“I can’t believe we’re having this issue at this stage of the—”
“At this stage of the process,” said Kate, interrupting, “some of us have already been working on this for years. And it’s all under control. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She stalked away. Jessica collected herself and then turned to go, acutely conscious of how hard the lab techs were working to ignore what had just happened.
And wondering exactly what it was that had set Kate off.
Jon dropped his bag in the entryway and stepped into the kitchen, where he gave her a kiss that almost made their time apart worthwhile.
“Missed you, Jessie,” he said.
“Missed you, too,” she said, pouring and handing him a glass of wine.
“Good call,” he said, noting the new stemless glassware she’d picked up on the way home from work. “It’s getting to be full service around here.”
“You know it,” she said with a smile. “How was LA?”
“Not bad. And as far as Holly knows, I’m still there. I fudged my return date so we could have some uninterrupted time.”
“Very clever. Like a mental health day.”
“Truthfully, I do have to go back again next week to finalize details.”
He’d gone out there twice now to meet a small group of extremely wealthy potential investors, two of them big celebrities. Citing a nondisclosure agreement, he wouldn’t divulge their names, no matter how hard she tried. “Did you say hi to Kim and Kanye for me?”
“You’re getting warmer,” he said, pulling her close. “What smells so good, besides you?”
“Korean short ribs and rice.”
“Sounds awesome.”
“It will be.” Jessica was about to add that she’d been able to time dinner perfectly, thanks to the modern marvel that was the Instant Pot, but didn’t want to risk sounding like a ditzy housewife. Besides, she needed to talk science over dinner and preferred not to share the spotlight with a kitchen gadget.
Even though they had agreed business was to be conducted only at the office, to avoid cross-contamination with their secret and satisfying home life, Jessica had spent the day planning to break that rule. If they were a normal couple, she reasoned, she would have been able to come home and proudly share the problem she’d discovered, vent about her coworker’s reaction, and then ask for advice on dealing with fragile egos in the cutthroat world of cutting-edge health-care start-ups.
“So,” she said, once they’d sat down together at the table she’d arranged with place settings they’d bought on a romantic outing to Crate & Barrel. “I made an interesting discovery today.”
“What’s that?” he asked, taking a bite of tender short rib.
“I was going over our testing protocols and was wondering why our recent leukemia biomarker trials had such different results. The in-house diagnostics conform closely to the numbers we report in our investor materials, but it looks like some of the outsourced testing fluctuated wildly.”
“What?” he said, not seeming to track what she’d just said.
“Kate told me it was because of a lab that had—”
“You went to Kate about this?” he asked, color seeming to drain from his face.
“Not before I reviewed everything I could find multiple times,” she said, feeling her confidence wane. She wasn’t about to add that she’d emailed Philip the data to confirm that she wasn’t imagining the discrepancies. To which he’d responded, This is really outside my purview.
“What exactly did Kate say?” Jon asked.
“That we broke ties with that lab, that everybody outsources, and the rest of the results are well within the accepted margin of error.”
“She’s right,” he said. “They are.”
“I . . . I . . .” Jessica had a hard time swallowing while Jon angrily drained his wineglass and threw his napkin down on the table.
“Don’t ever go to Kate or anyone else when you think you see a potential flaw or any other fucking thing,” he said coldly. “We stay in our lanes at Cancura.”
Jessica’s head swam. It was as though Jon, her loving, smiling Jon, had been replaced with somebody she hardly knew. And given her job title, how exactly had she veered from her supposed lane? “I thought it was important.”
“You couldn’t wait a few hours until I got home?” he snarled, pushing his chair back and tromping upstairs before she could will herself to move. His voice echoed off the lofted ceiling. “Goddamn it!”
Jessica sat there, stunned. They’d never before been the slightest bit annoyed with each other. She’d never seen him mad about anything except Annie Wilkes’s shenanigans—and even then he was usually able to laugh it off. Suddenly he was furious at her for simply doing her job?
While he stomped around the bedroom, slammed the door to the bathroom, and, from the sounds of water in the pipes, took a hot shower, she put her head on a place mat and cried.
Fifteen minutes later, the door to the bedroom opened.
Jessica didn’t lift her head.
He came back downstairs. His footfalls were soft as he crossed the room to her. She didn’t respond as he put his hands on her shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze.
“I’m a total dick,” he said, sounding truly remorseful. “You’ve spent the past four weeks doing a really good job with practically no guidance. I had no right to react the way I did.”
She didn’t want him to see her mottled, tearstained face, probably imprinted with the pattern of the place mat, but she finally looked up.
“There are mitigating factors you couldn’t be aware of, given your short time on the job,” he said, tracing the tracks of her tears with his fingertips. “Those trials are key to getting the Revelate approved by the FDA. Your questions are good but could inadvertently derail the process. Come to me the next time you have something tricky to discuss with Kate or anyone else. Let me be the messenger.”
“I can’t know what you don’t tell me,” she said, still feeling uneasy but relieved to be cut out of communications with Kate.
“I know and I’m sorry,” he said.
“Jerk,” she said,
