Chapter 7: The Lab Door

Dr. Wheelock's lab used to be a dry cleaner, and the old clothes rail still ran across the ceiling.

I stood on the sidewalk in New Haven on Saturday morning and read the faded sign above the door.

Under it, someone had taped a piece of printer paper that said WHEELOCK LABORATORY in marker.

The receipt in my pocket had an address on it and nothing else.

I had told Kellan I was going to the library.

It was the first lie I had told him, and it sat badly.

The bell on the door rang.

Dr. Wheelock looked up from a bench crowded with glassware and rubber tubing, and his whole face changed.

"Miss Hartwell," he said. "I didn't dare hope."

"Please call me Leonie."

His wife came out of the back room in a stained lab coat, wiping her hands.

Mrs. Wheelock was small and quiet and her grey braid hung to her waist.

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she brought me a stool, and I heard her think, Be kind, Alden. She's frightened.

I was.

The place was cold, and it smelled of bleach and old steam.

The shelves held a centrifuge with duct tape on its lid, three secondhand freezers, and rows of tubes labeled in a very neat hand.

Everything in it had been fixed more than once.

"I won't waste your time," I said. "I want to try something on the third step."

Dr. Wheelock's thoughts stopped.

I heard nothing at all for a moment, and then, softly, I have been waiting six years for someone to say that.

"Go on," he said.

"Dye first. Wash second."

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