40. Office Hours #2
“Not with a researcher’s salary, he doesn’t.
But he works there.” I pointed another mile or two ahead of us.
A white observatory sat on a bit of cliff that jutted out over the sand.
The massive lens of a telescope protruded from the domed roof.
“It’s a research facility operated by a nearby university. It’s where his main office is.”
“And you’ve spent a lot of time looking at it on maps?”
Embarrassed heat rose in my face. “Why would you think that?”
“You’ve looked at it enough to recognize the shape of its coast on Lyria’s doorway. But I remember your father, Wren. He wasn’t exactly kind to you. Why do you think he’ll help us?”
“Because he won’t have a choice.” I took Ciarán by the hand and hastened us down the beach. “Besides, after eighteen years of pretending I don’t exist, he owes me.”
Between two more modest beach homes, a sandy path led to a set of concrete steps that climbed the bluff to the campus. When we stepped aside to let a couple of surfers pass, one gave us and our dirty clothes a double-take, but he followed his friend to the beach without saying anything.
I held my breath as we climbed the stairs. I’d imagined visiting my father’s research center so many times, but had long since accepted that I would probably never get to because of Mom’s animosity for her ex. Meeting my father for myself had only solidified that.
Yet here I was, walking onto the empty campus with my Grimguard in tow. We wandered over well-maintained footpaths that wove between wooden buildings that had probably been built decades ago. Fresh paint helped hide just how outdated the labs were, but funding was usually tight for research.
It was still a nice campus, all things considered. The long shadows of palm trees offered intermittent splashes of shade, and bright flowers of varying shapes lined the walkway.
I read each sign posted outside the buildings with feverish anticipation. There was a building dedicated just to sea lion studies, and another to ocean cartography. Ecology, biology, astronomy, and then—
The Brenton Building.
Dedicated to the study of continental drift, it was even named after my father.
It was smaller than the others, but had the best view of the ocean, second only to the observatory. I stepped up the wooden steps and jiggled the doorknob.
“Locked.” I swore under my breath, but Ciarán took my place and grabbed the doorknob for himself.
Orange light filtered between his knuckles, then faded. He twisted the handle, and the door swung outward at his bidding. He slipped a metal key, freshly forged from Skal, out of the keyhole.
The hall smelled like salt and dust, but in a cozy way that reminded me of warm summers and worn-out sandals. The lopsided floor creaked underfoot, and I walked slow and careful—a habit borne out of being in Skalterra too long and fearing that monsters could be hiding anywhere.
The door at the end of the hall had a mottled window that blurred the office beyond it, but a bronze plaque hung on the wall.
Maxwell Brenton, PhD.
“You’re okay,” Ciarán murmured.
I hadn’t realized I’d stopped walking.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” My voice was too casual. Even without the aid of our tether, Ciarán knew it was a front.
“I’ll get the door.”
He unlocked the office with the same trick he’d used on the front door, then stood to the side to let me enter my father’s office first.
A dusty window looked over the ocean swells, and a cluttered desk boasted sticky notes laden with illegible scribbles. The computer was at least new, and I wiggled the mouse to wake up the screen.
The date and time winked at me from the corner of the screensaver, and my heart plummeted.
“Dammit!” I fell back in the desk chair, pulling at my hair.
“What is it?”
“It’s Saturday.” It wasn’t the end of the world, though it wasn’t not the end of the world either, technically. It was just another thing. Another task on this never-ending journey home.
“And?” Ciarán prompted.
“And most people don’t work on Saturdays.” I had thought the campus was empty because it wasn’t open for the day yet, but no. It was the weekend. Maxwell Brenton wouldn’t be here for another two days.
“What if you tried the phone?” Ciarán asked. “That is a phone, right? I feel like I remember those.”
My eyes flitted to the desk phone. Had I really been in Skalterra so long that I’d forgotten about phones?
I straightened up and shot for the phone to jam Gams’s shop number into the keypad.
An angry, pulsing beat sounded on the other end, and I deflated.
The line was dead. Did that mean Mom was in danger? Or just that she wasn’t paying for the landline while she was overlooking Keel Watch?
I tried again. Then again, and then I threw the phone.
“Wren!” Ciarán grabbed me by my shoulders. “That won’t help.”
“It wasn’t helping anyway!” I pushed off his chest and turned away in anger, shame, and embarrassment, coming face to face with the wall of framed degrees that decorated the office.
Two doctorates, plus a Bachelor of Science.
The bachelor’s was the least impressive of the three, but I stared at my reflection in its glass cover, the college name projected over my cheek.
Von Leer University.
I was supposed to be preparing to move into Von Leer’s dorms. I was supposed to be admitted. I was supposed to be at home with my grandmother and mother, looking over the course catalog and worrying that my new roommate might be weird.
But it had all been taken from me, and now I had to save the world and my family and possibly give up my entire future to make sure it stayed saved.
And Maxwell Brenton, the man who had ignored his daughter, who had given up the chance to know me for his own convenience, for the convenience of the diplomas on the wall, the diplomas I so desperately wanted—
He had it all.
The dingy, underfunded research building. The career. The acclaim in his field.
And the one time in eighteen years I needed him, it was a Saturday and he wasn’t here, and I didn’t know why I was so surprised or hurt because he’d never been around.
Glass broke across my fist before I knew I’d even loosed the punch.
“Dammit!” I fell back into the chair, clutching my hand, and the diploma, shattered frame and all, fell to the floor.
Ciarán hurried around the desk to kneel in front of me. He took my hand to inspect the cuts the glass had left across my skin. “What did you do that for?”
“I don’t know!” I hissed through gritted teeth. After everything, I’d started to think I was immune to simple pain, but the glass had cut deep across my knuckles. “Dammit, that was stupid.”