Chapter 23
Saturday 4:32 p.m.
“I think your aunt has a crush!” Sarah says to my nephews in a cheerful voice as soon as we are on the highway.
“Really?” says Peter.
“Oh, cool! Who is he?” jumps in Paul.
“Will we meet him?” continues Peter.
“No, no, and no!” I turn to the back seats to face them. “Your mom is just teasing me.” I half-smile to Sarah, who is sitting between them.
“So why does my wife think you have a crush on him then?” asks Mark, his eyes fixed on the road. He’s been cutting his hair short for many years now, but he still keeps his thick beard, now meshed with several threads of gray.
“Because he walked out of her apartment naked!” Sarah answers for me.
“What?” both boys jump in together.
“No!” I try to defend myself. “He only didn’t have a shirt on. I spilled hot tea on his shirt—”
“By mistake,” says Sarah.
They all burst out laughing.
“Ah!” I turn back to face the road and cross my arms over my chest. “It’s useless.”
“Sorry, sweetie, but you know, this is such big news for us. You were so stubbornly ignoring any potential partner that—”
“That she tried to place in your path!” Mark jumps in.
Sarah whips him with her stern gaze then continues, “That I was starting to get worried!”
“It’s my life!” I get upset every time they bring this up. “And anyway, I’m waiting for the right one,” I continue in a lower tone, half hoping they didn’t hear it.
“So is he the one?” shouts Peter from behind.
“Is he perfect?” says Paul.
In my mind, Sam’s image appears. I smile a little bit at the memory, thinking of his smile, his eyes, his voice . . . well, actually, all of him. “Yes,” I whisper.
“Woo-hoo!” The boys heard me. They give each other a high-five then lean forward again to hear more.
I turn to Sarah. “Well, isn’t he?”
She smiles warmly. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
“You just don’t want to say it in front of Mark!” I’m getting angry. I know I shouldn’t be saying this.
“Sweetie, it’s between the two of you. It’s all about the chemistry. Yes, he’s tall and blue-eyed and whatever, but he’s just not my type.”
“Impossible!” I turn back around.
“Look, you thought I needed new glasses when I met Mark, but he is my type!”
Oops! I quickly look at Mark. I didn’t want him to know that!
“Sorry, Mark!” I say in a tiny voice.
Mark laughs. “That’s fine, kitten. You’re not my type either.”
Phew! But still, I can’t believe that Sam wouldn’t be every woman’s type.
“Let’s talk about something interesting,” Mark says and winks at me. “How’s your ‘I’m just about to get a Nobel Prize’ research going?”
“Ah . . . fine.”
“What’s with the ‘ah’ there?” Sarah leans forward, leaving the boys to discuss something else in the back seat.
“Well, I’ve just been moved to a new project.”
“Don’t you like it?” Mark asks.
“No, no, it’s not that. It’s interesting, actually, but . . .”
“But what?”
“But I can’t say.”
“Can’t say what?”
“Anything. It’s confidential.”
“Really?” Mark frowns and straightens his arms on the steering wheel. “That’s strange . . . for a basic research institute.”
My voice is low. “Yeah, tell me about it.” I shake my head.
“Did David change your project?”
“Yeah. He kind of inherited a project from another lab head, and . . . it’s complicated, but he basically moved all the people on his team to this new project.”
“Well, does it still deal with bacteria?” asks Sarah. “I guess it has to. The whole floor is microbiology, right?”
I frown. I’m not even sure how much I’m allowed to say. I decide not to say anything.
But Mark is intrigued. “Hmm . . . can’t you tell us anything? Perhaps you can wrap it up in riddles—how about that?” He looks at me quickly and smiles, then turns his gaze back to the road.
I laugh out loud. I can’t possibly refuse that. “All right. Give me a few moments to think of something.”
After several seconds, I get an idea.
“How about this: You can’t see me with your naked eye, but I grow as fast as I’m fed. With a different strand of DNA, you would all be dead,” I say, smiling at my quickly made-up rhyme.
Sarah looks at me, then at Mark, then at me again, all serious. “Scary!”
Mark arches his eyebrows and shrugs. “I don’t have a clue. Well, it was worth a try. Now, let’s face a real danger.” And he pulls into the street where my parents live.
Sarah shakes her head and leans back between her boys.