Invisible (28 page)

“Look, Dana. It may just seem like hand lotion to you, but it’s an incredibly competitive industry. You have no idea. We’re just the little guy, trying to hold our own against the giants. You’d never even get this far in Procter and Gamble. You wouldn’t even get in the door.”

“I just want to run the machine. I won’t even look at what they’re doing.”

“Three hundred people depend on me for their livelihoods.”

“You want me to sign a confidentiality agreement?”

He hesitated. For one incredulous second, I thought he’d take me up on it. Then he turned on his heel and I followed him down the long white hallway to a double door without windows and a lockbox attached to the wall. I remembered when it was just a door, propped open with a shipping crate.

“Wow,” I exclaimed. “You really are serious about security.”

“I told you. It’s a competitive business. There’s a lot of money in skin care.” He punched in a code and swung open the door. “You have to glove up.”

This wasn’t the small, low-ceilinged room I’d once worked in. This place was two stories of blazing white. Pipes ran along the ceiling and fed down in spirals to rows of industrial-sized bins and funnels, manned by lab-coated people wearing paper masks over their noses and mouths. Conveyor belts looped around the exterior. Electrical boxes were mounted at regular intervals.

Brian handed me a paper mask. “This, too.”

People watched me as I walked around. Their gazes darted from me to Brian, and then to one another. Brian stopped to speak to one woman in a long white lab coat. I frowned down at the machine in my hand. Could it be malfunctioning? No, it
would display a code if there were something wrong. It was working perfectly.

“What about runoff?” I asked.

“We stopped running waste into the lake when Brian took over.”

Not Brian’s voice, but Frank’s. Surprised, I looked up. Frank stood there in his gray coveralls, wiping his hands on a dirty rag, and wearing a face mask. His eyes regarded me coldly. My heart suddenly thumped with guilt, as if I were a little kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “What is that thing?”

“I told you,” I said. “I think something made Julie sick. I’m testing the air in here.”

“It’s all right, Frank,” Brian said, turning back. “She’s not finding anything.”

“You don’t have to put up with this on my account,” Frank told him.

I bristled at that. “I want to check the lake.”

The three of us stepped out into the warm spring afternoon and wended our way through the trees, the matted pine needles cushiony beneath our shoes. A bird cawed high above. A hawk, my father would have said. I gritted my teeth. It was being here that was summoning him back into memory. Peyton had brought him up, too, as we sat sipping tea in the predawn. Julie had apparently painted Peyton a nice portrait of a man who liked birds and carried around binoculars. I hadn’t been as careful as my sister had been. I’d let my anger show.

The trees rose behind us as we stood on the shore, the lake peaceful and still in the clear sunshine. No ripples or gurgles of underground pipes pushing debris into the water, no muck limning the sand.

“What did I tell you?” Frank had pulled off his mask and now it dangled from a finger. “Sorry, Brian.”

Talking through me as though I wasn’t even standing there.

“No problem,” Brian replied easily. “I think this was good. It calmed people down seeing Dana walk around with that thing. You know how riled up they got before.”

“Before what?” I asked.

The two men exchanged a glance, but neither replied.

“You mean, before, when Julie was asking the same questions?” I said. “Were you humoring
her
, too?”

“Of course not,” Brian said.

He was so calm, as though none of this involved him. “What if it was
your
wife, Brian? Wouldn’t you want to know what had made her sick? What if it was one of
your
little girls hooked up to those machines?”

“Hey,” Brian said sharply.

“That’s enough,” Frank warned.

I wheeled around. “That what you told her? That you’d had enough?”

“I never told Julie what to do.”

“But you didn’t help her, either, did you? You didn’t support her, or try to get to the bottom of anything. You just let her feel that she was crazy, thinking what she was thinking.”

“She was running around talking to people, exhausting herself. She’d drag herself home at all hours. It was pointless. She was sick and she needed to rest, and focus on getting better.”

“What she needed was for you to believe in her.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“I know my sister loved you.” My sister, who’d believed in fairy-tale endings, had died knowing they were all a lie. No one lived happily ever after.

Frank’s jaw tightened. “Meaning what? That I didn’t deserve it?”

I’d
never thought so, and he knew it.

“Look,” Brian said to me. “You ran your samples. Take this
path around the building. It’ll lead you to the parking lot.” He turned to Frank, dismissing me. “Got a minute? I’ve got a call I’d like you to sit in on.”

The two men walked back through the trees to the building. I watched them go, my gaze settling on the taller figure, and knew I’d been right. Brian wasn’t to be trusted. But having that confirmed didn’t make me feel better.

A motorboat buzzed in the distance. The water rolled to the shore; a breeze rustled the branches and stirred up the scent of pine. I looked down at the monitor in my hand and switched it off. I’d taken well over forty readings. Not a single one of them was positive.

If there was something out there, it was well-hidden.

 [PEYTON]

T
HE VIPERFISH HAS NEEDLE-SHARP TEETH THAT JUT
out of its distended lower jaw and curve all the way up to its forehead. All he has to do is bite down and his prey is pierced through and through, unable to wriggle away. The viperfish can’t really close its mouth but that’s all right. He’s willing to sacrifice that convenience for the ability to easily snare a meal in the deep cold water where food is hard to find
.

But he has to be really careful when he bites down. If he misjudges, he can get stuck with jaws cranked wide open, with no way to dislodge the fish and no way to consume it. Then, locked together, eye to eye, he and his captive wait for death to find them both
.

Who’s the real winner then?

“Mr. G wants to get you started on the line.” Fern glanced at her watch and strode down the hallway, Peyton trailing in her wake. “Though I don’t know how much we can get done in an hour.”

Not her fault, though Fern made it sound that way. Peyton
had come straight from school. Maybe Fern didn’t approve of teenagers working in Manufacturing, either. Maybe Peyton had taken the job from one of Fern’s friends.

She shuffled along in her bootie-covered shoes, hair encased in a net, lab coat flapping at the knees with the cuffs of the sleeves folded up to keep from drooping down to her fingertips. No fashion statement there.

Fern stopped by the door and punched in the code. “We change the code regularly.”

Yeah, everyone knew you had to watch out for moms wanting to steal vats of baby lotion.

The big room hummed with movement and noise as people moved around making sure all the machines were doing their thing.

“Here’s the rundown.” Fern stopped by two small metal containers screwed to the wall and tugged a set of latex gloves from one and a paper face mask from another. She handed both to Peyton, then removed a set for herself. Sliding the mask over her mouth and nose, she pulled the elastic around the back of her head, and her voice grew muffled. “I don’t expect you to memorize it, but it’ll at least give you a general idea of how things work.”

Peyton fitted the mask over her own face and tugged on her gloves.

Fern set off briskly down the center of the room. “Ingredients are stored in a large storeroom next door. We work with fifty-pound bags of materials, and you’re not expected to cart those around. The guys in the storeroom do that, and they use dollies. I don’t know where you’ll be assigned yet …”

“Sunscreen.”

“Oh?” Fern arched an eyebrow.

Peyton shrugged. “Mr. G told me he needed me working on the third line.”

“Well then, let’s head over there. That makes sense, I suppose. It’s one of our least complicated formulations.” Meaning a dumb
kid like Peyton could be trusted not to screw it up. Fern stopped and fixed Peyton with a stern look. “You do understand our formulas are proprietary. That means you have to keep them secret.”

Peyton knew what that meant. “I signed the form.”

“Mr. G has lawyers. They’ll sue.”

“My dad works here. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“Right.” Her expression softened. It was that same sorrowful look Peyton had endured on the faces of her teachers all day.
That’s right
, she was saying to herself,
poor little motherless girl
.

Peyton was glad the mask covered her face.

People stood at various stations along the catwalk, studying gauges, jotting notes on clipboards, watching as big paddles churned gray glop. Some of them looked familiar, but it was hard to tell with just their eyes peeping over the bridges of their masks. Three of them stood close together studying a caliper-looking instrument, murmuring and shaking their heads. Another passed by and stopped to contribute a comment that made them nod in agreement. She watched, transfixed. What was she doing up here, pretending she knew anything? Working in Shipping was a much better alternative. Nothing could go wrong there except for getting a paper cut or running out of packing tape.

Fern patted the funnel suspended above the first vat. “This is how we add ingredients. We do it sequentially, to ensure uniform mixing and consistent texture. Everything’s on a timer. Larry, this is Peyton Kelleher. Frank’s daughter.”

“Hello, Peyton, Frank’s daughter.”

“Hello.”

“I’m just about to add the Z4.”

“If you’ve already got it measured, could Peyton do it?” Fern asked. “Mr. G wants her to get up to speed quickly.”

“Well … it’s his company. Go ahead. You got three minutes.”

Three minutes wasn’t much time. Her palms felt sweaty. “What do I do?”

“It’s all been loaded into the system. All you have to do is push this button and guide the funnel.”

Well, sure. She could do that.

Fern made a motion, and Larry stepped back behind Peyton.

“Did you hear what happened?” Fern whispered.

“Hear it? I saw it.”

“Do you think he asked her?”

“The way I heard it, Dana asked him.”

Peyton stilled, listening. Fern must have caught it, because now she turned away and dropped her voice to a murmur.

Big metal paddles churned white muck that very definitely already looked like lotion. What would adding Z4 do? Larry had said she had three minutes. Did that mean the timer had already gone off, or it was going to go off in three minutes? She didn’t see a timer anywhere. She glanced behind her to ask and saw Fern and Larry with their heads close together, still gossiping about Dana. Well, what was three minutes? Might as well push it now. She turned back and her shoulder brushed the funnel, sending it swinging. A cascade of white powder spilled into the vat, then swung back to dump a stream onto her. She leaped back, smacking at herself.

Fern yelped. “What are you doing?”

“I got it, I got it.” Larry shouldered Peyton aside and punched a series of buttons.

Peyton’s cheeks flamed.
Stupid stupid
.

The assembly ground to a halt. People were looking over.

“It’s my fault,” Fern said. Larry nodded without looking up. He was levering up the paddles and examining the dripping liquid.

“Let’s go,” Fern said.

Feeling very much like a student being hauled to the principal’s office, Peyton climbed down the stairs and followed Fern across the floor. She looked down at herself helplessly. She hoped it wasn’t expensive powder.

•  •  •

“It was my fault.” Peyton sat in the passenger seat of her dad’s truck, lab coat bundled in her lap.

“Of course it wasn’t,” her dad answered. “Did someone tell you it was?”

“They didn’t have to.” She fingered a button on the lab coat, wiping the powder away from the slick surface with the side of her thumb.

“Fern should’ve known better than to let you run the machinery without any training.”

“They just told me to push a button. I’m the one who screwed it up.”

“What were they doing while you were pushing this button?”

“Talking.”

“What about?”

For some reason, she didn’t want to say. “Nothing.”

He glanced at her. “Well, it had to be something for them to have left a kid alone with a million-dollar piece of equipment.”

A million dollars? She sat back. Things could have been worse,
far
worse. What if she had broken the machine? The enormity of it made her physically sick. “I’m moving back to Shipping.”