“I’m Will, by the way.” He holds out his hand. “I didn’t know you worked here too.”
I reach forward and shake his hand. The raised ridge of his scar feels hardened and tough. “I have an internship,” I state, and then immediately wish I could take back my words.
“Ohhh, one of the coveted internships,” he says with a smile, making me wonder whether he is teasing or insinuating that Dad helped me get this position.
Annoyance bundles my nerves, but I try not to show him any reaction as I lower the lid to the centrifuge. I don’t have to justify myself to him or anyone around here.
“Grace.” He shifts his balance back and forth. “Your dad, he saved my life during a really hard time. My sister had just died, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. But he understood things about me. What I was feeling . . . I just want to say how much your dad—”
I turn on my heels. How dare he call it the coveted internship. I’m the one who got this internship. I didn’t even use my full name, just so the judging would be fair. So they wouldn’t recognize me as his daughter. I want to tell Will all this. Tell him that I earned this internship without any help. Instead I try to act nonchalant. Unfazed. Cool as the breeze blowing outside.
“All yours,” I toss over my shoulder. I’m here because I belong here. Not because my father, who is not a researcher and insists on holding on to the most unrealistic hopes, got me a job. I begin counting the sound of my footfalls on the hard concrete floor to keep my mind off what Will is saying to me. Fifty-three steps that take me farther and farther away from all his insinuations. At the door to my lab, I stop and reach up to tie my hair back in a ponytail. I am a scientist and I know what is and is not within the realm of possibility. Hope is just a four-letter word.
Autumn
Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three . . . Her misaligned pigtails shook every time she bowed her head rhythmically to the silent counting in her head as she peeled each paper muffin liner away from the stack. She pushed her tongue through the gap where her baby tooth had just fallen out. The rawness of her gum felt strange, but she couldn’t help but worry that new empty spot. Daddy had promised a new tooth would soon grow in. She wondered how her body knew to shed things like a tooth and grow a new one in its place. Someday she would study the body and its cells just like her father and know everything about how it worked. She set down the muffin cup, making sure it was perfectly in line with the others. The ghostly ridged paper forms were in neat rows one after the other across the middle of the kitchen floor.
The high-pitched whistle of the noon freight train passing through town broke her concentration. She lifted her head, stopped her counting. Dropping the paper muffin cups, she raced over to the kitchen door. She threw open the door and a breeze whipped her pigtails back. Over the side fence, beyond the deserted parking lot, between the abandoned buildings, she spied the train cars slowly passing through the town as they traveled toward the port city 108 miles away. She began counting.
Her mother stood at the sink washing dishes, but once the cold air rushed inside, she turned and said, “Bugaboo, please close the door. It’s close to thirty degrees outside.”
She pretended not to have understood and kept the door open, continuing her counting until the final car passed out of sight. Twenty-three. A long train today. She would report that to her father when he came home, and they would mark it on her calendar beside her bed.
Her mother came to stand behind her and placed her warm, damp hands on the soft baby fat of her cheeks. “How many today?”
“Twenty-three.”
Mama’s eyes gazed out to the tracks. “That’s too many.”
She stared up at Mama’s face. They used to count together, but more and more Mama didn’t want to watch them the way they had when they first moved into the house. Mama had insisted on this house because she liked making sure she could see the trains. She said she needed to know they were real.
“Okay, bug. Let’s close this door. It’s freezing.”
Mama shut the door to the brisk wind signaling the approaching winter and walked back to the sink. Along the way, she swiftly bent down, scooping up the muffin papers on the floor. “Bug, the muffins are already in the oven.”
“But Mama, I was counting those.”
Mama sighed and then slowly held them out.
She ran over and grabbed them.
Mama pointed to the small table in the corner covered with a cream tablecloth dotted with periwinkle-blue forget-me-nots. “It’s too cold on the floor. Why don’t you sit at the table?”
She nodded obediently and sat down. Her mother hated any kind of floor that did not have some form of carpet on it. Even at the sink, Mama wore slippers as she stood on a fuzzy floor mat. Mama hated her feet being cold. Said it reminded her of a place that she had lived in once
