Leaving Time Read online

  “My God,” the Cougar says. “What happened?”

  Virgil looks just as baffled as she is. “What the fuck?” he mouths.

  I hiccup, louder, “I just want to find my m-mother.” Through damp eyes, I look at Tallulah. “I don’t know where else to go.”

  Virgil gets into character, slinging an arm around my shoulders. “Her mom disappeared years ago. Cold case. We don’t have much to work with.”

  Tallulah’s face softens. I have to admit, it makes her look less like Boba Fett. “You poor kid,” she says and then she turns her adoring eyes on Virgil. “And you—helping her out like this? You’re one of a kind, Vic.”

  “We need a buccal swab. I’ve got a hair that may or may not have been her mother’s, and I want to try to match the mitochondrial DNA. At least it would be a starting point for us.” He glances up. “Please, Lulu. Help an old … friend?”

  “You’re not so old,” she purrs. “And you’re the only person I ever let call me Lulu. You got the hair with you?”

  He hands her the bag he found at the evidence room.

  “Great. We’ll get started on the kid’s sequencing right away.” She pivots, rummaging in a cabinet for a paper-wrapped packet. I am sure it’s going to be a needle, and that terrifies me because I hate needles, so I start shaking. Virgil catches my eye. You’re overacting, he whispers.

  But he figures out pretty quick that I’m seriously terrified, because my teeth start chattering. I can’t tear my eyes away from Tallulah’s fingers as she rips the sterile packaging away.

  Virgil reaches for my hand and holds on tight.

  I can’t remember the last time I held someone’s hand. My grandmother’s, maybe, to cross the street a thousand years ago. But that was duty, not compassion. This is different.

  I stop shivering.

  “Relax,” Tallulah says. “It’s only a big Q-tip.” She snaps on a pair of rubber gloves and a mask, and instructs me to open my mouth. “I’m just going to rub this on the side of your cheek. It won’t hurt.”

  After about ten seconds, she removes the swab and sticks it into a little vial, which she labels. Then she does the whole thing again.

  “How long?” Virgil asks.

  “A few days, if I move heaven and earth.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “I do.” She walks her fingers up the crook of his arm. “I’m free for lunch.”

  “Virgil isn’t,” I blurt out. “You told me you have a doctor’s appointment, remember?”

  Tallulah leans in to whisper, although—unfortunately—I hear every word. “I still have my hygienist scrubs if you want to play doctor.”

  “If you’re late, Victor,” I interrupt, “you won’t be able to get a refill on your Viagra.” I hop off the table, grab Virgil’s arm, and pull him out of the room.

  We are laughing so hard as we round the corner of the hallway that I think we might collapse before we make it outside. In the sunshine, we lean against the brick wall of Genzymatron Labs, trying to catch our breath. “I don’t know whether I should kill you or thank you,” Virgil says.

  I look at him sideways and put on my huskiest Tallulah voice. “Well … I’m free for lunch.”

  That just makes us laugh harder.

  And then, when we stop laughing, we both remember at the same time why we’re here, and that neither of us really has something to laugh about. “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  “For a whole week? There has to be something else you can do.”

  Virgil looks at me. “You said your mother kept journals.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Could be something relevant in there.”

  “I’ve read them a million times,” I say. “They’re research about elephants.”

  “Then maybe she mentioned her coworkers. Or any conflicts with them.”

  I slide down along the brick wall, so that I am sitting on the cement walkway. “You still think my mother is a murderer.”

  Virgil crouches down. “It’s my job to be suspicious.”

  “Actually,” I say, “it used to be your job. Your job right now is to find a missing person.”

  “And then what?” Virgil replies.

  I stare at him. “You would do that? You would find her for me, and then take her away again?”

  “Look,” Virgil says and sighs. “It’s not too late. You can fire me and leave and I swear to you, I’ll forget about your mother and what crimes she may or may not have committed.”

  “You’re not a cop anymore,” I remind him. And that gets me thinking about how skittish he was at the police department, how we had to sneak around, instead of walking in the front door and saying hello to his colleagues. “Why aren’t you a cop anymore?”

  He shakes his head, and suddenly he’s closed off, sealed shut. “None of your damn business.”

  Just like that, everything changes. It seems impossible that we were laughing a few minutes ago. He’s six inches away from me and he might as well be on Mars.

  Well. I should have expected it. Virgil doesn’t really care about me; he cares about solving this case. Suddenly uncomfortable, I walk in silence toward his truck. Just because I’ve hired Virgil to figure out my mother’s secrets doesn’t give me the liberty to know all of his.

  “Look, Jenna—”

  “I get it,” I interrupt. “This is strictly business.”

  Virgil hesitates. “Do you like raisins?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then how about a date?”

  I blink at him. “I’m a little young for you, creeper.”

  “I’m not hitting on you. I’m telling you the pickup line I used on Tallulah, when she was cleaning my teeth and I asked her out.” Virgil pauses. “In my defense, I was completely trashed at the time.”

  “That’s a defense?”

  “You got anything better I can use as an excuse?”

  Virgil grins, and just like that, he’s back, and whatever I said to upset him doesn’t crackle between us anymore. “I see your point,” I reply, trying to sound nonchalant. “That is possibly the worst pickup line I have ever heard in my life.”

  “Coming from you, that’s really saying something.”

  I look up at Virgil and smile. “Thanks for that,” I reply.

  I will admit to you that my memory is sometimes fuzzy. Things that I chalk up to nightmares might actually have happened. Things that I think I know for sure may change, over time.

  Take the dream I had last night about my father playing hide-and-seek, which I am pretty sure was not a dream but a reality.

  Or that memory I have of my mother and father, talking about animals that mate for life. Although it’s true I can recall every single word, the actual voices are less clear.

  It’s my mom, definitely. And it must be my dad.

  Except sometimes, when I see his face, it’s not.

  ALICE

  Grandmothers in Botswana tell their children that if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, you must go together. Certainly this is true of the villagers I have met. But it might surprise you to know that it is also true of elephants.

  Elephants are often seen checking in with others in their herd by rubbing against an individual, stroking with a trunk, putting that trunk in a friend’s mouth after that individual has suffered a stressful experience. But in Amboseli, researchers Bates, Lee, Njiraini, Poole, et al. decided to scientifically prove that elephants are capable of empathy. They categorized moments when elephants seemed to recognize suffering in or threat to another elephant and took action to change that: by working cooperatively with other elephants, or protecting a young calf that couldn’t take care of itself; by babysitting another’s calf or comforting it by allowing it to suckle; by assisting an elephant that had become stuck or had fallen down, or that needed a foreign object, like a spear or snare wire, removed.

  I did not get a chance to conduct a study on the scale of the one at Amboseli,