Chapter 35 #3
Ripley tilts her head, confused. She does sometimes have to watch British movies with the subtitles on—maybe she missed something?
James materializes at her side. “Marie,” he says. “I thought you were sending someone else.”
“Delighted to see you too, Alfie. So this is your pet project,” she says, tilting her head at Ripley.
She feels James’s invisible flinch in her skin.
Alfie. Short for Alfred.
Alfred James Smithson, to be exact.
“Marie Smithson Wellesley,” Ripley says, almost to herself.
“Yes?” Marie says, a touch impatiently.
“From the Smithson Foundation.” For once, Ripley’s face isn’t burning. She touches her cheek with the back of her fingers. It’s cool, the skin tacky with sunscreen from her day at the fair. That feels like a million years ago now.
James’s hand comes to her elbow. “I can explain.”
“You lied to me, James.” Her heart feels fossilized—brittle and silent. At any moment, it might shatter into dusty pieces.
He rakes a hand through his hair, already wild after his hat blew off on the frantic ride. New freckles have appeared across his cheeks and nose. He’s more beautiful than ever, and her heart is not quite dead enough not to hurt when she looks at him and knows what he’s done.
“I never lied to you, Ripley. Never.”
“No, you elided certain things. But you knew the anonymous backer was you, and you knew I wouldn’t like it, and a lie of omission is still a lie, James. It’s semantics, and I seem to recall you saying that semantics matter in science.”
“I wouldn’t have done it if there were any other option, Ripley. I needed to be—” He closes his eyes briefly, then pushes up his glasses even though they’re not slipping down. “I promise that your project went through all the proper channels. It was approved by the board on its merits alone.”
“But the foundation has your name on it. Right? You’re probably on the board. Any publication that came from the grant would need to acknowledge the foundation. The Smithson Foundation.”
“It would be your work, Ripley,” he says desperately. “Your name would be first.”
“And yours would be last,” she says, the edge on her words so sharp it cuts her too.
“The fossils are going to fucking Oxford, James. Do you think anybody will believe that you didn’t drive this project from beginning to end?
That you didn’t point to the spot I should dig and then pat me on the head when something turned up? ”
She scrubs her hands over her face. “God, I fell for it again. Didn’t I?
I fell for someone who said he loved me, but really I wasn’t worth his time unless I could bring his career back from the dead.
You admitted you hadn’t published in three years.
You were desperate to get your work restarted.
You said that to my face, and I was still stupid enough to think I was what you wanted. ”
“Ripley—”
“Except,” she says, talking over him, “you didn’t even say you loved me. Right? We weren’t going to do that, you and I.”
Marie releases a scornful breath. “So this is why you missed Dad’s party. Although I suppose you observed his birthday the way he’d want, by shagging your way through the underlings, regardless of the cost to your family. Don’t tell me—she’s pregnant too.”
James turns spectacularly pale. He might not care if Will accuses him of sleeping with Ripley, but he sure cares when his sister does.
“A moment, I beg of you, Marie,” he says, his consonants so crisp, they shatter on impact.
“Of course,” Marie says, the words dripping with disgust. “I have a flight to catch, anyway. I’ll see you at your wedding, I suppose. Your first wedding.”
“Ripley,” James says once his sister is out of earshot. “You know me. It’s not like that.”
Steve Adams’s daughter would lean over and spit on this man’s shoes, then inform him she was breaking the funding agreement and dare him to sue her. But it’s like summer has ended in Ripley’s body. Winter is here, cold and crystalline. A season of grief.
“Then what is it like, James?” she asks dully. “Do you love me? Because I’m having a hard time believing someone who loved me could do this.”
He flinches for real, and her heart breaks a little more to know she made it happen. He doesn’t answer, though, and his silence forces Ripley to draw her own conclusions.
Her mom left when Ripley couldn’t make her dreams come true. Will left when he couldn’t transplant her work into his own career. James claimed he didn’t want to take any credit for Beauty, but everything he’s done has made that outcome inevitable.
The last thing left for him to do is to disappear too.
“I give up,” she says, her voice crackling. “This is enough. You should go.”
“It was the only way to keep Clever Girl alive,” he whispers. “Please, Ripley.”
“And now Clever Girl is dead, so good job, us, I guess. Walk away, James. Catch that flight your sister’s on. You were leaving anyway. What difference will seven days make?”
Seven days is nothing. Seven days is everything.
“All my things,” he says hollowly. “They’re at the dig.”
“I’ll overnight them,” she says. “Save you the trip.”