Yellowstone held no appeal without my girl there to see it.

My girl. Her chest tightened. Darak’s texts still came, even though it had been a week since they talked.

In that time she’d been turned down for a trial at the Cleveland Clinic, and the one that had looked promising in Mexico shut down due to lack of funding.

I miss the smell of your hair.

She rubbed her aching forehead, wishing she could block him permanently, but at the same time wanting more than anything to beam herself through the distance and throw herself into his arms. Stop texting me.

Can’t you forget that I’m Krinar? To me you will always be Eden—brave and beautiful and so full of life.

Eden rubbed her forehead. Full of life. She sat near her mom and dad under a tree at the Cornell Botanic Gardens, picking dandelions and flicking off the heads, her fingers sticky with sap. Nearby, her mother tapped the keys on her laptop. Did dandelions feel pain? Maybe to God Eden was a pretty yellow flower, a weed to be plucked and thrown aside.

She turned her attention to the passersby, every one of them trim and rosy-cheeked.

Healthy.

She hated those people, but for the first time she noticed that no one was fat. Of course, it wasn’t like you could find a chocolate muffin these days. Maybe all that healthy food the K’s pushed on everyone was actually paying off. Huh.

And, she was forced to admit, the Krinar hadn’t just given them world peace. It seemed like every day there was something in the news about cleaner air, global crop distribution, and species being saved from the brink of extinction. The Doomsday Clock had read two and a half minutes to midnight before they came, and now it didn’t even exist.

Her mother’s knees cracked as she got to her feet. “I’m running in to use the bathroom. You coming?”

Eden shook her head. “I don’t have to go.”

“You sure?”

“Mom.” She rolled her eyes.

“I guess I’ll wait a bit, then.” The woman could not cut the cord, even to pee.

Sighing, Eden leaned back against the smooth bark of the elm. She studied the sky, marveling at the unblemished blue. You couldn’t even spot an airplane unless you were searching. The fuel the K came up with left no trail.

They are good for us. She’d been wrong to blame the aliens for the sorrows in her home. The realization came as a brutal epiphany. She’d been selfish, not wanting to put the blame where it belonged: her disease. Still, Eden loved her dad. She couldn’t get past the fact that Darak had stolen her father’s life’s work.

Her phone buzzed, and a wild thrill radiated from her chest. Her hand shook as she entered her security code.

I dreamed about you last night, she read.

I thought we were done with this, she texted back.

I would do anything to take back hurting your father.

“Is that bastard still stalking you?” Her mother reached for the phone, but Eden held it away.

“He’s apologizing for stealing Dad’s glory.”

“Apologizing?” Her father pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I should thank him for what he did. Not to you, of course, baby. I’d shoot him for that.”

A powerful welling of love enveloped her. A few years ago her parents had marched for stronger gun control laws. “He ruined your career.”

But Dad cocked his head. “If anything, he boosted it.”

“I don’t understand.” Hadn’t the faculty been dissing him for months?

“He says the only reason he solved the code was because of the breakthrough I had with the tri-loop. He mentioned it in an article he wrote.”

“At least he had the decency to give you some credit,” Mom muttered.

Eden sat up straighter. “What article?”

“It’s coming out in Archaeology Today next month.”

“And Darak wrote it?” That was kind and, well, so like him. But he’d still lied about being an alien. He’d made a fool of her.

“He still needs to be shot and tossed into a wood chipper,” her mother said with a decisive head bob.

“A Krinar scholar wants to collaborate with me on the early Renaissance and how it helped form modern society. Apparently we did that on our own, no help from the Krinar. It’s an interesting topic.”

Wait. What? “You’re working with them?”

“How can I pass it up? I have lectures booked all through next fall. Forget authoring a peer-reviewed article seen by a few academics. This will have multi-global distribution.”

Eden swept her hands over her head and paused at the nape of her neck, then templed them over her nose. “So you’re saying your career isn’t ruined?”

“Ruined!” He snorted. “I’m made!”

A wistful smile ghosted across her father’s face, and shame caught her breath. Dad went around all the time like lead clouds pressed in on him from all sides, but not because of the Krinar or, more specifically, Darak. In fact, he’d never been mad at the Krinar at all—well, until he found out some guy had tricked his daughter into intimacy. But as far as her father’s depression, that was on Eden. Or rather, the cancer. It always had been, from the moment of her first diagnosis. She hadn’t been able to handle the responsibility of it, so she’d blamed Darak, a sweet and wonderful…

Krinar.

That still mattered. He’d still deceived her.

The next time he texted her, she was going to give it to him good for that.

But no more texts came.