Chapter 17
Fifty-Five Days Until the End of the Summer Excavation Season
The wind is cold by the time Geraldine’s satisfied with the half a dozen containers of thick sandwiches, fruit slices, and salty snacks she’s pressed into Ripley’s arms. A uniform line of leaden clouds advances steadily from the western horizon.
Ripley was hoping to outrun the storm, but they’re likely going to catch at least the northern edge of it.
Outside, Smithson’s gingerly touching the hood of the Charger like he’s trying to make friends with a wild beast. Ripley doesn’t remember seeing that gold signet ring on his little finger before.
Up close, she can make out a heraldic crest carved into the face.
It’s the kind of ring he could use to seal a letter that started with My darling.
She needs to stop overinterpreting the way his eyes jump away whenever she looks in his direction. Stop remembering the stutter in his breath when she braced herself against him yesterday afternoon. Stop thinking about how much she likes that he insisted on coming along.
He doesn’t want anything beyond friendship from her. Plus, his reputation wouldn’t exactly benefit from being associated with hers. With eight weeks left to find the rest of Beauty—fewer, with the storm delays—neither of them has time to flirt.
Smithson frowns. “What are you wearing?”
She looks down at her sunshine-yellow cropped sweatshirt, canvas shorts, and tennis shoes. “I keep some street clothes at Geraldine’s.” She’s also fixed her hair in two braids instead of one and added a black baseball cap and aviators. She didn’t overthink it at all.
“Hey,” she says, noticing a pile of clothes in the back seat right where she was going to put the food. “Did you take my coat out of the trunk?”
He scowls, twisting his ring. “You should have warm outerwear ready to go in case we break down in the rain.”
She stares at the coat. At the boots tucked behind her seat. He had thought of her, worried about her, wanted her to be comfortable. Then he had to figure out what she needed, find it, put it where she could access it. So many steps.
“Let me guess. It’s for science, right?”
“No. I’m feeling…” He pushes up his glasses testily. “If I tell you I’m nervous, will you promise not to coddle me?”
He shoves his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunching inward like he’s trying to keep his heart from escaping his chest. She wants to hug him, but that probably falls under the definition of coddling.
“It’s not too late to change your—okay, okay,” she says at his fierce look. “Just…tell me what you need, all right?”
She takes it easy all the way to I-15. Whenever she checks on him, he’s staring at the road. Never at the tree-lined mountains or the rounded hills braided with paths of runoff. One hand clutches the burled wood of the dash like he’s using the Force.
“Why do you own a car like this?” he asks eventually.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re a serious person. Very driven. And this car is…”
“Unserious.”
He gives her a look like If the shoe fits…“It can’t hold many fossils.”
“This car was my dad’s. He bought it for joy.
” That’s what Steve Adams had said when they’d torn down the highway on their weekend trips, hollering along to music she picked from the CDs he kept in a soft-covered black binder: Alanis Morissette, Our Lady Peace, Lauryn Hill.
He’d bought the Charger used, installed the wood trim with his own hands.
He’d also rebuilt the engine, replaced the clouded Plexiglas over the timeless analog instrument panel, and refurbished the classic tan leather upholstery.
He gave the car to her the day he rang the discharge bell on the oncology unit. Have fun, Pip. Roll the windows down and drive fast. Live your life.
Which she will, as soon as she’s in a position to help him live his.
“This is what you do for joy? Drive?” Smithson asks, giving her that searching, classifying look.
“Among other things. Why?”
“I haven’t seen you take the time to do it, is all.”
For some reason, her eyes get hot and tingly. “I’m doing it now.”
“I suppose you are,” he says in a way that clearly means You might be if I weren’t here.
She sends him a look. “You don’t have to go fast to have fun, Smithson. What do you usually do on road trips? You want music? Podcasts? Games?”
“Games?” Smithson frowns. “Shouldn’t you watch the road?” The morning sun moves across his thighs as he shifts in his seat, nervous and stiff.
“We’re not talking chess,” she says in a non-coddling way. “Think license-plate games. Word games. Didn’t you have siblings who saddled you with the letter X when you were naming animals for every letter of the alphabet?”
“Xenotarsosaurus,” he says immediately.
“Living animals.”
“Xeme.”
“Okay, well, it’s hard for most of us,” Ripley says. “What about a podcast?”
“Too distracting.”
“Music?”
“That depends,” he says forbiddingly. “Do you sing along?”
“Only by request.”
“My request?”
“No, mine.”
“Would you mind terribly if I said I’d rather you not?” It’s not a question.
“That doesn’t leave a whole lot on the table, Professor. I don’t know if you know how long seven hours is.”
“We could converse,” he concedes reluctantly. “About light topics.”
“Light topics,” she repeats, letting the sarcasm flow freely. “So what are the no-fly zones here? What do we not discuss?”
He looks at her sideways. “I thought all Americans had ready-made lists of forbidden subjects.”
“You’re not my racist uncle Marty at Thanksgiving dinner. And you’re not American, so how should I know what not to bring up? Brexit? The Loch Ness Monster? Your racist uncle Marty? Enlighten me.”
“Oh, absolutely not Nessie,” he says, faintly smiling. “That’s a powder keg. Mo’s ass?” he says, parroting the crew’s mosasaur joke.
“Yo’ ass.” Ripley laughs. “And Nessie isn’t a mosasaur. She’s a plesiosaur.”
“Hmm, marine reptiles,” he says dismissively. “They’re not particularly interesting.”
“Um, the Scottish tourism board would like a word.”
Arguing light topics with Smithson is good for him.
After ten minutes, he’s actually using the headrest. Fifty more, and he’s watching the scenery, his spine the same shape as his bucket seat.
At ninety minutes, he allows that since the rain is holding off and she doesn’t need to avoid all distractions, they may listen to a podcast. Ripley chooses one about a Canadian con man who absconded to England in the nineties with millions of dollars’ worth of gold.
She jokingly accuses Smithson of agreeing to the podcast in order to duck out of a debate that she was winning; he crossly asks if she wants to listen to the crimes or not.
Two episodes later, he’s hooked. “I know that street,” he announces proudly whenever the narrator mentions a road with houses that don’t have numbers, only names.
They break for sandwiches at a rest stop an hour from the border.
Smithson insists on reading the historical plaque, then visiting the “scenic viewpoint,” which is just some farmland and, in the distance, a hill.
She laughs at him, but he refuses to be shamed for spending twenty minutes watching crows gather around what’s probably a wolf’s leftovers.
Ripley teases him as they pull back onto the highway.
“First the alphabet games, now scenic outlooks. Don’t try this at home, or your family will disown you. ”
He leans forward, head tilted up to the darkening sky. In her peripheral vision, Ripley catches the flutter of his right hand twisting the ring.
She glances over. “Sorry, have they actually disowned you and I’ve stepped in shit?”
“What a charming expression,” he says, but he’s wearing a small smile. Ripley wants to reach over and put her hand on his knee. She wants to rake her fingers through his curls and tug. She should have put the podcast back on.
“And no, I’m not disowned. All my siblings and I have trust funds,” he continues.
She decides to let the trust-fund thing slide. “Yes, Google said you had sixteen siblings.”
“Only four. Linus and Marie are older than me. The younger girls, Cavendish and Faraday, are still teenagers. No one calls Faraday by that name, though. She’s a Daisy through and through.” Ripley can tell from the curl in his voice that Daisy’s the sister who demands bolstering. His favorite.
“Marie and Linus, as in Curie and Pauling? And then Cavendish and Faraday? How did you dodge the famous chemistry namesake?”
“I got Alfred, actually. For Nobel. We all got James as a middle name. Even the girls.”
She can’t hold back a short, sharp ha. “You are shitting me.”
He ducks his head, seeming pleased by her reaction. As if making her laugh makes him feel better. She focuses on the road, willing away the heat that’s climbing her neck.
“It’s true, alas. Or, it was true. I changed my name when I published my first paper. Now it’s James Alfred Smithson. Still rather a bear. One does wish to get out from under the legacy of it all. From time to time.”
“Right,” Ripley says slowly. She’s spent a month using his last name. His legacy name. Yes, he said she could, but she doesn’t feel great about it now. “What did your parents say when you told them you wanted to change it?”
“I didn’t tell my dad. It’s bad enough that I didn’t go into chemistry.
” He raises a forbidding forefinger, his face assuming a scowl Ripley hasn’t seen before.
“ ‘My children’s names honor the spirit of science. Whereas the vast majority of artists never make a living, much less a name, every scientific advancement matters. Science. Never. Dies.’ ”
His impression of his dad is terrifying, largely because he’s playing it as funny. She has the awful feeling she knows why he’s making light of his art.
“Anyway. My father still believes the name on my first publication was a clerical error, but he instructed me to carry on using James A. Smithson after that, since my professional identity was now established.” A ghost of a smile touches his lips.