The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (15 page)

An hour later, the Apple technician handed me two brand new iPhones. I stood before him as I clicked into one of them. I recognized the screen saver and breathed a sigh of relief. The image was of me, heavily bundled, at the top of a ski slope. Jeff had taken it on a recent trip to Aspen. This was Jeff’s new phone. His data had been retrieved.

I clicked into the other phone. Its screen was blank, exhibiting standard iPhone features. I showed it to the technician and looked at him questioningly. He launched into a rapid and seemingly defensive rant in Italian.

I began asking around the Apple store for anyone who spoke English, but, instead of helping me, patrons began to conveniently disperse. I was reminded of my previous day’s experience on the bus. After a few frustrated moments, I knew what I needed to do. I withdrew the two damp ticket stubs from my new purse and dialed Dante Giordano’s number.

Fifteen minutes later, he walked into the Apple store. I took in the tattooed flesh, the muscular body, the ever-present backward baseball cap. And the friendly, almost naïve smile. He was carrying a battered backpack, the type of backpack typically carried by a student. I briefly wondered what was inside it.

The young technician in a polo shirt had a brief exchange with Dante before being replaced by a middle-aged man in a suit. I assumed this was the manager. He smiled at me with what I feared might be a look of apology. Then he began speaking to Dante.

Dante listened for a moment and then interjected an increasingly agitated tirade, one that left the manager red-faced instead of smiling, and cowering instead of friendly.

“What? What’s going on?” I kept saying, but Dante ignored me until he had finished with the manager.

Then Dante turned to me and spoke more calmly. “They lost the information from one of your phones.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. I leaned onto the counter, afraid I might faint.

“How—,” I began, but Dante cut me off.

“I don’t know, and this donkey won’t tell me. He said there was a problem moving the information from the wet phone into a new one. It sounded like bullshit to me.”

“Is there anything they can do to retrieve it?” I asked weakly.

“No,” he said and placed a soothing hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Katrina.”

I felt sick. I slowly stepped away from the counter and from Dante, walking aimlessly. “It’s not your fault,” I said softly, unsure if he had heard me. I took a few deep breaths. I could hear him yelling at the man behind the counter again.

I wandered out of the store, and Dante caught up to me. “They said they will pay for both phones.”

“You have no idea how much the data on those phones is worth,” I said quietly.

I gazed at the two new phones in my hand. I clicked into the one with the blank screen. It contained only standard features. I consulted its contacts section as if my daughter’s phone number would miraculously be there. The section was empty. But I knew her number would be in Jeff’s phone; she had texted him just the day before. I clicked past the image of me on an Aspen ski slope and into the contacts screen.

Alexis was nowhere in Jeff’s contacts. I clicked into his record of recent calls. There was no evidence of recent communications with my daughter, despite the fact that, in addition to her text to Jeff, I myself had called her the previous day from Jeff’s phone.

I returned to the home screen. It once again indicated a new text message. I remembered having seen it earlier that morning on the frozen face of the phone I had carried into the sea. I clicked into the new message, sent from an international number I did not recognize. When I read it, my stomach lurched.

The stranger who had chased me into
Castel dell’Ovo
was telling the truth. My dead husband had sent me a message.

Antony was so captivated by [Cleopatra], that, while Fulvia his wife maintained his quarrels in Rome against Caesar by actual force of arms… he could yet suffer himself to be carried away by her to Alexandria, there to keep holiday, like a boy, in play and diversion, squandering and fooling away in enjoyments that most costly… of all valuables, time.

-Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Plutarch (ca. 46–120 CE)

Chapter Eleven

On the screen of Jeff’s brand new iPhone was a text message less than a day old. It could only have been composed by Jeff himself, and it could only have been intended for me.

“I need a restroom,” I said under my breath.

“Down this hall, on the left,” Dante quickly directed me, his face a mixture of horror and concern.

I briskly walked and then ran toward the destination he had pointed at, dropping both new phones into my purse with trembling hands while I did.

I bolted into a stall and surrendered up my breakfast. As I fell to my knees before the toilet, I instinctively brought my hand up to pull my long hair back from my forehead. The effort was a split second too late, and the hand sliced through an already emerging stream of vomit, which I then plastered into my hair.

In the stall beside me, a small child screamed and then began to sob. “
Ssshh
,” her mother whispered. “
Andiamo!
” The restroom door was flung open, and the wailing gradually receded as the mother dragged her terrified child away.

As I clutched the sides of the toilet while what felt like my whole life spewed angrily forth, I wondered for the first time,
What’s wrong with me?

When there was nothing left, I sat back and took a breath.
I was sick on the plane
, I remembered. I had thought that it was motion sickness, something I have always been prone to in cars and boats, but not typically on airplanes.
But I also felt sick in the museum
, I remembered. I had attributed it to claustrophobia at the time, and that was something I have
never
been prone to.

I stood up and staggered to the sink. I plopped my shopping bags onto the counter and retrieved a new travel toothbrush and a hairbrush from one of them. I brushed my teeth and then washed my hair in the sink with copious amounts of liquid soap from the dispenser. I rinsed out as much of the soap as I could before brushing out my hair. After a few minutes, I was satisfied with my hygiene, but my hair was still wet, and my face was blotchy and red. I reapplied my makeup using the new supplies, which I then dropped into my purse.

My nerves were slowly calming, but I still felt sick, even with nothing left in my body to cause it.

Unless…

I stared again at the text message.

“Hold on a minute,” Jeff says. He steps away from the brand new iron railing and into the construction-rubble-littered bedroom of our future home. I am left alone momentarily, watching the remaining rays of sun dance upon the Pacific Ocean.

Jeff returns with two empty five-gallon plastic buckets and inverts them for us to sit on. He then disappears again and comes back with a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, and two wine glasses.

I laugh out loud. “What a nice surprise!” I say, and he beams with pride. After I sit down, he grabs the bucket I am sitting on and slides me closer to him.

Jeff uncorks the wine and pours a glass for each of us. “To sunsets,” he says simply, and we toast.

We sit in comfortable silence for a few moments, sipping our wine and watching the changing colors in the sky.

“Have you seen your mother this week?” Jeff asks casually, and I frown, my pleasant mood suddenly darkening.

“No,” I say and take a larger-than-usual gulp of wine. “I’ll see her this weekend if it kills me—even though I still really don’t have the time. I feel terrible, and every day this week I have tried, but I just haven’t been able to drive all the way out to the home—at least, not during visiting hours. I’m so frustrated. My schedule doesn’t work with their visiting hours.

“My mom barely remembers me anymore,” I elaborate. “And talking on the phone is utterly useless. But she is still happy to see me, even if she isn’t sure who I am half the time. It’s frustrating that I’m not able to see her more often.”

Jeff rubs my shoulder. “Hang in there,” he says. “Your house is sold, my house is sold, and the work on this place will be done before you know it. Once we move in, we can bring her to a closer place. Everything will be easier.”

“You’re right. Having her closer will make the situation so much better.” I give him a soft kiss, and we sink back into a comfortable silence, breaking it only once, to refill our glasses.

As the sun is just dropping below the horizon, Jeff speaks again. “So… which is it? White? Or pink with flowers?”

I have completely forgotten about his bizarre text messages from earlier in the afternoon. I turn and stare at him. “What is wrong with you? What are you talking about?”

“For the bedding,” he says. His eyes are dancing. “It was the nurse’s idea—sort of a fresh start.”

I continue to look at him like he is crazy, and then I open my mouth to ask again what he means.

“Shh,” he whispers, placing a finger gently over my mouth. “Just enjoy the sunset.”

I turn in silence back to the ocean view but find myself distracted. White or pink? My mother’s favorite colors. And, like me, she loves flowers. What nurse?

The sun drops below the horizon, and Jeff takes the empty wine glass from my hand. He sets it down on the terrace with his own. “Come with me,” he says and leads me back into the bedroom.

On the wall to our right is a large bay window, presently covered with an ugly beige contractor’s sheet. I had not noticed the opaque fabric earlier, but now I realize that it obstructs the view to the house next door, the one with the “PENDING” sign in the front yard.

My mind begins to race, and I feel a chill run down my spine.
White or pink. For the bedding. The nurse’s idea. Once we move in, we can bring her to a closer place. PENDING.
I glance at Jeff and he chuckles. I glance back toward the covered window.

“You didn’t!” I say, racing to the window. I tear down the contractor’s sheet and stare blankly in disbelief. Jeff casually steps up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, gently locking his fingers around my stomach.

Across a lovely strip of our backyard garden, I can see over our fence into the side yard beyond it. A middle-aged woman in hospital scrubs is relaxing in a cozy sitting area that graces the yard. She is reading a magazine.

Sitting next to the woman is my elderly mother.

The woman looks up at us and then takes my mom’s hand and points up to our window, waving my mother’s hand for her as someone would do with a small child. My mom smiles with recognition and says something to her companion, and Jeff waves back. He then mimics the motion of my mother’s new nurse by taking my hand and moving it to wave.

“Hi, Mom,” he says quietly into my ear.

“I don’t believe it,” I say, still stunned. “You bought the house next door. And you put my mom up in it with a private nurse.”

“I know they were big decisions for me to make by myself, but I wanted it all to be a surprise. The nurse came highly recommended by John and several of his colleagues. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind?” There are tears welling up in my eyes. “This is the most considerate and generous thing anyone has ever done for me.”

As it turns out, it is also the first instance of
The Game
in our relationship.

It was like hearing a voice from beyond the grave. Except that Jeff was not in a grave and the message was not a voice. It was a simple strip of text in a white bubble on a handheld device.

The text read:
Trust nobody. Her 2.

I thought I was being so careful. I was not. Already, I had been too trusting. I had invited a stranger to Herculaneum and then to Pompeii. Dante Giordano saw what I was investigating. I told him Jeff had cancer. I told him details.

I vowed not to make the same mistake a second time.

So I climbed out the bathroom window.

“White,” “Maybe pink,” and “With flowers.”

These words eventually lead me to discover my husband’s grand gesture of purchasing the house next door, allowing my mother to live in perfect comfort with a nurse and allowing me finally to see her every day.

The confusing texts, sent to me completely out of context, initiate The Game for the first time.

I quickly learn that when Jeff talks to me like he has lost his mind, the apparent nonsense he is speaking is actually a punch line. It is up to me to deduce the story that led to it.

As our relationship grows, The Game becomes our favorite intellectual pastime. It becomes increasingly elaborate over the next four years as we each concoct new ways to one-up the other.

The Game is like a private variation of
Jeopardy
, with carefully selected answers given to provoke a question, and it is like a treasure hunt in reverse. The first clue provides the very end of the mystery. The goal is to drive the puzzle back to the beginning. At the beginning, there will be a surprise.

I knew Jeff’s habits as well as I knew my own. Jeff would never have written anything as grammatically incorrect as “Trust nobody. Her too.” Jeff would freely type “LOL,” “ROFL,” “WTF,” or any of the acronyms that digital-age text conversation dictated. But had he meant what this particular text message implied, he would have abbreviated his thought “Trust nobody. Her either.”

This discrepancy in semantics was precisely how I knew the message was from him. He was referring to something else entirely.

HER2 is the name of a protein associated with breast cancer. In recent months, Jeff and I had started up a program to develop a drug against HER2. We trusted nobody with it.

Targeting HER2 is a double-edged sword. While current therapies against the protein show promise and can powerfully combat breast cancer in many patients, the drugs also carry FDA-mandated warnings for toxicity.