The Mark (21 page)

“Like she was afraid of it?”

“Right. Dr. Wells notes that it got to a point sometimes where she wasn’t just afraid of how she’d protect you, but also of how to protect herself. She seemed preoccupied with death, always trying to prevent it, fearful of every action.”

I nodded, thinking of how, over the last few months, I’d found myself wondering about every choice. How did it change my fate that, looking for my wallet in the morning, I was ten minutes later walking out my door than I would have been otherwise? Did I miss walking past a man, a dog, a bus that might change my life? Was that a good thing or not? If I wore pink socks instead of black, what would be the result? Would they attract the attention of the serial killer sitting next to me in the coffee shop? Were these things preordained or was I in control? You could drive yourself crazy with these questions. I guess my mother had.

Petra insisted I stay over. “You’ll never get a cab out here at this hour,” she said. I glanced at the clock, the hands hovering just past ten. “I’d drive you, but I’ve got a crazy day tomorrow.”

I protested, but it was no use. She was right, I had no way home. Petra made me chamomile tea. “To help you sleep,” she said. “Doctor’s orders.”

“You said you met Dr. Wells when you first started at Barrow,” I said, the thought occurring to me as she was showing me to the guest room, also white on white. “Is she still there? Could we ask her about some of the details? Maybe she’d remember more—”

Petra cut me off with a shake of her head. “No. She died the year after I started. She was older, would have been in her late sixties when she treated your mother. The file seems pretty complete anyway,” Petra added. “Dr. Wells had a reputation as a perfectionist. I’ll keep looking. There are still another few years of sessions to read. Anything she learned from your mother is almost certainly in there. The rest, unfortunately, is not to be known.”

The next morning Petra drove me to downtown Ridgevale. She knew of a bus service that ran to Bering twice a day.

“I’d have asked Wayne to take you,” she’d said, “but honestly, I wouldn’t trust his car to make it.”

“Please, Petra, you’ve already been so great. I can’t thank you enough. I owe you.”

“Well, then repay me by keeping in touch. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s a shortage of cool people out here,” she said. “I try to make sure I know all of them.”

“I definitely will.”

“Good. Don’t flake on me,” she warned. “I have your number. I will track you down.”

“No worries.”

I slept a little on the bus ride, having gotten only broken sleep the night before, but my head kept spinning, trying to piece together the day of the accident. Had my mother been unable to convince my father about the mark? Lucas hadn’t believed me, but we’d been dating less than a month. Was it possible that she hadn’t told him? Or had she, the two of them rushing to the hospital, worried that it wasn’t just a headache, but a stroke? An aneurysm? A tumor? I tried to imagine how I’d feel if the action I’d persuaded Lucas to take caused his death. The fated accident a slip in the bathroom rather than the skidding of brakes. Could that be what happened? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I’d never know the whole story, but I knew enough to believe that my mother, like me, could see the mark. And it had ruined everything.

“Where have you been? I’ve been worried about you. Tell me what happened—you saw another one, didn’t you?”

Lucas showed up at Drea’s apartment around four, frantic and petulant. I wasn’t surprised to see him, though he’d never been up before. Drea wasn’t due back until later, so I let him in reluctantly, wanting nothing more than to keep sipping tea and listening to Mozart, but I knew I had to deal with him eventually. I’d ignored all his messages and texts and thrown away the notes he’d taped to her door and slipped underneath it.

“I’m not doing it anymore, Lucas,” I said, walking back to my mug by the sofa.

“What? You mean warning them? What happened? Another one who didn’t believe you?” He folded his arms, preparing for another debate. “Well, don’t forget about the one you saved.”

“Yeah.” I leaned forward to toss the paper at him, glad that I’d been too worn out to burn it or throw it away like I’d meant to. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget him.”

Lucas scanned the paper, confused.

“That’s him, Lucas. The guy in the picture. Eduard Sanchez.”

I left the couch and walked to the window, staring outside at the slow-moving traffic while Lucas read.

“Cassandra …”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Lucas. I’m done. I’m not meant to meddle. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but I feel it in my gut.”

He said nothing.

I turned to face him, to make sure he understood me. This was it. No more discussions. No more arguments. This was a decision only I could make, and I felt sure I was making the right one.

“I can understand why you’re upset,” he said. “You should have called me.”

I shrugged, turning back to the window. What I wanted was for Lucas to come to me, put his hands on my shoulders, tell me I was right, destiny was better left undisturbed.

Instead, he said, “I can see you need some time alone. I don’t blame you. I think when you have more distance, time to sort through this, you might reconsider.”

I didn’t answer. There was nothing to say.

“I’ll let myself out,” he said softly.

chapter 26

I almost skipped class, but I felt I owed it to Professor McMillan to go. He’d been great, grading my exams and papers, though he wasn’t required to for an audit student. He even wrote a nice note on my last one, saying what a pleasure it had been to have someone there purely for the joy of learning.

I was late, hoping it would prevent me from having to talk to Lucas. I felt his eyes on me the minute I walked into class, but I ignored him, sliding into the first empty seat and focusing on Professor McMillan, already lecturing. He was mid-sentence when Lucas’s hand shot up.

“Yes, Lucas?” Professor McMillan turned to him, puzzled. I kept my eyes locked on my notebook.

“I was just thinking,” Lucas said, “that it might be interesting to apply the readings on determinism and free will to the hypothetical Ms. Renfield brought up in one of our earlier classes.” Lucas paused, adding pointedly. “Now that she’s here.”

He wouldn’t dare.

“What hypothetical is that?” Professor McMillan asked.

“About the patient and the doctor. The patient thinks she’s in good health, but the doctor finds something terminal.” Lucas paused to look at me. He really was. He was putting my life up for debate. “Should the doctor tell? Does he have a responsibility to share what he knows?”

Professor McMillan thought for a minute, then nodded. “Very well. Why don’t you lead the discussion?”

Lucas stood, a self-satisfied smile on his face. I closed my eyes, clenching my teeth as he repeated it: “What is the doctor’s responsibility?”

Hands went up across the room.

“Determinists would say that the outcome is already decided,” answered a blond girl, the one who’d called Lucas “choiceworthy.” “Like, say it’s heart disease. They’d say she was destined, from birth to have it. Maybe because the disease is in her genes or her mom brings her up on fatty foods or whatever. It’s like it’s fated—she never has a chance.”

“Okay.” Lucas frowned. “So, if it’s all predetermined, fated, as you said, the doctor has no responsibility to try to help the patient?”

He wasn’t looking at me, but he was talking to me. I was furious.

“No,” the girl answered. “The doctor still has to tell.”

“Why?” Lucas asked.

“Because he’s
part
of the predetermined events. The patient’s visit that day, the conversation they have, what they decide to do or not do—it’s all part of the patient’s destiny.”

“Exactly.” Lucas smiled approvingly. “So, even if he can’t control the outcome, the doctor is still morally responsible for fulfilling his role and telling the patient, correct?”

She nodded, beaming.

“And what about the libertarians? How would they view this dilemma?”

“Well, they think
everything
is about choice, so the doctor definitely has to tell what he finds,” a guy up front said. “If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be giving the patient a chance.”

“Okay,” Lucas said, “so again, the doctor has to tell.”

I couldn’t believe Lucas was doing this: twisting the lesson to suit his own agenda, making it seem like I had a moral duty to tell people about the mark. He was encouraging these flawed arguments and no one was calling him on it. Not even Professor McMillan.

“And finally,” Lucas said smugly, “what would the compatibilists say?”

“Still the doctor’s responsibility to tell,” the same guy said. “I don’t think there’s any question about that in any of these arguments, the issue is really—”

Lucas cut him off, leaving me no doubt that this lesson was for no one but me.

I stood up. I was shaking, I was so angry. “First of all,” I interrupted, several people nearby turning to stare, “determinists don’t believe in moral responsibility and you know it, Lucas.” More heads turned at my bluntness.

“Second, libertarians would say the doctor’s only responsibility is to use his free will and choose the best solution—which might or might not be to tell—since
nothing
is predetermined.”

I had everyone’s attention now. “But it’s a stupid question to start with. I mean, maybe I can buy the idea that a doctor, who
chose
his role and took a sworn oath to intervene, should tell someone that they’re about to die. But of course we’re not really talking about a doctor here.”

I could sense my classmates looking at one another, confused. I never took my eyes off Lucas and he never took his off me. I tried to make my voice less strident, hoping one last time to get him to understand.

“I mean, we all know death is coming, right? We all have a chance to make the most of our time, to choose how we spend our days. There is a limit to them, it’s not a secret. Why should anyone be responsible for giving you more than your share? Especially when there are no guarantees about what you’ll do with them. Maybe it will be something good. Or,” I said, thinking of Eduard Sanchez, “maybe it will be the opposite.”

It was totally quiet in the room, every eye on me, notebooks and lesson abandoned. Professor McMillan had stood up, but he too waited, watching it play out.

“I’m not sure who I side with—determinists, compatibilists, whatever—but I believe Socrates was right that we are, each of us, responsible for our own happiness. You choose to smoke that cigarette, talk on that cell phone while driving, have that extra drink. You are responsible. In making those choices, you accept the outcome. Call it fate or personal accountability …” I shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter.”

I gave Lucas a minute to answer, but I could tell from the disappointment in his eyes that we were worlds apart. Always would be.

I collected my books and, the room still silent, walked out the door.

chapter 27

I went to the park. To the pond, my thinking place. I didn’t really want to think, though. What I wanted was for all of this—the mark, my failed first love, Nan’s lies about my mother—to go away. Be some kind of dream. Instead, it got worse.

I almost didn’t answer my cell, sure it would be Lucas. It was Petra.

“You okay?” she asked almost immediately. “You sound bummed out.”

“My boyfriend and I had a fight.” In front of my philosophy class. About the meaning of my life.

“I’m sorry. I can call another time if you want …”

“No, no. What’s up?”

“I finally finished reading the files. There was more in there. Some new stuff. You got a few minutes?”

“Sure.” I lay back, feeling the tickle of grass against my neck, and closed my eyes. I didn’t really want to hear anything else about my crazy mom and how she hadn’t been able to handle the mark. If she couldn’t, how could I? “Go ahead,” I told Petra.

“Turns out there
was
more than just survivor guilt. About halfway through her second year, it started to come out. Dr. Wells believed it probably existed before the accident, in some form, but grew afterward.”

“What grew?”

“Delusions.” I could hear papers shuffling. “You ever hear of Lachesis?”

“Is that some kind of condition?”

Petra snorted. “Not even close. It’s a person.
She’s
a person, I should say.”

The name, now that Petra identified it as one, was familiar, but just barely. I sat up, staring at the sparkly surface of the pond. “Who is she?”

“I looked it up to be sure,” Petra said. “Lachesis,” she read, “Disposer of Lots, one of the three Moirae. She measures the length of the thread of human life spun by Clotho.”

“The three Moirae? What are Moirae?” But even as I asked it, I felt my stomach roll. I remembered where I had heard the name before. “Who is Clotho?”

“My questions exactly,” Petra agreed. She continued reading. “The Fates, or Moirae, were Greek goddesses who controlled the destiny of everyone from the time they were born to the time they died. They were: Clotho, who spun the thread of a person’s life; Lachesis, the apportioner, who decided how much time each person was allowed; and Atropos, the inevitable, who cut the thread when you were supposed to die.”

Petra kept reading. “The Fates were often depicted as cold and unmerciful, but weren’t always deaf to the pleading of others. When Atropos cut the thread of King Admetus, Apollo begged the Fates to undo their work. They promised that if someone took Admetus’s place in the gloomy world of Hades’ domain, he would live.”

I remembered Nan sitting with me, both of us leaning against my headboard, I in my pajamas, she with a well-worn book open before us. Sometimes she didn’t even need the book.

“Cassie? Hello? You still there?”

“I’m still here,” I croaked.

“So you’re probably wondering what this has to do with your mother.”

“Right.” My head was spinning. I tried to focus on the pond, the trees, anything real and concrete to anchor the things swirling in my brain. The memories, the stories, the facts that were adding up way too fast.