, there was a Dalmatian, in another a German shepherd. Both dogs appeared to be asleep, but the fact that our appearance hadn’t wakened them let me know that they had been sedated. A third cage stood empty, and I thought of Pia, the wolf hybrid. A stainless steel table in the middle of the room was equipped with restraints, and I also noticed a small refrigerator, a Bunsen burner, a centrifuge, numerous vials, a microscope, and what appeared to be a kitchen blender.

“I thought you were no longer involved in research,” I commented, trying to sound offhand. The truth was, my mother wasn’t completely wrong when she called me a hypochondriac, and all of my husband’s recent erratic behavior was running through my mind.

“Officially, I’m not.” Malachy shambled over to a computer that looked at least ten years old. “But I couldn’t just abandon my work to a bunch of incompetent wankers, now could I?” He tapped a few keys and an image came up on the screen: the familiar image of human DNA, a double helix. “Do you know that human chromosome 17 shares linkage with canid chromosome 23?”

I shook my head. “Not specifically, no.” I knew we were all mammals, and that we shared a common ancestor if you went back far enough, but I’d never delved too deeply into genetics.

Malachy tapped out a key and a segment of DNA removed itself, turned upside down, and then was reinserted. “This suggests that at some point, there was a mutation—an inversion, probably.”

Behind me, the Dalmatian growled as it fought off the effects of its sedation. “Dr. Knox,” I said, trying to call his attention to the animal.

“But wait. Look what happens when you reshuffle a few more genes.” On screen, the DNA began to shift and recombine. “There you go—the sequence for canid DNA.”

“But that’s at the genetic level,” I said, suddenly grasping his point.

“Exactly,” said Malachy. “I always suspected that the lycanthropy virus could affect cell function, and I surmised that there might even be some shift at the level of the nuclear DNA, so that one cell would start looking and acting like another kind of cell. But it took me a while to understand that the change was taking place in the mitochondrial DNA.”

I looked at Malachy, suddenly wondering if, in fact, his illness was muddling his brain. “If you’re telling me that my husband could have been infected with this virus, I’d like to know exactly what you think that means.” Because at the moment, every werewolf movie I’d ever seen was running through my head, ending, disconcertingly, with an image of my husband turning into Jack Nicholson.

Malachy raised his eyebrows. “My dear girl, that is what I’m trying to find out. No one knows precisely how mitochondrial and nuclear DNA interact, but clearly, it’s complex. All I can say is, there’s a genetic factor, and then there’s an environmental factor. But I do think it would make sense for your husband to pay me a little visit.”

I could just imagine how that suggestion would go over. “I don’t think—” I began, but we were interrupted by a long moan from the Dalmatian.

“Blast. I’d better check on him. What I really need, of course, is a pure wolf specimen.” Malachy knelt down awkwardly to open the cage door, and before I could react, the Dalmatian rushed him, snarling and going for the throat. I tried to reach for the animal’s legs, to pull him up off-balance, but I couldn’t move fast enough. I could see blood, and Malachy’s hands were raised, trying to block the dog’s head.