John Carver set the carton of eggs down on the dark counter top, pulled out the first two eggs, and paused, considering the carton. He glanced at the clock on the kitchen’s all-in-one oven unit.
8:30 AM.
No time for a proper breakfast. Of all the days for him to forget to set an alarm…
With a sigh, John dropped the eggs back in the carton and reached for the fridge door. One of the eggs missed its mark and hit the floor with a defiant splat.
Perfect. Just what he needed right now.
John stared at the oozing puddle of clear albumin and the splash of yellow lipids creeping its way across the floor, utterly apathetic to his plight. Behind him, a child’s laughter broke the silence. John turned his stunned stare on his four year old son, Michael.
“Daddy made the egg go splat!” Michael clapped his hands together with gusto, just in case his meaning hadn’t been clear enough.
John glanced at the clock again, anxious energy rising in his chest. With a force of will, he took a deep breath, let it out, and showed Michael a wide smile. “And there’s today’s lesson on how not to cook eggs, buddy.” He did his best to quickly mop up the mess with a few paper towels, then he put the intact eggs in the fridge and grabbed the box of granola from on top. “Looks like it’s carbohydrates for us this morning.”
Michael’s hands shot up in victory. “Treat day! Treat day! The car high rates are so much better anyway, Daddy—like candy instead of…” His brow wrinkled in thought.
“Eggs?” John asked.
Michael nodded enthusiastically. “Eggs are stupid. And they taste boring and they take forever. Way longer than car high rates,” he added as John placed a bowl of granola in front of him and began to pour the milk.
“Don’t I know it, buddy. But eggs are full of the stuff that’ll make you grow big and strong.”
“But I don’t need that, Daddy. That’s what you’re for! If I need to be strong, then I’ll just say, ‘Daddy, come pick this up!’ and then you’ll come and then I won’t need to be strong.”
John decided now wasn’t the time to try to explain the value of self-dependence to his son and instead settled for tousling Michael’s hair before turning to finish cleaning the egg mess and prepare his own breakfast bowl, with Greek yogurt instead of milk.
A third glance at the clock confirmed that he was indeed going to be late for the first day of class. Not that a bunch of freshman biology majors were going to care all that much anyway. But maybe it would only be by a few minutes if nothing else went wron—
The buzz of an incoming comm call rumbled against his wrist with almost comical timing.
“Father have mercy,” John mumbled.
He tilted his wrist to check who was calling and nearly dropped the bowl when the name on the screen registered.
Lilly Cross.
His heart picked up, while his head began to formulate more productive responses—namely whats and whys. Like what in God’s kingdom Lilly Cross could be calling him for, and why it had taken her this many years to do so.
“Who is it, Daddy?”
John hastened to finish the mouthful of half-chewed granola he only then realized was still in his mouth. “It’s, uh… It’s—just a second, buddy.”
He set his bowl down and answered the call. As the holo sprang up and the comm worked to establish the connection, he popped in his earpiece. He couldn’t imagine Lilly would have anything to say that he wouldn’t want Michael hearing, but then again, he couldn’t imagine why she was calling after all this time in the first place. Unless…
A trill of excitement shot through his chest. He quickly stomped it down.
No. That had been a past life. Whatever this was—
Lilly’s golden hair and hazel eyes appeared on the holo and wiped away all other thought.
“John,” she said, almost as if she hadn’t expected to see him.
She searched his face, and he realized he was staring with a slack jaw.
“Lilly.” He almost stopped at Lil, but the name felt out of place on his tongue. Too familiar for the girl he’d barely spoken to for over a decade now. No. Not the girl. The woman. Because they’d grown up, hadn’t they? Gone their separate ways and never looked back. Or she hadn’t, at least, he assumed. “I, uh, wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”
It was only then he noticed the view through the window behind her. “Are you at an airport?”
“Yeah. I’m, uh… headed out west.”
“I see.”
Why did she look as uncertain as he felt?
“Was there something I can help you with?”
Her face twisted through half a dozen expressions. Had he tried to conjure them from memory, he might not have been able to recall each facial tick, each Lilly-ism, but watching her now, they all spoke as clearly as if she were saying the words herself.
She was nervous. Afraid, even. And she was thinking twice about having called him. Clearly, she’d been on the fence about it to start.
“What is it, Lil?”
It just slipped out. He wanted to curse the softness in his voice.
Her expression turned guilty. “I shouldn’t have called. I’m not even sure why I did. I can’t, uh…”
“What’s going on?” he asked when it became clear the thought had drifted cleanly off.
Lilly had never been one to drop a thought. A little distractible at times, maybe, like plenty other academics he knew. But not like this.
She didn’t seem to be sure how to answer the question.
“Are you headed to a talk or something?”
She came back from wherever her mind had wandered off to with a slow nod. “Something like that. Spreading the work. You know how it goes.”
He frowned. Of course he knew how it went. Just because he was mostly teaching these days instead of running in the research wheel like her didn’t mean he’d forgotten the other side of academia. Why was she acting so strangely?
“Daddy!” Michael cried. “My milk is running away!”
John realized with a curse he’d given Michael the bowl with the crack—the crack that had apparently graduated to full on leak. Milk was slowly bleeding out of the blue ceramic to pool around the base of the bowl.
“You’re busy,” Lilly said. “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t have called. You take care of yourself, John.”
John glanced from the spilled milk to the clock.
8:36 AM.
“Dammit.” He gnashed his teeth, plopped another paper towel over Michael’s pooling milk, and stepped into the kitchen hallway. “Tell me why you called, Lilly.”
She deliberated for a few more seconds. “It’s just work stuff,” she finally said. “Probably shouldn’t get into the specifics right now, but umm… Shoot. Look, I know this is going to sound kind of strange—okay, really strange, probably—but umm… Would you mind checking in at my house over the next couple weeks to make sure everything’s okay?”
“What?”
Lilly opened her mouth to say something, but John pushed on, broken eggs, spilled milk, and a holo display that read 8:37 AM all churning in his head.
“We don’t have a real conversation for eight years, and you decide to just call me out of the blue to tell me you think your family is in danger or something? What the hell’s going on, Lilly?”
Lilly glanced nervously at her surroundings and touched at her earpiece as if to make sure their conversation was still private. “I know. And I didn’t say anyone was in danger. I just… I’m worried that the project I’m working on right now might draw the wrong kind of attention, and I… I didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry.”
There was a brittle cracking sound from the kitchen, followed swiftly by a cry of, “I didn’t do it!”
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
“Well gee,” John half said, half growled. “Did you think about calling Robert?” The words left his mouth before he’d given them permission, and with entirely more bite than he’d intended.
For just a second, Lilly looked like she’d been slapped. The pain in her eyes struck straight into his gut, amplified a thousand times.
He shouldn’t have said that.
“You’re right.” Lilly gave a single nod, all traces of vulnerability disappearing behind a nearly perfect mask of professionalism. “I made a mistake. Take care, John.”
“Lilly, I—”
She ended the call, and her holo winked out of existence, leaving the image of her cool facade burned in his mind.
Grab knife. Twist.
Michael was sitting in front of a shattered mess of blue ceramic and soggy granola with his head hung low when John walked back into the kitchen. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to spill the milk. I was trying to fix it.”
John tried to make some response but couldn’t seem to bring himself to do much more than stare off into space.
“Was that your friend on the comm, Daddy?”
“Yeah, buddy.” He patted Michael’s head and scooted him toward the door. “One of Daddy’s good friends from college. Now go see if you can tie your shoes today. We gotta get you to daycare.”
Michael hurried off toward the front hall, clearly surprised and delighted to have escaped the stern chastising he’d been expecting.
For a long moment, John only stared at the mess on the island counter top.
What on earth could Lilly possibly be up to that would have her so worried she’d call him? And not only that, but ask him to check in on her family?
And why him? He was a biology professor, for heaven’s sake. Even if she’d somehow gotten caught up in something questionable or dangerous—and he didn’t see how she could have—what could he possibly be expected to do about it beyond—
“Daddy!” came Michael’s call from the front hall. “I tied a shoe but it doesn’t look right!”
8:42 AM.
Crap.
“Be there in two seconds, buddy!” he called back.
Whatever Lilly was up to, he had a life to tend to before he could do anything about it.
With a heavy sigh, John set about mopping up milky granola and sweeping the broken pieces into the garbage.
