The Unseen

CHAPTER TEN

She is at a table, a round breakfast table, in a sunny room, arched glass windows on three sides. She is tall but small, not just small, in a high chair, a child, a toddler giggling through wisps of red-gold hair. The sun is dazzling through the windows, warm on her cheeks.

At the side of the table, a beaming man with a round, ruddy face laughs with her, blue eyes sparkling…

…as the forks and spoons dance by themselves on the table in front of them…

Laurel’s eyes flew open. Her cheeks were warm… as warm as if she’d been sitting in sunlight.

But the electronic shrilling she was hearing did not belong in that sunny breakfast room. She moved under the blankets, shaking off sleep, and realized her cell phone was jangling on the stand beside the bed.

To her vast and groggy surprise the caller was her mother. Adrenaline shot through Laurel and she bolted up in bed. “Mom? Is everything okay?” Meredith never called two days in a row, and it was shockingly early in West Coast time.

“Of course,” Meredith’s voice was gravelly, irritable. “I was just calling to see how it went.”

Laurel wrested her co-opted pillow away from the cat and leaned back against it. She wasn’t entirely buying her mother’s sudden attempt to be an involved parent, but saw an opportunity to mine some information herself.

“It was nice,” she said neutrally. For a moment she wondered if Margaret had already reported about the dinner, if there was some conspiracy between the all-but-estranged sisters. And why would you be thinking that?

“So everyone’s well?” Meredith was asking, equally neutrally.

“They seem fine, Mom,” Laurel answered. “It was nice of them to have me.” Then before she could lose her nerve, she blurted out. “Did you know that Uncle Morgan was a test subject in the Rhine parapsychology experiments?”

There was an instantaneous, live silence on the other end of the phone. After an eternity, Meredith said slowly. “Yes, that’s right. I’d all but forgotten about that.” Then she said something that threw Laurel more than anything else that had happened. “He always was like Mama that way.”

Meredith’s voice was far away, and she’d reverted to a Southern accent that Laurel had only heard her use in times of extreme stress. Laurel held her breath, wondering if her mother would say more. When she didn’t, Laurel hazarded:

“Like Grandma—in what way?”

“What?” Meredith snapped, and there was a hint of outrage in her tone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. How in the world did that business come up, anyway?” Meredith’s tone was back to her usual crisp irritability, and the Southern accent was gone.

“Oh, I saw an exhibit in the library and wondered if they remembered the lab,” Laurel said vaguely. She hesitated, then took the plunge. “All of those experiments must have been a huge deal on campus when Aunt Margaret and Uncle Morgan were there, at Duke.”

The silence on the other end was icy. “I hope you haven’t been upsetting your uncle.”

What? What was that?

Laurel swallowed. “I don’t think I have, Mom. What do you mean?”

Her mother ignored that entirely. “I have to run. I’m speaking at a conference this morning—”

“Wait—Mom,” Laurel said quickly. “I wanted to know… when we visited Aunt Margaret and Uncle Morgan and Grandma—when I was three or four—were they living in the same house? The two-story with that glassed-in breakfast room?”

Her mother paused. “Yes, the house on Steeple Street. Why?”

Laurel closed her eyes and saw the sunny alcove from her dream, the silverware dancing on the table in front of her uncle.

“I thought I remembered it. I just wanted to know.”

Again, silence, something unspoken. Then Meredith said, “Don’t forget to write your aunt a thank-you note; they live and die on those things there.”

As usual Meredith disconnected without saying good-bye, but Laurel had gotten what she needed: Uncle Morgan wasn’t fantasizing; he really had been a test subject in the lab. And Meredith’s unexpected admission kept playing in her head.

“He always was like Mama that way.”

The thought, coming from her supremely rational mother, gave Laurel an eerie thrill. It meant Meredith believed that Morgan, and their mother, had some kind of—and Laurel had to pause even mentally before she even thought the word—

Power.

She felt caught in something huge, something bigger than herself, and yet about herself—something almost inevitable.

I have to know what happened.