Weaver sounded as if he'd smiled. It shaped all his words. "If I were your husband, I'd never dare cheat on you."
"He did," Dru said. "And I caught him."
It was a reflex answer. Weaver might have known her circumstances, or it might have been an unfortunate joke, but she realised she didn't actually care. This puzzle was doing what puzzles always did; soothing her and convincing her that she could force things to turn out right. She went home that evening feeling triumphant.
She drove down Ridgeway Drive looking for a lurking blue Kia, as she had every day since Clare had mentioned it, but there was nothing to see. It must have been like this on an army patrol, she thought. She couldn't imagine living every day like that. Being watched was bad enough, but if you had to check every shadow in case you got shot or blown up, then it was no wonder so many guys came home in a mess. She could now see how it would never be over for some of them.
The aroma of serious cooking hit her as she opened the front door. There was the smell of a TV dinner reheated, and then there was the complex fragrance of something created in stages that left its sequence of traces on the air. Dru hadn't realised that Clare could do anything like that. She dumped her bag on the chair by the kitchen door and wondered if it was a pre
-emptive shot before a revelation about a broken vase or lost piece of jewellery.
"Now what's that?" Dru asked.
Clare fussed with plates. "I made
boeuf bourguignon
."
"Are we celebrating something?"
"No, I just wanted to be clever."
Dru opened the oven, ashamed of her suspicion. Fragrant steam rolled out. Yes, there was a competently
-executed casserole bubbling away. "You know it should have a bottle of red wine in it, don't you?"
"Oh, it's in there." Clare cleared textbooks off the table. "There was some in the pantry."
That bottle was Dru's emergency anaesthetic supply. She couldn't be angry, though. "Good. Otherwise I would have worried about how you acquired it."
She really had to shake this suspicion. She was even second
-guessing her own daughter. That was the problem with a job that was about watching people and waiting for them to do something wrong. All you saw in the end was sin, even if it wasn't there at all. And people resented being seen as guilty until proven innocent. The act of surveillance poisoned the whole relationship. Dru knew all this, but it had still crept up on her.
The
boeuf bourguignon
was pretty good. Dru tried to stand back and see her daughter for what she was, just a kid, upset by divorce like any other, getting good grades, doing her chores, not pregnant by some waster, not doing drugs or drinking liquor, not demanding every consumer luxury she saw, and entitled to get things wrong while she learned how to make the transition to adulthood. She wasn't the enemy. She was a fellow inmate.
Is the job making me miserable, or am I colouring the job?
Larry had accused her of being a joyless grey cloud that blocked the sun for him, a phrase that she translated to mean that she'd been unsporting about letting him frolic with twenty-something girls at the marketing agency. Perhaps both meanings were equally true. He'd certainly hit that nail on the head: joyless. But she had a little joy in her now, and it stemmed from stalking prey. It wasn't a great recommendation for her personality.
"Great cooking, sweetheart," she said, having a second helping. "Actually, we do have something to celebrate. I'm probably not going to be laid off when the merger happens. Jobs suck, but not having somewhere to live sucks more. That's being a grown-up, in a nutshell."
"Sad."
"True."
"Have you caught your thief yet?"
"No, but I've seen him face to face now. So he knows what I look like. No more cloak and dagger."
"But you enjoyed that bit."
"Yes." Dru had. She quite enjoyed the thrill of taking the risk. She hadn't admitted it to herself until now. "I did."
"You could always disguise yourself. Change your hair."
It was a thought. If she needed to pay a visit somewhere, it was one of those details that tended to alter an entire description. After dinner, she stood at the bathroom mirror, convincing herself it had to be done.
She was going grey – goddamn
grey
. It wasn't even a stylish Indira Gandhi kind of greying. She had dull brown hair and now she was going dull grey. Everything that she'd looked forward to was now behind her. It was over, capital O.
Bright red or ash blonde? No. Don't be crazy. Who's going to take you seriously then?
Who cares? It's just a disguise.
And then again, maybe that was an excuse to do something frivolous and just a little desperate.
She made a salon appointment the next day for after work. A stylist called Jay ruffled through her hair with his lips pursed, frowning at her in the mirror.
"How about a nice blonde?" he asked. "Nothing brassy. Because you've got a
lot
of grey. It'll get rid of that
awful
mousiness. And maybe some texture." He held his hands just under her jaw level. "Take some length off, too. That'll turn back the clock. Yes, blonde. Blondes can get away with
anything
."
If he'd been a co-worker, she would have punched him out, but a hairdresser had the same immunity as a court jester.
"Do it," she said.
WESTERHAM FALLS, MAINE
TWO WEEKS LATER.
Weeks of intensive training had started to leave their mark on Ian, and he liked it.
He sat on the edge of the bed, inspecting his biceps in the mirror, left then right. He wasn't sure if it was down to more muscle or less body fat, but they
looked
bigger. He hadn't really noticed the change before the last couple of days. Then – bang – there it was, a transformation that had nothing to do with morphing.
He'd
worked
for this. He'd earned it in the gym and on dawn runs and by struggling cross-country with a rucksack that was half his own bodyweight.
That
was what mattered. He'd made it happen himself, and that meant he was in control of his life for the first time. He wanted women to look at him the same way that they looked at Rob. There were probably more important things in the world to aspire to, but right now Ian couldn't think of one.
Rob's right. It's down to me. I've just got to put in the effort.
If Ian could have erased everything in his memory before the day that Mike and Rob crashed into his life, he would have been satisfied with the hand that life had dealt him; no lies, no fears, no loneliness, and no recollection of losing Gran. All he would know was that he was different, but that he could make himself whatever he wanted to be, in every sense of the word.
But I don't have to keep reliving the crap. It doesn't matter where I came from or what I wasn't told.
This was probably what Gran had wanted for him, even if she couldn't possibly have imagined how it would happen. Did he need to find out who his biological parents were? They didn't even know he existed. They might never have met outside of a Petri dish. And then there was the surrogate mother – did he want to find her? He wasn't sure yet. Maybe it was better to keep pretending that David Dunlop was his great-grandfather.
There was no point in looking back, only forward.
Beer, birds, BMW.
All that stood between him and a normal life was a single photograph.
He hadn't morphed noticeably since that day in the sports store. Livvie had taught him a concentration technique that involved thinking about something simple — an apple, a pencil, anything he was familiar with — and imagining every aspect of it from its shape and colour to its smell and how it felt in his hand. It was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. It seemed impossible to keep his mind on the object and shut out the random thoughts that he usually didn't even notice. He built up his concentration by seconds each time, not minutes. Whenever he had a moment to himself, he practiced.
Today he visualized opening a parcel, hearing the rustle of brown wrapping paper, smelling the musty cardboard, and letting nothing else intrude. He could only manage to immerse for short bursts. But he'd begun to recognise that cut-off sensation that told him he'd disconnected from the world around him and had forced his brain to do something different.
Damn: he'd slipped out of the trance again. He felt like he'd woken from a nap. Next time, he'd memorize his face and try to see every pore, freckle, and hair, and hope that it somehow linked all those weird reactive cells to the map he was forming in his brain.
If I morph, I need to know how to get back to the way I looked before. Everything depends on that.
He poked his biceps again to make sure he wasn't imagining the improvement, then went downstairs. The house was silent except for the faint backdrop of fridge, aircon, and clock noises. It was his turn to clean the kitchen. Chores were part of the natural order of things, something he'd done for as long as he could remember, and even Mike had his cleaning duties. Manual work did you good and kept you grounded, Mike said. Ian scoured the sink and polished the steel surfaces on the range. It didn't matter why chores were good for you. They just had to be done.
"You're going to make some girl a great husband."
Livvie made him jump. He was so engrossed that he didn't hear her walk in. "I thought you were working."
"No, I escaped. I'm going to treat myself to a trip to the garden centre. Coming? We can have a coffee there."
Ian's idea of a garden centre was the feed store in Athel Ridge, and they didn't have a coffee bar, just soda on the cash desk. "Only if I can pay," he said, expecting her to stall him.
Livvie beamed. "That's the best offer I've had all week. Let's go."
Ian was quietly thrilled. He'd been upgraded from problem kid to responsible adult. He transferred some bills to his wallet and prepared to pick up the tab for a woman for the first time in his life. Livvie took the Volvo and drove west through some picture-postcard towns and a beautiful wild landscape.
"Now
that's
why I need to spend less time in the studio," Livvie pulled over to the side of the road and lowered the tinted windows to look out across a valley. "I've had full spectrum light installed to ward off cabin fever, but it's still like working down a mine."
Ian was in awe of her. She had a no-nonsense way about her, very much like Gran. There was probably a more flattering way of saying that but he hadn't worked it out yet.
"You never talk about what you do," he said.
"Well, live interpretation for businesses is pretty dull, and the government work tends to be sensitive material. Mike and Rob do the really interesting stuff."
"Were you angry when I showed up?"
Livvie shrugged and started the car again. "Stunned, but not angry. And you didn't have a choice."
"Mike and Rob can be pretty scary."
"Funny, I still think of Mike as a harmless, over-friendly Labrador. I sleep better knowing Rob's watching his back."
Ian could only see Mike as a soldier, a real man who fought real wars and saved – or took – lives, someone he respected enormously. It was hard to imagine him needing protection.
"Can I ask something personal?"
"Sure."
"When you met Mike, did you know who he was?"
"Did I know he was so rich? Or did I know who his father was? Neither. He didn't tell me for months. I was pretty annoyed when he did. I was only after his body."
Ian's diagnosis of women was confirmed. They were terrifying, powerful, judgemental creatures. They ran the world. He'd never be able to get one to take him seriously.
"He's a really nice guy." Ian searched for a word. "Modest."
"Oh, Leo made sure of that. Mike and Charlotte had a strict upbringing. They had to work for everything and save up from their allowance if they wanted something special. They even had to clean their own rooms and call the staff
sir
and
ma'am
. No cosseting at all. They got a lot of love, but they definitely weren't spoiled. It was all duty and discipline." Livvie was speeding along, obviously happy to talk. "Leo detests rich brats. He thinks they should be sent to gulags until they shape up. Or shot. Or both."
It explained everything about Mike and why he was so anxious to serve. Ian hadn't met Charlotte yet. His only window on her was Mike's occasional comments about the Alien Queen.
"Is that why Mike doesn't have many friends?"
Livvie nodded. "He feels safe with regular people. But when they find out who he is,
they
get scared."
"Rob's not scared of him."
"Ah, Rob operates on another plane of existence." Livvie smiled to herself, all vivid white teeth. "If you want to see how the
normal
rich live, that'd be Charlotte and Jonathan and their Midwich Cuckoo kids. Mike can't cope with all that. Or Machiavellian politics. He needs everything to be noble, uncomplicated, and transparent."