LITMIR.BIZ

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Chance didn’t smile once.

      She hesitated, then finally opened the door and stuck her head in. “Is this a bad time? Should I come back later?”

      “That’d be good. Give us ten minutes, please,” Chance said.

      Ted turned and looked at her but didn’t seem to register her.

      She backed out, letting the door shut on its own, and leaned against the wall beside it. It seemed everyone was having some kind of crisis. And secrets.

      Annoyed at being left out of the loop, she wandered away, deciding to get a cup of coffee from the break room. As soon as she’d poured a cup, she got a text message from her mother:

      Hvng wndrful tme. Styng xtra wk. Love.

      Which reminded Sara Beth that her mother had never sent an itinerary. She’d said that she wouldn’t be out of cell-phone communication range, so what more did they need?

      Which possibly meant her mother wasn’t where she’d said she was going. Maybe she was with a man. More secrets.

      She typed Have fun in the text box and sent it to her mother, not asking the questions she wanted to, not calling her, either, figuring it would go to voice mail.

      Sara Beth sipped her coffee. Her life had gone from routine to unpredictable. She’d wanted to recapture some adventure, but the fun-and-games kind, not all this serious stuff.

      After ten minutes, she returned to the lab, dumping her mostly full coffee cup, since food and drink weren’t allowed. Ted and Chance were standing next to the centrifuge. Chance elbowed Ted, as if trying to get him to laugh, so Sara Beth felt free to go inside.

      “Thanks for waiting,” Chance said.

      “No problem. Is everything okay?”

      “Yes,” Ted answered, still looking serious, but not grim—or somber, or whatever that was she’d seen on his face before. “Good morning, Sara Beth.”

      “Hi. I have good news.” She didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she slipped them into her pockets. “I’ve been cleared to give you a lot more time so that we can finish up as soon as possible.”

      “That’s great,” Ted said.

      “I’m looking forward to getting back to normal myself,” Chance said. “Carrie’s doing an admirable job of filling in for you, Sara Beth, but she’s not you.”

      She smiled at the compliment. They did work well as a team. She respected him as a doctor. He was particularly good with the husbands, often counseling them separately through the in vitro process, knowing that most of the attention so often focused on the wives and their emotions. Sara Beth liked that he went the extra mile.

      “So,” she said, anticipation making her stomach do flip-flops. “I finished the latest box of files yesterday. Should I go to the vault and get more?”

      “I already did,” Ted said, pointing to the box next to her desk, which she hadn’t paid attention to, thinking it was the old box. “I hadn’t realized before, but I found out you’re not authorized.”

      Not authorized? She could never go into the vault? Never find her mother’s file? She grabbed her stomach, the pain so intense that nausea rose. She swallowed hard.

      “Hey.” Ted grabbed her as she swayed. “Sit down.”

      Chance rolled a chair behind her. She sank into it.

      “What’s wrong?” Ted asked, crouching in front of her, putting a hand on her forehead. “Are you sick?”

      She waded through the agony in her mind to find an answer for him. “I … had cereal this morning. Maybe the milk was bad,” she said, knowing it was lame, unable to think of anything else.

      Chance had his fingers on her wrist. Ted was lifting her eyelids, checking each eye.

      “Do you need to throw up?” he asked.

      The absurdity of the situation struck her. Here she was being tended to by two doctors, all because she’d been denied access to information she had no legal right to have, anyway. How guilty would she have felt if she had gone into the vault and gotten that information? What would she have done with it? She couldn’t contact the man after all these years, could she?

      No, it was better this way.

      And maybe at some point, she would actually believe that …

      “I’m okay. Really.” She gently pushed their hands away. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m all right now and ready to get to work.”

      “Just sit there for a while,” Ted said.

      She would rather go somewhere and cry, get it out of her system, but she was sure they wouldn’t let her out of their sight until they were satisfied she wasn’t going to pass out. “Okay,” she said.

      The timer on the centrifuge went off. As Ted reluctantly left her, Chance whispered, “Are you pregnant?”

      Shocked, she met his concerned gaze, her face heating up. “No!”

      “Sure?”

      “Yes. Positive.”

      He patted her shoulder, then joined Ted. Only a few words of their discussion reached her. Experiment. Risk. Won’t know until …

      Were they on the brink of success, then? Did they have something ready to try? Wouldn’t there be all sorts of hoops to jump through for the government first?

      She used her feet to push her chair to her desk and opened the box, pulling out a few folders, then turning on her computer, trying to accept defeat by reminding herself that when push came to shove, she may not even have followed through on her plan. She just wasn’t sure she could live with doing something so unethical.

      Sometime later Sara Beth felt herself in motion. Ted was pushing her chair to the lab door.

      “What? Hey! What’re you doing?” she asked, holding her feet up as they went.

      “You’re taking a break. You didn’t hear me call your name five times. I think I’ve rubbed off on you.”

      Not yet, you haven’t, but there’s hope. The thought made her smile, as did his taking care of her, worrying about her.

      “Go fuel yourself,” he said as she stood. “I don’t want to see you for at least a half hour.”

      “Breaks are fifteen minutes.”

      “Are you arguing with your boss?”

      “No, sir. I just don’t know how to take a half-hour break. I can do an hour for lunch, but a break? Can’t.”

      He didn’t roll his eyes, but he might as well have. “Whatever.”

      She laughed. “May I ask,” she said, getting serious, “if you and Chance have discovered something new? Something exciting? I couldn’t help but notice that you both seemed so intense.”

      “Maybe. That’s all I can say at this point.”

      The look in his eyes gave a different answer. “You did.” She squeezed his hand. “I won’t say anything, I promise.” Yet another secret to keep. She grinned at his caution-filled expression then she left the room, knowing he hadn’t shut the door yet and was watching her.

      Her heart was lighter. Even though she’d hoped so much to see her mother’s folder, she knew it would have weighed on her, too.

      It was better this way.

      Ted waited until Sara Beth was out of sight then he grabbed his cell phone and made the call he’d wanted to make for years.

      “Hey, Ted. How’s it going?” came the voice on the other end.

      Caller ID had taken the element of surprise from phone calls, Ted thought. “Good.

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