Chapter 46

I hadn't paid a lot of attention to Jenna's house when we arrived. All my focus was centered on her. Now we step out the back door, and I take it in. It is rustic. Nothing like her brownstone in Boston. It's a large and sprawling house, showing signs of age. The back door sticks when Jenna leads us out, and the wooden porch sags. But what strikes me the most is how natural it is. The brown wooden siding blends with the landscape. There are no formal gardens like at her house in Boston. Large rocks divide raked dirt pathways from wildflowers and native plants, and a towering oak tree hovers over a large open area overlooking a pond. A rough wooden bench is almost invisible in its shade.

"This isn't what I expected."

"I used to live across the way." She points across the pond to what looks like the remnants of a house. A few stone walls remain standing, but most of it is overgrown with vines and weeds. The only intact building is a long greenhouse that sits on the back of the property.

"You lived in a greenhouse?"

She laughs. "No. The house burned down forty years ago. That's when I moved here. This place actually suits me better."

I look out at the pond and then back at her house, which almost looks like it's growing out of the landscape too. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Kara was all over Whitman like he was the one who invented words, but you were always more about Thoreau. Looks like you've found your own Walden here."

She grins. "You remember that?"

"I remember a lot. There was Dickinson. Millay. You and Kara had a long list of favorites." I look into her eyes for a second or two longer than I should, and she looks away.

"The house was left to me by the man whose art you saw on the wall, but I've continued to maintain the greenhouse over on the other side. That used to be Lily's. Come on. I'll take you over. There's something you need to see." She grabs my hand and pulls me down a gentle incline toward some woods. "There's a bridge this way we can use to cross." At the edge of the woods is a large wooden bridge that spans a small waterfall where the pond overflows into a briskly running creek. "This creek was just a trickle when I moved here--I could walk across on the stones--but construction upstream channeled more runoff into the stream that feeds it. It's especially bad after storms like the one we just had."

"Is this the pond where you..."

"Yes. I threw all three uploads right about there." She points to the center of the pond.

"You must have had quite an arm to get them out that far."

"I was desperate and determined. I wanted to make sure I threw them where my parents couldn't get to them, at least until..." She hesitates. "Until they were no longer viable. My father said that once they were removed from their battery docks, it would take about thirty minutes for the environments to stop spinning."

I stare at the glassy surface, trying to see it the way Jenna did. It was a different time. Trying to see it as a way out instead of as an ending. Thirty minutes was all it took. That's barely a blink compared to all the time I spent on a warehouse shelf. What did the other me think during those last minutes? Was he glad? Was I glad? Which one was, is, the real me? Both? A shiver runs down my arms, and I look away, which Jenna takes as a signal to move on.

We cross the bridge to the other side, and I get a closer glimpse of the remains of the house. "How did it burn down?"

She looks sideways at me and then at the ground. "A wildfire." I can dissect a quick glance with Jenna as well as I can with Miesha. Jenna's natural state was always reserved and calm--and careful. Like me, she grew up as a pleaser. But in a two-second glance beneath all her serenity, I see fury. It passes quickly. She probably doesn't even know I saw it. I doubt that her Bio Gel has all the abilities of my BioPerfect. I'm just beginning to realize I need to tap into its strengths more often. I can't ever be just who I was. I may as well make the most of whatever I am now.

I look at the rubble of what must have been an amazing house at one time. "With all the Fox fortune, I'm surprised you didn't rebuild."

She frowns. "There is no Fox fortune. At least not anymore." Her steps hesitate for just a second. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I still have both of these properties and a lot of adjoining acreage that I acquired over the years. That's more than many people have, plus I have a small income from some investments I've managed to hang on to. And with the money from the herbs and vegetables we sell, we get by."

I didn't see that coming in her glance. The Fox fortune was in the tens of billions. Maybe by today's standards, trillions. Where could it all have gone?

I guess I underestimated her Bio Gel, or maybe it is just old-fashioned perceptiveness, but she seems to have read my thoughts. "That's why I brought you over here. To explain a few things." We're almost at the greenhouse when the girl I saw at the market yesterday with Jenna emerges with a flat of seedlings in her hands. The small child who pried my eye open this morning bounces out right behind her with a smaller container of seedlings of her own. They spot us and walk over.

"Allys and Kayla, I'd like you to officially meet my friend Locke."

Allys grins. "We met last night, unofficially, though you wouldn't remember. You were a little woozy. Glad to see you're feeling better."

Did she help Jenna undress and bathe me? With my size and weight, Jenna couldn't have done it all by herself. My neck flashes with heat. "Nice to meet you. Officially. Thanks, for, uh--" I turn my attention to the little girl. "Nice to see you again too, Kayla. As you can see, I'm not dead."

"Good. You can help us with these."

Jenna exchanges a glance with Allys. "Not right now, Angel. Maybe later."

"Come on, Sweet Pea," Allys says, and begins walking away. "This lettuce needs your special touch."

Kayla chases after her, and Jenna looks after them both, smiling.

"How do you know them?" I ask.

Jenna turns, and we continue toward the greenhouse. "Allys is an old friend. A very old friend. She lives here with me now. And Kayla"--she reaches for the greenhouse door and pulls it open--"she's my daughter."

I stop halfway through the door. I can't hide my shock, and she smiles. "Come on, Locke, it's not that unusual. I may still look like the sixteen-year-old that you knew, but I have been around for a while. I haven't been sitting gazing at my navel all this time."

I nod like an idiot and then blurt out a question before I can even think about it myself. "Are you married?"

"I was. Ethan's been dead now for a hundred and ninety years, but we were married for seventy. He was a good man."

The numbers aren't adding up in my head. "But Kayla's only--"

"I was illegal the entire time Ethan and I were married. It didn't seem right to bring a child into our way of life. But we had saved everything that was necessary for a child if either of us ever felt the time was right. I had to use a surrogate for obvious reasons, but Kayla is one hundred percent ours."

"You've been alone for a hundred and ninety years? You never married again?"

She shakes her head. "It's hard enough to lose one husband. There have been a couple of people over the years...." She leans back against the door. "The thing is, Allys is just as old as I am. She was saved with Bio Gel about the same time I was. I've watched her outlive six husbands and what she's gone through each time. That's not for me. When you're like us, saying good-bye becomes a way of life, but I couldn't deliberately do that to myself over and over again like she does. She says she's done for good with love now, but it's only been six years since her last husband died. Give her time." She walks through the door, and I follow.

"So you're done for good?" I say to her back.

She pauses mid-step and shakes her head, then turns to face me. "I've learned never to say never about anything. The world proves me a liar every time I do. But I know I'm done with saying good-bye." She throws out her hands, sweeping them toward the plants. "So, what do you think?"

Nice change of subject, Jenna. That's what I think. I look around the greenhouse. Lots of plants. Green. Warm and wet. Woven hemp mats down neat rows of green stuff. All nice, but hardly important to me right now. I look back at her. She isn't getting it. The clock is ticking. I don't have time for tours or to admire her hobby. There's a madman after me and Kara. Not to mention, I haven't even begun to scrape the surface on all I need to say. One short conversation doesn't wipe out decades of wondering. I can't pretend enthusiasm. Not right now. Not even for Jenna. "It's a greenhouse, all right."

"Exactly. That's just what I wanted to hear." She grabs my hand. "Come on." She pulls me toward two rows of thick palms. Fronds whip at my face as we make our way down the path between them. Halfway down, she stops and faces me. "If you need to hide for some reason, this will be a safe place to come."

I look at the palms. They provide some camouflage, but I think I could do better in the woods past the bridge.

"Lift," she says, pointing to a corner of a hemp mat.

"Here?" I lift a corner and see that the ground beneath the mat is not dirt. There's a metal plate with a recessed latch. I pull on the latch, and a three-foot square of floor swings away, revealing a staircase.

"Before the Fox fortune was all gone, I did manage to make a few improvements around here. Let me show you."

She leads and I follow her down the dark stairwell.