Warming Trend (15 page)

Ani scrubbed her shirt sleeve across her eyes. “They’re going to revoke my scholarship—they’re talking about making me pay it back. That I have to sign papers. I didn’t take Kenbrink’s notes out in the field, Eve. I didn’t!”

Maybe it was that she knew Ani so well, and didn’t think that Ani had ever lied to her—whatever it was, she heard the small hesitation all the more. Her blood turning cold, Eve had the unshakable, undeniable realization:
She’s lying
.

“Why do they think you did, honey? Why are people saying such awful things?”

“Because I left when we got back. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to. Nobody told me, but everyone else had been told. So that leaves just me. It doesn’t make sense to pick me, just because of that, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.” For the first time in her life, Eve prayed for her instincts to be wrong. Ani wouldn’t lie to her. “Is there more than just that?”

“When I came back in, I didn’t bring my pack. Monica said she told me to, but I don’t remember her saying anything about it. I tried to talk to Tan about it, but she’s got the dean and campus police breathing all over her. It’s like I don’t know anybody anymore—and they sure as hell don’t want to know me. Everybody thinks I took them, even after they turned up.”

Eve’s confusion doubled. “If they’ve been found, then what’s the problem?”

Fresh tears welled up in Ani’s eyes as a deep flush of red stained her throat and cheeks. “They turned up in a drainage culvert. They’d been in the water and none of the paper survived.”

Even loving her as she did, Eve thought Ani looked guilty, very guilty about something. “Anybody could have put it there.”

“Not when we came in. You were there—you’d have seen anyone veer off or throw something, wouldn’t you have?”

Eve nodded. “I was only looking for you but I still know that nobody left the group. So…they’re absolutely convinced that nobody but you could have done it?”

Ani nodded miserably and her dark eyes were wells of despair.

Eve drew Ani over to her narrow dorm room bed so they could sit. They had spent a night or two on it in the early days of their relationship, not at all unhappy that it was barely wide enough for both of them. The little shoebox of a dorm room had been large enough for an impromptu picnic during finals, when a tryst and what Ani called “Eve’s sacred brownies” had chased away the mid-winter blues.

It didn’t help to think about those times. She took Ani’s hand and squeezed. She might suspect that Ani was lying about something, but focusing on what they could fix right now seemed like a good idea. “Well, that’s not much of an argument. Last time I read a mystery it took more than opportunity to blame someone.”

“Oh, they have my motive all picked out. They just can’t figure out the means.” Ani looked deeply satisfied about that, convincing Eve all the more that she was hiding something.

“What’s the motive?”

“That I wanted an easy pass from my advisor.”

“Ridiculous. You’re more qualified than most of the other students.”

Ani swallowed. “People are saying worse than that.”

Eve patted Ani’s hand. “Tell me everything, honey. I want to help you. Just tell me.”

Ani turned her gaze to Eve’s, her expression completely open, eyes seemingly bottomless. In barely a whisper, she said, “I’m really sorry. I didn’t think it would turn out like this.”

Eve took a deep breath. Lovers can make mistakes, she told herself. All that matters is that we love each other. We can get through this together. “What did you do?”

“I did put the notes in the culvert. I’m the reason they’re ruined. I feel
awful
about that. I didn’t know it had clogged.” She burst into tears again, her abject misery adding to the growing ache in Eve’s heart.

“Oh, honey.” She slipped an arm around Ani, hiding her own tears in Ani’s hair. Her remorse was clear. An insidious voice insisted that so many thieves were sorry—when they got caught.

“I put them there so they would get found. I wanted someone to find them.”

“And then they’d stop wondering who had taken them.” Well, that was one way to cover her tracks.

Ani nodded vigorously. “I—we—I thought it would help.”

“We?” Oh, hell. She’s going to break my heart, Eve thought. Ani had always been a bit starstruck around Monica, but could it have been more than that all along? Was that what Monica thought Ani had misunderstood? “You and Monica?”

Ani nodded again, and wouldn’t meet Eve’s eyes.

Her heart couldn’t be broken, not yet. It was throbbing in her chest. “Monica knew you’d taken them?”

“I thought she wanted me to. I thought—thought it was what would help.”

“And was it?” Eve heard her tone growing cooler.

“I don’t know. She could have told them more. She
knows
that I put them there and she hasn’t told them.”

She’s protecting you, the way I want to protect you, Eve thought. There was only one reason Monica would be doing that, at least that Eve could think of. “Why did it matter so much doing something she wanted, when…when it could get you into this kind of trouble?”

“I couldn’t let them take away her life’s work.” Ani stared at their joined hands. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

“You wanted to protect her?”

Ani nodded. “It was all about her. The whole thing was about her. I didn’t matter.”

Eve pulled her hands away. “You risked everything—everything you’d worked for, trying to get some respect for a Bycall from the academic wizards who scorned your father, you did that for Monica Tyndell’s approval?”

“No, not like that.”

“Then what? For her affection?”

“You don’t understand.”

The sharp, slicing pain brought tears to her eyes. There. Now her heart was broken, she thought faintly. It was Cyndy all over again. Never got over the first love. Eve and all her foolish dreams were disposable. “No, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you could do it for her.”

“I thought that was—I was wrong. She didn’t want me—”

“How could you?” Eve put her hands over her ears. “Don’t tell me anymore, not now.”

She shot to her feet, trying to breathe, but her body was on autopilot. More important than air was getting away, trying to outrun the hurt. She ran past the elevator to the stairs, clattered down the four flights, averting her tear-streaked face from all the curious looks. People might know she was Ani’s girlfriend, but most didn’t know her name. The side exit was mercifully closest to her van. She locked herself in and finally let the tension and anger pour out as she cried into her hands.

You have to go back, one half of her was saying, you have to go back and listen.

No, you don’t, the other half argued. She tried to lie to you, too. She’s been lying all along about how she felt about another woman.

And when she told you the truth, you ran.

So what am I, superwoman?

Eve backed out of the parking space, alternating between trembling rage and limp exhaustion.
Am I supposed to know how to handle this?

She turned toward home, but found herself circling back to the electronics store at the end of the big box retail strip. Whatever Ani had done, they were treating her like a prisoner. A phone for her dorm room would be a peace offering for running away. Okay, maybe Ani was in love with someone else. Or maybe it was hero worship. Eve wasn’t going to get trapped into being an understanding friend when her lover dumped her, but she wouldn’t be a cold-hearted bitch either.

Check-out took forever with some kind of computer glitch, but Eve was glad of the time to calm herself. She hadn’t been thinking rationally. She also hadn’t eaten, and didn’t imagine Ani had either. At the drug store she picked up a couple of packets of crackers and cheese and some cold water. It would help them both, she was sure of it.

She had thought things could only get better, but her knock on Ani’s door was answered by Monica Tyndell, who looked drawn and distraught.

“What are you doing here?” Eve looked past her, and Monica stepped back.

“Ani’s not here. She left.”

“Going where?”

“I don’t know.” Monica sniffed. “I feel so terrible. I came up to see if I could help you two come up with a plan, and Ani was shoving clothes in a duffel. I guess I should have tried to talk her out of it, but her reputation is shot, and they’d put her in the poorhouse paying damages. I guess I agreed with her—they’ll have a harder time doing that if she’s not here.”

Eve glanced around the room. Clothes that had been hanging on pegs were gone, as were some books and the three pairs of boots that always lined up behind the door. The photo of her father and a dogsled team was gone. It hurt incredibly to see that the one of the two of them, at a New Year’s Eve party, was still there.

Surely she went to my house, Eve thought. I’ll catch up to her there.

But Ani had already come and gone by the time Eve got home. A few more books, her MP3 player, the fancy scientific watch Eve had given her for Christmas were all gone. Tonk looked like he always looked, happy to see her. If Ani had shared her plans, Tonk wasn’t telling.

That’s when the reality had hit her, so hard she’d slumped down to bury her face in Tonk’s deep, thick fur. Wherever Ani had gone, Tonk couldn’t go. Most nights since, not knowing where Ani was, Eve still hugged Tonk close for solace.

* * *

Ani’s sinuses were irritated and her eyes felt like they had sand under the lids. The stale, recirculated air in the plane was worse than the dry-as-a-bone chill of the club’s air conditioning. Even the sticky humidity of Key West would be welcome at this point. They had an hour to their landing in Seattle, then one last flight for a ten p.m. arrival in Anchorage. Lisa, at least, had had a nap. Ani was starting to feel like the walking dead.

“So she just ran out. Never let you explain.”

“I…well…”

Lisa gave her a scathing look. “Don’t tell me you didn’t try again.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

“You are such a chickenshit. And she’s no better,” Lisa declared.

“You know everything, don’t you?” Ani was back to thinking Lisa was a curse for her sins.

“You were so
perfect
for each other you couldn’t have a single, decent conversation when something bad happened?”

“They took my phone.”

“So
perfect
that you couldn’t walk however far it was to the nearest pay phone?”

“People were taping vicious notes to my door. I didn’t feel safe going outside and the biggest part of it all,” Ani said slowly, “was that I did do it. Part of it.”

“Okay, so confess to that. Take your medicine. But it’s not like you murdered the guy. You didn’t start this chain of events—you just made a mistake in the part you did play. It’s not like you swapped out someone’s board wax for ski wax. You didn’t take someone’s dreams away. Someone did that to you.”

Ani shook her head. “I don’t get off that easy. Because I destroyed those notes they had only a partial record of the expedition. One of the students had one day’s notations from camp one, and there was the data gathered after Kenbrink’s body went back to Fairbanks. That meant part of a multi-year study wasn’t finished and some grad students who had invested two or three years of their lives didn’t get what they had hoped. I did take somebody’s dreams. I knew it then, and Eve deserved better. The situation was FUBAR and I was the reason the notes were lost forever. If they’d been found I might have been able to face the rest of it down, because ultimately, no harm was done. But harm was done and I did it.”

Lisa was giving her that
you are so dense
look. “So what did you do after that?”

“I stuffed the things I needed into a duffel bag and headed for Eve’s. I did hope to talk to her, then, explain why I had to go. But she wasn’t there.”

She was grateful the parking lot had emptied, for the most part, and while there were still clusters of people around, the cap jammed down on her head and the big duffel in her arms made her look like one of the clean-up crew. She made it to her truck unaccosted. Almost immediately there was a knock on the window.

Her heart was pounding. It was Tan, and normally she would have been relieved, but Tan had been so distant this morning when Dean Malmoat had searched her backpack. When the dean had later told her she would have to pay back her scholarship, Tan was the first person she wanted to consult because she thought she’d get an honest answer. But she’d had no phone and nobody but Monica had come to see her after the dean had told her not to leave her room.

“Ani, what’s going on?” Tan’s mixed Inuit blood was most evident in her expressive eyes. “Where have you been?”

“They told me to stay in my room. So I did.”

“Oh. Nobody I asked knew that. Eve—”

“She found me,” Ani said bitterly. “Like everyone else, she didn’t want to listen. And I don’t know what to say except I didn’t take those notes in the field. Someone else did that.”

Tan nodded as if she believed Ani, but her expression was shuttered. “Well, this all has to be quite a shock for her. It was for me. Can’t you tell me about it? Where are you going?”

Ani couldn’t believe that Tan’s face held no hint of censure, but she suspected that Tan knew things she wasn’t telling. She couldn’t tell Tan about the attempt to frame Monica. What was the point? “It’s my fault the notes got ruined, Tan. I did that, that’s on me. I can’t afford to pay back my scholarship, so I’m getting out of here.”

“Ani, they can cancel your scholarship, but they can’t make you pay back what you’ve used. Who told you they could do that?”

Ani saw some people looking over at her truck, as if realizing she was now in it. “I’ll send you a note and let you know where I am, okay?”

“Ani, stay. This is bad, but maybe we can—”

“I have to go before they start throwing stuff.” She put the truck in gear and left Tan standing there. She wanted to trust Tan, but it was more clear than ever that Tan was part of the administration, and she’d do what the dean wanted. Tan might still be saying things could work out when they threw Ani into a dungeon and lost the key.

The drive to North Pole was surreal—the setting sun was blazing gold and orange, and the sky was china blue and free of clouds. She had hoped to spend this weekend moving to Eve’s. Hoped to spend the rest of the summer getting very comfortable in a new rhythm of life. Working out laundry and washing dishes and taking Tonk for walks. Sharing tins of soup and learning how to make a dish or two that Eve liked, so she could make her breakfast in bed sometimes. Read or relax together, with one blanket over them both. She had hoped for an uncomplicated life. Maybe, maybe if she tried again, explained again, maybe Eve would forgive her.