Chapter 20: Unopened

Lena's POV

At one in the morning in the Kellner lab, the pendulum was still swinging, and my fiancé was asleep on the bench.

He had one arm folded under his head and the other flung out across the logbook.

His glasses were crooked. Seven years on, they still slid.

I was twenty-five, with a ring on my left hand that I kept turning with my thumb.

I was supposed to be reading the numbers off the scale.

I was watching him sleep instead.

The steel wire we had cut together that first week was long gone.

The rig on the bench now was ten times better.

Our result had run in a journal, with both our names on it.

I had put my name second on purpose. I didn't need to be first. I needed to be right, and I was.

His phone lay face up beside his elbow.

It lit.

I watched the gray circle with no name slide onto the screen, and a line of text under it.

I leaned over, not close enough to read.

Malcolm didn't wake.

He had told me about the folder called Later the week after the showcase.

It held every message the number had sent since then.

I had asked how many, once, and he had said thirty-one.

The next time he said thirty-four, and after that he stopped counting.

Since the night at the tree, I had never seen him open one.

Seven years, and not a single one.

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