Chapter 11 #3
“Are you? Really?” He turns toward her, dish towel crumpled in his hand. “What happened to you, Ripley? Beyond what I read in the discipline summary from the University of Eastern Montana.”
“Wow,” she says miserably. “That’s public?”
“No. But there are channels.”
“That makes me feel so much better.”
“Tell me your side of the story, then. It’s rather unusual that Will Stone never published the theory he claimed you stole, don’t you think?
In fact, he never produced anything of that caliber again.
It makes me wonder whether, if one chose to dig deeper, one might find he has committed all manner of misdeeds to get where he is. ”
Ripley lets out a long breath before speaking. “My lawyer said Will can sue if I defame him. And he already won the disciplinary hearing, so…”
Smithson’s muscles flex far more than is necessary for him to throw the dish towel on the counter. “So it’s true. That bloody wanker,” he says passionately. “He should pray he never breaks down on a country road and my car is the next one to pass by.”
“Whoa. That is, uh, an extremely specific scenario for someone who doesn’t drive.”
He leans forward, hands splayed against the weathered Formica.
“What if I could get you funding that secured the academic rights to Beauty for you, Ripley? What if you and I could reveal the truth about Will? You could come back to your PhD. You could work with the best people, collaborate on the most exciting projects. You could slow down. Take your time instead of pushing yourself so bloody hard. I could find you a placement in a good lab. M-my lab, if necessary.” He looks down, catching his lip between his teeth.
Ripley picks up the last pot. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
His face looks like she drove a silver stake through his heart. “But why?”
Because even if they take Will down, it won’t undo the past three years. Because a grad-school stipend won’t pay her dad’s bills.
“I know you’ve never imagined a life outside academia, but I’ve built something good here, Smithson. A company. A community. It shouldn’t be so surprising that I want to keep it.”
“I’ve imagined a life outside academia,” he says, all huffy and affronted. But there’s a wisp of something underneath. Some emotion that, if he weren’t James Smithson, she’d call wistful. Longing, even.
“Okay, but for you it’s a thought exercise,” she says.
“For ninety-plus percent of paleontology PhDs, it’s reality.
There were four other people in my year at UEM.
One is now a children’s librarian. Another is a statistician for an insurance company.
The third is”—she shudders theatrically—“a private collector.”
He nods thoughtfully. “And the fourth is Will Stone.”
“Yup.” Back then, she hadn’t imagined a future where Will became a professor and her own career went extinct.
“My point is, universities train all those students knowing there are no jobs. Then they claim we shouldn’t touch fossils unless we have those jobs.
Well, I don’t accept that. So instead of telling me I should be one of your people, how about you try being one of us?
Here’s your chance to see how the other ninety percent lives. ”
She nudges him aside, dips the last pot in the rinse water, and lays it on the drying pad. “And since you’re one of us for now, I’ll find you a bike you can keep at the site. Geraldine probably has one in the barn somewhere. While you’re here, you can bike anywhere you need to go.”
His startled eyes flick to hers, the central starbursts catching the gold of the sinking sun. “I can drive back with the crew.”
“I’m sure you can. But you shouldn’t have to if you hate cars.”
“I don’t hate them.” He picks up the towel, folds it precisely in half, and hangs it over the towel bar. “I was in an accident when I was younger. Now I prefer nonmotorized transport whenever it’s feasible.”
He catches her reflexive glance at his leg, and her neck flushes with guilty heat. “So you don’t drive? You don’t fly?”
“I do both when there’s no other choice.”
“Noted, but when you’re on my dig, I’m responsible for ensuring you have the choices you need. I know I haven’t done a great job of looking after you so far. I’ll do better going forward.”
For a moment, something hovers between them, as delicate and golden as the last rays of a Montana sunset. It feels like possibility. Like they might be—
“Hey, Ripley. I think I left my—oh,” Jordin says, pulling up short at the swinging door, an anxious look on her button-nosed face. “Am I interrupting?”
They step away from each other, ridiculously synchronized. “Nope,” Ripley says right on top of Smithson’s “Absolutely not.”
“Oh-kayyyy,” Jordin says, deeply skeptical. She grabs Matteo’s hoodie from the back of her chair and shrugs it on over her tank top and cutoffs. “Are you coming out to the porch? Geraldine made cookies.”
“Be there in a minute,” Ripley says. “You go ahead, Smithson.”
He hesitates. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” she says, thinking he won’t get the reference to The Last Crusade.
“Easy there, Indiana Jones,” he says with a faint smile.
That’s the moment when she knows for sure that she’s in trouble.