Ghost Planet (31 page)

“Oh my God, Rose! I was afraid to hope.”

“Hey!” Murphy gripped his arm. “Let her go!”

“Back off,” snapped Peter.

“Peter—Jesus—what are you doing here?
Are
you here?” I seriously questioned my sanity. How was this possible?

“Peter?”
Murphy stared at him, dropping his arm. His eyes moved back to me. “Who is Rose?”

I swallowed. “It’s a nickname.”

My eyes moved over Peter’s face. He was the same as ever. Lanky and good looking. Not as tall as Murphy, but similar in ways that had never occurred to me before. Dark hair, though Peter’s was coarser, wavy, and shoulder-length. Fair skin that burned easily. High cheekbones and a square jaw. But Peter’s eyes were smaller, and brown, with a slight upward cast that I always teased gave him an elfish look.

“What are you
doing
here?” I repeated.

“I came for you,” he breathed, hugging me close. “I can’t believe this, Rose.”

My gaze moved to Murphy’s face, and the strain and confusion I saw there helped me to focus. “Peter, let go of me for a minute. I need to sit down.”

He drew back, studying me, and he loosened his grip. Murphy pulled out one of the chairs and I sank down. Peter glanced around and found the other one, dragging it over to sit across from me. He reached for my hands.

My heart was beating too fast. I felt dizzy. “I don’t think you understand—I’m not Rose, Peter. Rose died in a transport accident.” My stomach twisted in anticipation of his reaction. “I’m a ghost.”

He gave me a puzzled smile. “I know that. It almost killed me. God, I was
furious
with you. But I read all your research on this hellhole you insisted on running to, and I went to visit that training facility. At that point I’d made up my mind to come here and do an investigative piece. But then one of my sources got hold of a message from the woman who runs the Symbiont Research Institute. That’s when I learned you were alive.”

I stared at Peter, dumbfounded. He bent closer, pressing my hands between his. “That message you sent saying you loved me—it came after you died, and at the time I assumed it had been delayed. But it wasn’t.
You
sent it. I knew I had to find you and help you.”

Oh God.
The message I’d decided not to send. I must have done it in the process of smashing the display.

He continued to study my face. “Are you all right? You look so pale. Are you glad to see me?”

My stomach and my brain were in knots. I looked at Murphy and he picked up on my silent plea for help.

“I think you’ve given her a bit of a shock,” he said. “Why don’t you let her have a minute to think? Introduce us to your friend.” Murphy nodded toward a girl lurking shyly in the doorway.

Peter’s gaze fixed on Murphy, taking him in for the first time. “I understand how things work here, and I know who you are. But this has nothing to do with you.”

I cleared my throat to steady my voice. “That’s not true, Peter. Murphy is…”
The love of my life? The father of my child?

Murphy came to my rescue, filling in the gap with, “Good to meet you, Peter.”

Then he did something that at the time seemed accidental, but later I wondered. He reached out a hand to Peter, and as they stiffly shook hands, Murphy’s other hand came to my shoulder. The moment he touched me I felt a surge of emotion from Peter, as I had when I shook hands with Hank.

Excitement. Relief. Desire. Love.

Confusion. Jealousy. A sprouting seed of anger.

Murphy’s hand fell away, cutting off the flow.

“How do you know Elizabeth?” Peter’s voice was tight. Quietly threatening.

I raised my fingers to my throbbing temples. “We both met Murphy in Ireland, Peter. He was our tour guide at Trinity College.”

“What?” He stared hard at Murphy, his face red with anger. “I’ve been making myself crazy over this, Rose. I thought maybe you knew him from school, or had a fling you never told me about. Why are you the ghost of a man you spoke to
once
?”

Murphy had made a lasting impression on me. Apparently not on Peter.

“I don’t know, but I’m not his ghost anymore.” I felt Murphy’s eyes on me. “I’ve detached.” This was somewhat misleading, and I worried about what Murphy might read into me saying it at this particular moment. But I needed to defuse Peter’s temper and get him out of the apartment.

“I didn’t know that was possible,” Peter replied, his smile slowly returning. “That—that’s great news, Rose.”

I glanced again at Murphy. He had his arms crossed, thumb on his chin, and he was watching me closely, his own expression carefully guarded.

“Peter, I need to ask you to go,” I said. “I do want to talk to you and explain better. And I want to hear the rest of your story. But I need some time to take this in. You have to understand—I never expected to see any of my old connections again. I believed I was dead to all of you.”

He scooted his chair toward me, leaning close. “I know it’s a shock. I can hardly get my own head around it. But, God, I can’t help it—I love you, Rose, and I’m so happy to see you. Let me walk you back to wherever you live. We can talk in private. Or not talk. I won’t pressure you about anything. Just give me a few minutes alone with you.”

How many times had the two of us been down this road?

“
This
is where I live, Peter,” I said. “With Murphy.”

His smile dissolved. “I thought you said—”

“I did, but it’s more complicated than that.”

Peter’s expression darkened. “Cut the psychologist bullshit, Rose. What you mean is you’re sleeping with him. That’s not complicated.”

Murphy stepped forward, looming over Peter. “Ease off, now. You’ve no cause to be angry with her. Why don’t you give her the time she’s asked for?”

Peter’s eyes bored into Murphy, but his face softened as he looked at me again. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have said that. If you want me to go, I’ll go.”

“I’ll come find you later. I promise.”

Peter got up slowly and bent to kiss my cheek. Then he joined the young girl at the door, glancing back once before he left us.

Murphy sat down in the chair Peter had vacated.

I sighed, dropping my face in my hands. His hand caressed the back of my head.

“You all right? You looked like maybe you were going to be sick.”

“I come all this way to get away from him, ride to my death in a transport, get reincarnated as an
alien
, and he follows me because he thinks I need to be rescued.” I laughed as a tear slipped onto my hand. “Who would do such a thing?”

“It’s unbelievably romantic.”

“It’s unbelievably
insane
. And just like him too.” I raised my head. “But he doesn’t understand. It’s not me he’s in love with.”

Now Murphy laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “You have to stop doing that, Elizabeth. It’s become like a defense mechanism for you. You’re afraid it’s what people will think, so you try to beat them to it.” My face grew warm. Was that what I was doing? “You
are
her,” he continued. “You may be in a new body, but for all practical purposes, you are her. She’s you. And he’s still very much in love with you.”

I stared down at my folded hands. “This is completely nuts.
He’s
completely nuts.”

“Is that your professional assessment, love?” I glanced up again to find him smiling. “Why in God’s name does he call you Rose?”

“Rose is my middle name. His mother’s name is Elizabeth. He finds it creepy, especially when we—um…”

“I see.” Murphy squeezed my knee and stood up. “I’ll go out and make the rounds. You take some time for yourself. Or if you like I’ll fetch him again so you can talk alone. I only stayed to make sure you were okay.” I gave him a dubious look and he chuckled. “Maybe it wasn’t the only reason.”

I got up and moved close to him. “Murphy…”

He put his arms around my waist. “You couldn’t have foreseen this. I don’t want you to say anything right now. I know you’re going to need to work though it.”

“What I really need is for you to kiss me. Is that a possibility?”

He smiled and gave me a soft but chaste kiss.

Sighing, I hooked my hand through his arm. “I don’t want time to myself. Let’s go to work.”

*   *   *

Murphy and I managed to put Peter behind us and put in a full day together.

In assessing the needs of the camp, we discovered Blake had everyone organized and working efficiently, so there was really nothing to be done but make sure they kept getting the supplies they needed. Apparently there was a stash of money in New Seattle, in an account managed by the woman Ian had met. No one seemed to know where the money had come from, nor could we find the answer in any of Blake’s records. But at the moment it was the least of our worries.

We spent most of the day working on detachment—educating the others in camp and assessing potential difficulties. In the process we experimented with our new empathic tools. The ethics of this were a little dubious. But we couldn’t actually read anyone’s thoughts, and gauging their emotions helped us to ask the right questions.

When the sun had slipped down behind the western wall, we stretched out by the river to relax before dinner. We’d only been there a few minutes when Peter joined us.

He introduced us to Emily, his young cousin. I remembered him telling me once that she had died of a brain tumor when she was eleven. He had only been nine at the time, and it had made a deep impression on him. Now he was almost twenty years her elder.

After the introductions, Peter’s gaze settled on me. “Do you have some time to talk now, Rose?”

It was impossible not to react to the sound of his voice. Impossible not to react to the use of this nickname, which recalled all of our years of intimacy into the present moment.

There was really no point in putting this off. I glanced at Murphy, and he lifted his eyebrows slightly, as if to say, “You don’t need my approval.” Which of course was true. But still.

He stood up, and I said, “See you at home.”

He winked at me, but went off looking uneasy.

Peter asked Emily to wait for him downriver, and when she’d gone he scooted into Murphy’s spot. We sat quietly for a minute or two, listening to the chickadees in the willow branches. I had spent the day outside my own head, and it had been exactly what I’d needed to order the confusion Peter’s sudden arrival had caused. I knew what I wanted to say to him. But getting started was hard.

I decided to ease into it. “How did you find me, Peter?”

He smiled. “That was a lucky break. I knew from Mitchell’s message that you were taken to the institute, and my original plan was to follow you there. But one day in a counseling session in New Seattle I overheard one of the shrinks say that you and Murphy had escaped. So I started researching possible hiding places. I’d caught a whiff of a rumor about a resistance group, and once I’d pulled that thread I didn’t find the rest too hard to unravel. I was honest with Blake about my background—told him I wanted to embed there, so I could document his story. Hard for a man like him to resist.”

“That doesn’t sound like luck to me,” I said with a laugh. “More like your typical resourcefulness.”

“The lucky part was I didn’t know I’d find you here. I just figured it was a good place to start.” He met my gaze. “You’re looking well. Something here agrees with you.”

Indeed
. “So are you, Peter. I’m glad to see you.”

Peter worked as a journalist—more accurate to say he
lived
as a journalist—and at this point he began asking questions, one by one, methodical and thorough. By the end of it I had told him our whole story, omitting only the more personal details—the progress of my relationship with Murphy, and my pregnancy. I’m not sure why I shied away from the latter. Everyone in camp knew, and it was better he heard it from me. But I wasn’t ready to discuss it with him.

“So you’ve forgiven him for turning his back on you like that,” observed Peter. “I don’t think I would have been able to let it go.”

“I could forgive him because I understood him. Our roles on Ardagh 1 were the same. Or they would have been if I hadn’t died.”

Peter shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have been able to do it. Your heart’s too big. Always has been.”

“I don’t know about that. Hardly anyone questions it here. It’s become their way of life.”

“It’s fucking criminal. I don’t know how these people live with themselves.”

I couldn’t suppress a fond smile. “You always were a sucker for the downtrodden.”

Peter’s life would have driven most people to suicide. He gravitated toward stories of abuse and oppression. Starvation and disease.

“I could write a whole series on your experiences and discoveries alone,” he said. “I promise you I’m going to make the people on Earth pay attention to what’s going on here.” He reached up and brushed my cheek with his fingers. “We’d make a great team, Rose.”

I dropped my gaze, rubbing my arms for warmth, but more to give myself time to figure out how to answer him without hurting him. But I miscalculated.

“You don’t have a jacket.” He slipped an arm around me, pulling me against him and resting his chin on my head.

“Peter—”

“Sorry,” he muttered, dropping his arm. “Listen, I know you didn’t expect this. You’ve been through hell, and you’ve moved on with your life. I understand that. But I need you to tell me—now that I’m here, will you give me a chance?”

I shook my head, my throat tightening.

“You’re sure? We’ve taken breaks from each other before, and you’ve always come back to me. Could this be like that?”

“No.”
Simple, honest, direct. Don’t give him false hope.

“So you think you love this guy more than you love me.”

I looked at him squarely. “This thing that you did—I still can’t believe it, Peter. Coming here to help me. Not knowing whether you’d find me, or what I’d be like if you did. I’m never going to forget it. I’ll always be grateful to you. And I do love you.”

He nodded slowly. “Now comes the ‘but.’”