Chapter 9: The Tape

Tobias came to the lab at eleven the next morning.

I was upstairs in Peter's rooms with the door open a crack and a mug of tea going cold in my hands.

Peter had told me to stay put.

I had agreed.

Then I crept to the top of the stairs and sat on the third step, where the railing hid me.

Below me, the glass door crashed open.

"Where is she?"

I knew his walking voice.

I knew the heavy footsteps behind him too, two men in dark coats, one of them the driver.

Peter's two technicians stopped working and stared.

"Mr. Schuyler," Peter said, at the bench, without turning around. "This is a clean room."

"I don't care what it is."

"Then I'll ask you to keep your voice down."

"You cut open my wife's head!" Tobias shouted.

"You took a woman who couldn't hear, a vulnerable woman, and you put your hands on her."

"And it didn't even work!"

"That's what you were told."

"That's what she told me."

"Then I expect it's true," Peter said mildly.

My stomach turned over.

I had told Tobias eight months ago that the operation failed.

I had cried for him, to make it real.

He stepped up to the bench and slapped something onto it.

A phone, with a video playing.

"Yesterday," he said. "The cemetery. You took her to our daughter's grave without asking me."

I could see the little screen from my step.

The two of us on the grass, laughing.

He held it up for the technicians.

"My wife can't speak a word, and look at her. Laughing. With you. I have footage."

"A woman is allowed to laugh at a grave," Peter said.

"She's a married woman!"

"She is."

"I'll have you struck off every board in this city. I'll have your license, your funding, your building. Do you understand me?"

Peter finally turned.

He was taller than Tobias, and quieter, and he leaned on the bench with his arms crossed.

I could not see his face.

I could see Tobias's, and it went from red to a strange wet white.

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