Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

“Luke. Please. I need you. Ten minutes.”

He craned his neck down the hallway, as if to verify its emptiness.

“In here,” he said, summoning her back into his office.

She followed and shut the door. Despite the room’s airiness, it felt claustrophobic.

“Do you want to sit down?” He gestured toward the Lucite.

“I don’t,” she said.

“What’s up?” He was impatient. “I have to be somewhere in an hour.” She heard an uncertainty in his voice. She reminded herself of the basics of communicating with Luke. With all men. Joining them emotionally, wherever they were. Not letting the vicissitudes of your own wild, unhinged, female feelings take charge. Corroborating those feelings, that state of being, and then soothing it.

“What is it? You seem…” She searched for the word. It was squirrelly or skittish , but that would only make him retreat from her. “Preoccupied. Worried. I can tell you’re upset about something.” She could. It was in the way he was holding his lips, contracted around his teeth. Pursed. The membrane holding his vulnerability was porous. Even now, with Gwen’s situation teeming in her mind, making her whole body feel on edge, she could see that to accuse Luke of anything would be foolish.

“What’s going on, Luke? You can tell me. As friends having a conversation. It’s not work unless you say it is. We’re partners, remember?”

“So what’s up?”

In Pushing Through , she’d instructed her readers to begin confrontational conversations with statements of feeling.

“I’m feeling worried, Luke.”

“About?”

“About information recently shared with me. Unexpected information.”

“No games, Tessa, remember? Tell me what you mean.”

She looked him in the eye. “I’m feeling concerned about Gwen’s pregnancy. I know you think it’s a psych issue, but I’m certain it’s also phys—”

He cut her off. “Okay, so you know.”

“I know what?”

“That she’s carrying twins. I’ve been wanting to tell you. But it posed a conflict.”

“What?” Tessa’s body electrified, as if she’d been plugged into a socket. “A conflict with me ? What about the conflict of not telling her ?”

“It was risk mitigation. To keep her from doing something dangerous before we knew we could stabilize the situation. We have every intention of telling her.”

“When? The Cohort’s due in a week!”

“When she goes into labor,” said Luke calmly. “When she’s officially no longer a flight risk. As you know, she’s demonstrated instability since she arrived here. It’s only progressed. Plus, there are some complications with the twins.”

She already knows, you bastard, she wanted to say.

“Complications?” she said, playing dumb.

“That’s where we’re fortunate, actually. The situation is extremely rare. The embryo Gupta implanted spontaneously divided. But it didn’t cleave entirely. The babies are conjoined, yes. But they’re attached at the sternum. Nothing but cartilage and tissue connecting them. No organs involved. They’ll be easy to separate.”

Relief flooded her, but she reminded herself not to trust him.

“Easy?” she said.

“Milford has it under control.”

“Really? And did Milford endorse this decision not to tell her? To willfully deceive a mother about the ultrasound images of her own baby?”

Luke sighed. “ Endorse is too strong a word. Let’s say he consented. It was a matter of unleashing Gwen’s hysteria over the span of many weeks, or containing it to the brief window of her labor. It wasn’t an easy decision, but it was the right one. The future of Seahorse was at stake.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” she said. “You’re not saving Seahorse. You’re just postponing its implosion. You think Gwen’s going to meekly slip back into the world with newborn twins and keep this story to herself?”

Luke steadied his gaze on her, contemplative.

“She’s not going back into the world. Not for some time, anyway.”

Tessa almost laughed. “What are you going to do? Hold us hostage?”

“Of course not. We’re putting together a protocol that will be in the best interest of all parties involved. Mothers, babies, and the Center. When everyone goes their separate ways, it will be in the spirit of calm and goodwill.”

When. Tessa felt a cold seep of dread in her shoulders. Over the years of working with Luke, she’d experienced a broad range of feelings toward him, but fear had never been one of them.

Until now.

Luke took a step toward the door of his office, apparently done with the conversation. “I know I can count on you to keep this conversation in total confidence, Tessa. I know nothing is more important to you than our work here, and the well-being of your Cohort. I know you’d never do anything to compromise either of those.”

His voice sounded deeper than usual. Ominous.

“I have a favor to ask of you, Luke.”

“Anything,” he said, with sarcasm.

“I need you to run an errand for me.”

“In what direction? Because I’m headed up to the city.”

“I’ll show you,” she said, and presented her phone.

“What the fuck is that?” said Luke.

“It’s in New Mexico,” said Tessa casually. She’d entered the coordinates Tracy had sent into a mapping application. “The middle of nowhere, actually.”

“This is getting weird, Tessa. Why the hell would I go to New Mexico for you?”

“Because for once, it’s the right thing to do.”

“For once?”

“I know about the Config samples, Luke. Have you heard of informed consent? Do you know there are serious penalties for using stolen genetic material for profit? The Feds don’t like it, Luke. It’s an ethical snake pit. Not to mention a PR nightmare. Have you heard of Henrietta Lacks?”

Luke stared at her, blinking. His unwashed brown curls splayed over his brows; Tessa resisted the impulse to brush them away from his face.

He was so young.

It was no excuse.

“You’ll need your plane,” she said matter-of-factly. “Plus a helicopter. So please check to see if your pilot’s available. You’ll be picking up a friend of mine tomorrow after midnight.”

“Tessa, hang on. Wait. I think you’ve gotten some bad information.”

“Just follow instructions,” said Tessa. “Don’t be late.” She made her way to the door.

“Wait,” Luke repeated. “Don’t be insane. Is this your hormones talking? Did you catch something from Gwen?”

“If you need me, I’ll be with the Cohort,” said Tessa, delivering a smile. “Have a safe trip.”

2021

Tracy lay in his residence and waited for his 11:00 p.m. shift to start, watching an opal half-moon take its post in the sky. Sleep had begun to evade him again. His body refused to sign off during the afternoon, so that he might be alert for his guard shift. Instead, he lay awake in his hut while the day burned on beyond his blackout shades, staring at the photos of his sister’s kids, his nieces and nephews, that he’d tacked to the wall above his bed ten years ago. He knew that even inmates, in time, usually had the desire to personalize their cells, but he’d never been able to bring himself to do it. Bethany had sent him more photos over the years, updated ones, routed to him at a snail’s pace via the post office addresses the Agency required him to use. But those kids, the ones in the new photos, were different people than the ones who’d climbed up his leg and bounced on his lap. They were teenagers now, full of restless desire, foreign to Tracy in a way that made him unable to put up their pictures. You couldn’t know someone unless you understood, precisely, what they wanted. What they feared. So he’d left the pictures of toddlers and kindergartners up for so long that they’d faded and curled at the edges, and beyond that paltry decor, nothing else. His “home” was nothing but an efficiency studio in the desert, blanker than his fake apartment in Cambridge.