Invisible (31 page)

She had to hurry.

The grass was cold and damp on her bare feet, the driveway prickly with pebbles and sticks from last night’s rain as she walked fast to the garage. Over in her yard, Mrs. Stahlberg was a lumpy shape bent over her rosebushes, probably salting slugs or, worse, shaking poison all over everything to kill the Japanese beetles. Peyton had told her not to use those chemicals. They only ended up in the groundwater, but Mrs. Stahlberg had thrown her hands up in the air.
Oh, Peyton. One little flower patch isn’t going to matter
. Well, it wasn’t one little rose garden. It was all of them, hundreds of thousands, every rose gardener saying the same thing.

Peyton hurled her garage door along its creaky tracks, and ten feet away, Mrs. Stahlberg straightened.

“Peyton? What on earth are you doing out here, dressed like that?”

Peyton was wearing an oversized T-shirt. Everything was covered.

But Mrs. Stahlberg clearly hadn’t been expecting company. The bun on her head dangled just over one ear as though she’d slept on it wrong, and the hem of her housedress sagged. She tugged the sides of her sweater together. “Peyton. Is everything all right?”

Peyton yanked the string to the overhead light, flooding the gloomy space with a weak light that didn’t reach the corners. “Just getting something.”

“Like what?”

Peyton didn’t have to explain everything, just because Mrs. Stahlberg wanted to know.
“Something.”

Why hadn’t Peyton thought to store it under the kitchen sink, or even in the basement? It could be December with four-foot
drifts of snow she’d be working through to retrieve it. But she hadn’t been thinking. This whole past year, none of them had been thinking.

“Surely you could have put on a robe, honey.”

Surely
Mrs. Stahlberg could have put on a bra. “I won’t be long.”

“You never know who’s looking.”

The only one looking was Mrs. Stahlberg and maybe her creepy son. LT sometimes came around and stood in the bushes looking up at the house he had once lived in but didn’t anymore. And LT didn’t count. He was weird, but he wasn’t a perv.

The tank stood on a back shelf, the glass grimy with old cobwebs. At least the filter and heater were sealed in a heavy plastic bag. Her mom’s doing, no doubt. Another reminder of how large that space was that her mom had left behind. Peyton scowled, and walked quickly back to the house, through the kitchen, and down the hall.

She ran the water into the bathroom sink until it was warm enough, and filled the tank she’d just rubbed clean.

“Good morning, Peyton.” Dana stood in the doorway, her hair mussed and her bathrobe loosely knotted. She’d come home late the night before. Peyton had awoken to the quiet click of the back door and the sudden flare of light as Dana turned on the overhead down the hall.

“Morning.” Peyton slotted in the filter and the heater. The gravel would have to wait.

“Peyton—I need to talk to you about something.”

Peyton hurried down the hall to her room. How long had she been gone? Ten minutes, probably. The rainbowfish were sluggish in the morning. They might not even be awake. She set the tank on her dresser, dropped in the Stress Coat to condition the water, and picked up her net.

“What’s the matter?” Dana said. She’d followed her.

“My fish had babies.”

She came right up beside Peyton, and they both looked through the glass. The tiny fish hadn’t moved, though the adult endlers were beginning to stir. It was the sunlight starting to make its way into the room. She could have had all males, but she had felt sorry for them, living in that male-dominated world, showing off their stripes and flashy fins only for each other. She’d had to include two females.

Oops, over there, a rainbowfish darted through the doorway in the fake lighthouse. Peyton dipped in her net. She might be able to scoop them all up in one try.

There.

Carefully, catching the drips with her hand, Peyton carried the net over to the little tank and lowered it into the waiting water. The newborn fish were still for a moment, then suddenly zipped apart, like something had exploded in their midst. Peyton laughed. She couldn’t help it.

Dana had her hands on her knees, peering into the little tank. “I thought fish produced eggs.”

“Not these ones.” They looked like guppies now, but when they grew up, the males would develop all sorts of coloring—orange bellies, black tails, blue backs. Peyton nudged the small tank to face the bigger tank so the mommies could watch their babies play.

“Were their parents going to eat them?”

“Their mothers might. The rainbowfish definitely would.” They were normally mellow fish. It wouldn’t be a problem once the fry got bigger. Peyton pressed the light switch on the bigger tank, and the fish there came alive. She picked up the container of fish food and dusted some flakes onto the water’s surface.

“Will the babies eat the same thing?” Dana wanted to know.

“Just less of it. A fish’s stomach is the same size as its eye.”

“Cool.”

It
was
cool, all the intricate ways in which nature played itself
out. As Peyton set down the fish food, she saw Dana had picked up the container of Stress Coat. “That’s not food,” she said.

Dana raised her gaze to hers, then set down the bottle. “Right.”

The bathroom door closed, and the water pipes shuddered themselves awake. Peyton’s dad, starting his morning routine.

“Excuse me,” she said, and Dana moved aside.

Peyton carried the paper towels she’d used to clean out the tank into the kitchen and pulled out the trash bin from under the sink. There, beneath the banana peels and damp coffee grounds, she spied the solid brown lip of a bottle. Beer? She poked away a plastic wrapper to reveal the sturdy shoulders of a whiskey bottle.

Her dad had tricked her, waiting until she’d gone to bed before pulling out the hard stuff. And here she’d been, all stupidly happy about her new fish. She’d let him trick her into thinking he was okay. Or maybe not. Maybe he hadn’t been hiding this from her at all. Maybe the person he’d been trying to fool was Dana.

Did he think Dana could do something, keep him from drinking the way he had? If so, then Peyton should show Dana the bottle. It was scary, thinking about her dad slipping back to that distant place and leaving Peyton all alone. The last time, Peyton had had her mom. Who did she have now? Not Dana, that was for sure. Dana wasn’t someone Peyton could ever trust.

Peyton dropped the paper towels on top of the bottle, making sure it was completely covered, then pushed the trash bin back into place. She had to accept the truth. With her mom gone, she had no one.

Except, maybe, Eric.

 [DANA]

S
URPRISE
, I TOLD JULIE WHEN SHE GOT UP THAT
morning. I held up the knitting. She’d been right. It made a much better blanket than sweater.

How come you’re up so early?
she said, yawning.

The baby had hiccups
.

She sat beside me, fingered the rows.
Dana, this is great
.

I’m almost done. All I need to do is figure out how to end it
.

Let’s see
, she said.
What were the directions again?

A Closed sign hung in Lakeside’s window. Still, someone might have arrived early to start getting ready for the lunch crowd. I rapped on the door and peered through the glass. A man emerged from the gloom inside. Fred. He grinned when he saw me.

“Looking for coffee, huh? You can take the girl out of Minnesota, but you can’t take the Minnesota out of the girl.”

The interior was cool and dark, heavy with the compressed odors of stale cooking oil and beer.

“Cream, right?” He brought two cups over and we sat at the
counter. “So what’s up? I know you didn’t come all the way down here for a cup of French roast.”

I took a sip. Perfect. “I wanted to ask you about that salesman from the other night.” Mr. Specialty Chemicals. I had scanned the description on the bottle in Peyton’s room, and the word had leaped out at me.
Chemicals
.

He scratched his arm. “I wouldn’t have guessed he was your type.”

“Ha-ha. Would you happen to know if he’s still in town?”

“Let’s see. Probably. You couldn’t shut the guy up about that big deal he was closing in on and how he was thinking about buying a lake house. Can you see him ice fishing?”

“You know where he’s staying?”

“Don’t have a clue. Try the Tremont, though. It’s got the cheapest rates in town, and given how lousy a tipper the guy was, I’d say that would be the place for him.”

It turned out to be the third place I tried. I was at the reception desk when I heard that East Coast twang behind me. There he was, ruddy-faced, sparse hair swept back over a square forehead, striding across the lobby to keep up with a man in jeans and a sports coat.

“Never mind,” I told the front desk clerk. “I found him.”

“Come on, man,” he was saying. “Let me talk to my boss, see if I can rework the figures.”

The other man looked familiar. Doug Miller? Couple of years older than me, he’d been at Julie’s funeral, though he hadn’t come to the house afterward.

“You know you can’t beat our quality.”

Doug mumbled something, too quietly for me to make out.

The salesman shook his head. “Why haul me all the way out here for nothing?”

Doug passed me on his way to the front door, gave me a quick
nod. I nodded back as I walked over to where the salesman stood, stuffing papers into a soft-sided briefcase.

“Hey,” I said.

He glanced up, his gaze blank, then he brought me into focus. “Hey.” He rested his hand on his briefcase, giving me his full attention. “I’ve been looking for you. You never warned me about the mosquitoes.” He snapped the flaps on his briefcase. “I thought Florida was bad. Heck, this town even makes New Orleans look like a paradise.”

“It’s one of our hidden treasures. So how did your meeting go?”

“Guess you heard. They totally played me on this one, brought me in to make the other guy blink. I’d told my boss the deal was in the bag.” He picked up his case. “My wife already traded in her minivan.”

“You’re talking about Gerkey’s?”

“Didn’t have the decency to tell me this on the phone. They had to let me drag myself out here and wait around for a week before delivering the news. That’s no way to treat a guy.”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t.” We began walking to the elevator. “You said you sell specialty chemicals?”

“That’s right.” He punched the elevator button. “The wave of the future.”

“What’s special about the chemicals in hand lotion? I’ve looked at the ingredients—”

“They’re not there. You won’t find them listed on the label.”

“Why’s that?”

“People are touchy about what goes on their skin.” He snorted and watched the elevator door. “Like socks don’t touch you.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but he’d said something the other night in the bar. What was it? “Are you talking about nanotechnology?”

His eyebrows pinched together. “How did you know that?”

“You told me. What’s so special about nanotechnology?”

“It just means small.”

The elevator door slid open. I moved to keep him focused on me, and put my hand on his forearm. “How small? As small as a grain of salt?”

“A grain of salt would be a
planet
to a nanoparticle.”

There it was. My heart gave a funny little hiccup of recognition. I’d had my monitor set to pick up particles the size of asbestos fibers. Nano-sized particles would have slipped right by, undetected by the monitor’s sensors. The answer had been there all along. “You know,” I said, “I never got your name.”

“Greg,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about nanotechnology, Greg. I’d love to hear more. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“I’ve been inside this hotel for days now, waiting for a phone call. Get me out into the sun and you’ve got a deal.”

See?
Julie had said, her hands on mine, guiding and patient.
All you have to do is carry this loop over to the other needle, and draw it tight
.

 [PEYTON]