Chapter 32: Full Moon

The new lab had my name on the door, in black letters, and nobody's veto behind it.

Marla was at the bench with a mug of coffee and her feet on a stool, reading a stack of grant letters out loud.

"Eleven universities want to partner with the Brennan Lab," she said. "Two of them said please."

"Which two?"

"The ones who'll pay."

I laughed and signed the stack.

The old woman from Georgia sat in the corner with her boots up on a crate, supervising the new interns, who were terrified of her.

She had come west for a week and stayed a month.

"Doc, this one boiled the saline," she said, jerking her chin. "Boiled it."

"I did not," the intern said.

"The pot is still on the stove."

Marla put down her mug.

"You know what this reminds me of," she said, grinning. "The day of the funeral, when I..."

"No," I said.

"No," said a second voice from the door.

Eamon stood there in his grey coat, with a paper bag from the bakery downstairs and the good arm full of flowers.

Marla looked from him to me.

"Fine," she said. "We never speak of it. Great. I'll cry about it privately."

The old woman snorted.

Nobody in that building mentioned the funeral again, not the elders, not the interns, not the guards at the lobby desk.

The headstone on the ridge had been dug up the week after the ceremony.

Someone, and I never asked who, had left the stone in the lab courtyard, face down, as a paving slab.

I walked across it every morning.

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