“I have something else in mind,” Sophie said. “I’ve just got to talk to the group. And I’ve got something else I need you to do, too, Mom.”
Julie nodded, not saying that in this moment, she would do absolutely anything any of them asked.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
JULIE
Julie didn’t think she was back in Sophie’s confidence yet, nor did she deserve to be. She accepted her orders hoping that maybe this thing, this huge thing, might earn back her daughter’s trust. Sophie played the general, her family willing soldiers.
The first instruction wasn’t to test the BNL clinic on their removal policies, which was a relief. While her instinct in the hospital room had been knee-jerk—“I’ll have it turned off tomorrow”— that reaction had cooled. She’d been an adult when she got hers, and there was no telling if her brain had adapted or not. Her Pilot had only ever helped her; she had to work up to deactivating it.
Instead, she texted Representative Griffith and asked if he’d meet with her the next time he was in the district office. They conducted most business over e-mail—their last texts to each other had been three months before—so the request had its desired effect. He responded immediately, saying he’d visit on his way home for the weekend.
Which was why, the following Friday, he threw himself in a chair in her office and said, “If you’re quitting, break it to me quick.”
“I’m not quitting.” Though he might fire her by the conversation’s end. She closed the door.
He made a show of relief, wiping his forehead with a manicured hand. “And how’s your son?”
“Doing okay. Thank you for the flowers.” He was a good guy, for a politician. She’d never lost any sleep over working for him; time to find out if her trust had been misplaced. “I need to know what you know about BNL.”
He frowned. “Evan is the main contact with them. Do you want to call him?”
“No, I want to know your relationship with them first, not his.”
“Well, as I’m sure you know, they’ve been great for our district. Three thousand jobs, infrastructure, schools . . . They helped us fund a transit expansion out to their headquarters, which spurred housing growth, too—but you must know all that. Is that what you’re asking?”
“I’m looking beyond what they’ve done for us or we’ve done for them.” She took a deep breath. “What I want to know is: Is your Pilot real?”
“What do you mean?” He touched the light on his head.
He looked sincere. If he was sincere, maybe it wasn’t a government-wide conspiracy, as Sophie thought. Maybe it was just BNL, or BNL and the military. She wasn’t sure which questions were the right ones to get the information.
“When did you get your Pilot? Before or after they started supporting district projects?”
“Let’s see. I got my Pilot three months after my daughter got hers, maybe six months after Evan. Mine was the first on Capitol Hill, but Janelle’s always been an early adopter and she kept talking about how it helped her focus, and it would give me an edge in debates and hearings. It didn’t hurt that they’d just set up shop here, so I felt like I was supporting the home team.”
“So they were already here?”
“Yes. I remember chatting with Sylvia Keating at a charity dinner about how I was going to get one. She was so attentive. She was concerned about it being too early to stand out like that, and that they might get banned from Congress, but I said we hadn’t banned pacemakers or hearing aids or medications, so why would we ban her devices? I thought she was worrying over nothing. I guess after I said that she saw me getting one as a positive rather than a negative. She made sure my appointment was private, so the press wouldn’t run with it until I was ready for them, and she hooked me up with the doctor who had personally installed hers.”
“Leroy, what does your Pilot feel like?” She flashed on the first time Val had asked her that after she got hers; no, Val’s question had been “Do you feel different?” She had, but it was hard to put into words.
He had the same struggle. “You know. Confident, capable, on it.”
“I’ve worked for you for a long time. You’ve always been confident and capable and on it. So you’re saying it intensifies strengths you already had?”
“Yes,” he said, with less boundless confidence. “Why ask that? You have one. You know.”
She knew. How many times had she dismissed David’s noise, thinking he was referring to the same thing she felt, but describing it differently? It would be easy to chalk the congressman’s description up to a communication failure, too. She had a new theory of her own now; maybe she was wrong, but she didn’t think so. “I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen to all of it before you say anything.”
He stood, removed his coat, and draped it over the chair’s back. “Sounds like I should get comfortable.”
She began. She tried to keep it short, mindful of all the constituent meetings that had overrun their allotted time and how she sympathized but wished they had practiced telling their stories concisely. What mattered? Sophie getting left behind. David’s noise. David’s accident.
“Wow,” said the congressman.
“That’s just the personal part. Here’s where it gets tricky.” She told him about the pills, the studies, Sophie’s categories, Pilot on, Pilot off, including the one she had come in mistakenly suspecting.
“So that’s why you asked me if my Pilot is real? You thought I might be faking it?” He sounded angry and disappointed, but not entirely disbelieving. “You know me well enough to give me the benefit of the doubt.”
“I believe you’re not faking it. I’m sorry I asked that question. But—” This was it. This was her theory, new, not
