Of Literature and Lattes, page 23
“But Becca said they were heading there to look at houses this week. When I asked Krista, she denied it, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t going.”
“Looking for a house isn’t moving. Don’t let that worry you. Not until she gives you official written notice. How are parenting rights allocated?”
Jeremy shook his head and leaned forward, resting his forearms on Madeline’s desk. “I’m not sure that applies to us. I didn’t have a lawyer when we divorced. I just signed the papers she sent to me and mailed them back to her. Becca wasn’t even born yet.”
“Is your divorce sited in Illinois or Washington?” At his shrug, Madeline typed up a storm before looking at him again. “Are you named on your daughter’s birth certificate?”
“Yes.” That question he could answer.
“Good. Now . . .” Madeline sat back and picked up her latte again. “Walk me through this . . . How does it work when you want to see your daughter?”
“I call and drive to pick her up if Krista lets me.”
“There are no set times?”
Jeremy shook his head.
“I need to do a little research into this, including getting eyes on that divorce agreement. I’d also like a copy of Becca’s birth certificate.” Madeline leaned forward. “At the most basic level, your ex-wife can’t move your daughter out of the state without your permission. You are Becca’s father. If Krista persists, I suspect our first step will be to file an injunction against her to keep her in Illinois until we work out your parenting rights, if you have none delineated.”
“How do we do that?”
“I file a petition with the court and we schedule a hearing. Two hearings. The first will request Krista stay in Illinois, and that can come fast. The second could take months. That one will determine parenting rights.”
Jeremy pushed forward. “But say I get weekends and Tuesdays or something; she can’t leave after that, can she? What will it matter if I have rights if Becca’s halfway across the country?”
Madeline’s eyes softened. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”
One step at a time. Jeremy sat back and thought about all those “one steps” he’d made over the past several months, and how few of them turned out to be good ones. “I don’t want to lose her.” He pressed his lips tight. “She’s a pretty incredible kid.”
“I would agree with that.” Madeline smiled.
Jeremy stood. “Okay. I’ll get you the papers and . . . What do you charge for this kind of help? For the Brendon stuff too, you never told me.”
Madeline smiled again. “Why don’t we worry about all that later too?”
Jeremy opened his mouth to protest. To accept such help, such generosity, was hard. It stuck in his throat and made him feel weak. But, quick on the heels of that thought, he reminded himself he had no money—and Janet knew it. And if Janet knew it, he suspected there were no secrets from Madeline either.
“Thank you. I will pay you . . . I will.”
“I trust you and I’m not worried, Jeremy.”
He waved good-bye to Janet and Claire on his way back through the bookstore and returned to his coffee shop. Everything inside him felt jumbled. But as much as he wanted to sit in the back office to settle, he needed to make one more stop.
Ryan stood at the register talking to a young woman, coffee already in hand.
Jeremy tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry to leave again, but I need to go talk to Krista.”
Ryan glanced at him. “You okay?”
“I hope so. I’ll be back to close up.”
Ryan nodded and Jeremy heard him resume his conversation. A laugh reached into the office space as Jeremy grabbed his keys and headed out the alley door.
As he drove the half hour to Park Ridge, one thought filled his mind. He had, perhaps, poked a sleeping bear. He wasn’t sure if he would change what he had done, but he wondered if he should have warned Krista first. She hated surprises and she fought when backed into a corner.
And Madeline could be wrong, he thought. He’d never read his divorce papers. Maybe they were different. Maybe Krista could do whatever she wanted. Maybe she didn’t need to present him with her move in writing. And if he made her mad . . . he might as well have purchased the two one-way tickets to North Carolina himself.
Krista answered the door dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. “What are you doing here? Becca’s not with you until Thursday.”
“I need to talk to you.”
Something in his voice must have cued her, because she narrowed her eyes and stepped outside. Her gray-blue eyes always took on a stormy tone when she got annoyed, and they morphed to steel gray now. And she always stepped outside when a fight was about to go down. She never wanted her parents to hear a note of conflict.
“What’s going on, Jeremy?” She asked the question with slow, crisp diction.
He tried to warm to the subject. “I really don’t want you to move.”
She sighed and slumped as if weighed down by some force he couldn’t see. “Look around, Jeremy . . . Becca and I live with my parents. When I left you and she was young, it was the right thing. I was a mess. I was twenty-one, a college dropout with no job and no money. But I’m twenty-eight now. I’ve worked hard. And I never thought I’d still be here. That this would be my life. Don’t you get that?”
“Then move out. Stay in the Chicago area, but move out of here.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“North Carolina is?”
“Yes.” She sputtered out the word. Laden with derision, it fell between them. She pointed back to the house. Red brick with black shutters, it stood sturdy like a two-story fortress behind her. “My dad’s so proud of me he cracked open a bottle of champagne. My mom almost cried . . . It’s a good job, Jeremy, a really good job.”
“There will be others.” At her questioning look, he clarified. “Other good jobs. Better jobs.”
“Not in front of me right now . . . I’m not trying to hurt you, but this is happening.”
“I talked to a lawyer today.” He blurted the words.
“You did what?” Krista stilled. Almost. Jeremy noticed her jaw working right beneath her earlobe.
“I did it to help. To ask if you could legally take Becca away or what I could do to keep you from moving, because I want to be in Becca’s life. I want regular times to see her, not have to call and get her whenever it’s convenient. A father doesn’t do that. You said it yourself. I need to show up and I want to. When I get back on my feet, I’ll pay for some of what she needs. School. Extra tutors. Books. Whatever she needs . . .” His words drifted away.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I had to. I don’t want to be cut out, Krista. Knowing what you know about me, about my parents, how can you think, especially now, that I could live like that again?”
Krista opened her mouth just as Becca ran out the door behind her mom.
“Daddy, I saw your car.” She launched past Krista. He lifted her up and hugged her tight. Something between them had changed that day at the park two weeks ago. And it only got better the Thursday before as they ran all around town forming the book club, arranging the pastries, and stuffing Andante with pillows. But the real highlight was welcoming Ryan back that afternoon. It had been Becca’s idea to put candles in a blueberry muffin and make Ryan’s return a celebration. In fact, she’d made that entire day a celebration, his new beginning, and he couldn’t go back. She was a part of everything right in his life.
“Daddy’s not staying.” Krista laid her hand on Becca’s back.
“You can’t?” Becca leaned away, her face inches from his.
Jeremy slid on his best smile, kissed her cheek, and set her down. “Not today, Bug. I just came to say hi.”
“Hi.”
“Hi to you too.” He kissed the top of her head.
“You head inside, Becca, and I’ll be right in to finish the cookies.”
Becca happily slapped her flip-flops up the few stairs as Krista turned back to Jeremy. “Call off the lawyer, Jeremy, please.”
“I can’t do that, Krista. I’ve recently learned there are a few things worth fighting for. Becca’s one of them.”
Krista shook her head. In many ways it was the saddest, slowest motion Jeremy could imagine.
“Fine.” She sighed. “I guess we’re doing this.”
Without another word she turned around, stepped inside the house, and shut the door.
Chapter 35
“You asked to see me?” Special Agent Pullman rolled a chair next to Alyssa’s. She glanced over at him. Over the past five days she’d lost her fear of the man and had even come to regard him as more friend than foe.
“I’m done. I found everything you need.” She pointed to the left monitor. “Tag created code E435, and everyone with that code attached to their data was added after a clean data set was run through our algorithms. Back it up further, and the code was added to every individual who answered yes to questions 12, 84, and 119 on the patient questionnaire and showed polymorphisms of a few different genes, and did not have ANA, antinuclear antibodies, in their blood. That last test had to be negative.”
“Why negative?” Pullman pushed up his reading glasses.
“Because if a patient had those antibodies, there was a good chance their doctor had already had a discussion with them, and that could get messy. Not only would Tag not want patients to claim he’d told them nothing new, but if he missed the diagnosis, say the doctor had already talked about hypothyroidism and Tag cited lupus, then red flags would be raised about XGC’s work. The true algorithms could pinpoint a patient’s area of vulnerability, but Tag was going off script. He was basically throwing darts and hoping to land on a chronic disease that sounded feasible.”
Alyssa leaned forward and ran her finger down the second screen’s far right edge. “These are your E435s. Customers who had genetic markers, polymorphisms, without antibodies. And since they were the ones most likely to have something in their family history, but nothing themselves yet, these people gave Tag a warm lead-in. Most were probably already a little worried, and their diagnoses named and confirmed their fears. Confirmation bias. They were less likely to question XGC’s results.”
Pullman sat back and pulled off his glasses. “Good work. Can you document this?”
“Already did. I tracked every step and outlined it for you. I even labeled all the files. You’ll have no trouble tracing what I did. I even designed a clean parallel program that walks you through it.”
“Very thorough.”
“Keeps me out of jail?” Alyssa quipped and rolled her chair back a few inches to better see Pullman’s expression. She hoped for a smile, a laugh, something to let her know everything was okay. She got nothing—which oddly made her feel she had little left to lose. “I also found that the rumors were true.”
“What rumors?”
“You gave me access to everything . . . I had to dig around a little.”
The corner of his mouth finally lifted. “How long?”
Alyssa studied him and conceded she’d pulled nothing over on him. She even suspected his question was more a test than a query, so she opted for honesty. “I finished this morning and have been poking around all day. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
Pullman’s expression revealed nothing.
She looked down at her hands. She found she was twisting them together, and stilled them against her knees. “He really sold all those names to pharmaceutical companies abroad. I hoped that was just a rumor.”
“That’s how much of this began. We got solid evidence from a company that purchased XGC’s first set of customer data. I’m still trying to discover if he shopped it domestically. We haven’t found any communications yet.”
“Then he didn’t. Tag was completely OCD; he personally tracked everything. I mean everything down to the numbers of ink cartridges used per department. Honestly, this E435 was hard to find, but it never needed to be there either. Tag created the code because he wanted it, not because he needed it.” She waited a beat. “Can I ask you something else?”
“I get the feeling this is a more personal request.”
“It is.” She pulled the keyboard toward herself and brought up another spreadsheet before tilting the screen in Pullman’s direction. “Winsome has statistically more participants in XGC data sets, far above the national average.”
“We noticed that. Almost everyone in management had support from their hometowns. Interestingly, yours was the highest. Mr. Connelly’s was the lowest.”
“I heard my mom practically got all Winsome to sign up. But Tag should’ve had good numbers too. He’s from Bettendorf, Iowa. Another town with good Midwest loyalty.”
“Mr. Connelly grew up in LA.”
“That was a lie too?” Alyssa dropped back in her seat. “Was nothing he said real?”
“I haven’t found anything yet . . . But back to your question.”
“Someone from Winsome was coded E435. She was told she was headed toward early onset Alzheimer’s.”
“Still not a question.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“No.” The word was short, direct, and it brooked no argument. Pullman slid a cloth from his coat pocket and wiped at his glasses. “We’re on dangerous ground, Ms. Harrison. One XGC client committed suicide in March, and that means a charge of reckless homicide is on the table. Right now we must make sure our information is accurate and handled properly. This is confidential medical information and it has already been abused.” He set his glasses back on his nose and peered over them. “Furthermore, beyond myriad legal issues, these are people’s very lives.”
Alyssa couldn’t breathe. All her refutations, rationales, and her insistence in every interview that all could be made well, played before her. She had consoled herself, justified herself, with the fact that “these are future predictions, not diagnostic.” Confirmation bias struck again. She believed only what she chose to see and had seen only what she needed to believe.
“Ms. Harrison? . . . Do you understand?”
Alyssa shook her head trying to clear away her guilt, which was tipping to panic with each shallow breath. “I didn’t know . . . No one reported that. I’ve been searching the internet every day, and it’s nowhere. No one said that happened.”
“It isn’t something we’ve made public.”
Alyssa felt her body go hot. She rolled her chair inches away, as if distance could help.
“Do you understand, Ms. Harrison? I need to hear you say you will not approach this woman. I also need to remind you that you signed a confidentiality agreement the day you arrived here. It covers all information pertaining to this case. All of it.”
“Yes . . . I . . . Of course.” She popped out of her chair. “Do you need me? I . . . I need to go.” She scanned the room for the way out. She had forgotten where it was. “Do I need to come back next week? I’m done. I . . . I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
Pullman stood. “We’re fine. Thank you. I’ll have the team look this over on Monday, and we’ll reach out if we have further questions.” He stepped beside her and pulled her chair closer. “You’ve gone pale. Why don’t you sit down again? I didn’t mean to shock you, I simply want you to understand the severity of this.”
Alyssa could not sit. She needed out. “I do, and I’m fine. I didn’t know, but I’m fine, really, I just need to go . . . Thank you.” She picked up her bag and stepped to the door. She spun around. “You’re not going to arrest me anymore, are you?”
“I may have more questions for you, but no, I doubt I’ll arrest you.” Pullman gave a half smile.
Alyssa fled the building.
Alyssa sat in her car outside the Sweet Shoppe. She shouldn’t be there. She should go straight home. She watched Jill Pennet inside wiping her counters; she watched customers come and go; and no matter how many times she told herself to drive away, she remained right where she was.
After another fifteen minutes, she got out of her car and pushed open the door.
The bell chimed, and savory smells hit Alyssa first. They reminded her of Jeremy. The Sweet Shoppe didn’t carry the savory baked goods Jill provided for Andante.
Jill emerged from the back room wiping her hands on her apron. “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”
Alyssa shook her head. Jill was about ten years older than she was. She didn’t know her personally, but she’d always known of her. Jill’s picture had still hung outside their high school gym during Alyssa’s years. High School All-American in field hockey. 1995.
“Not at all. I . . .” Alyssa stalled. She hadn’t thought this through. She hadn’t thought anything through. “I wanted to buy—” She looked to the display cases filled with sugary delights, none of which she could eat. “Lemon and rosemary,” she blurted. “You made grain-free lemon and rosemary cookies for Andante. I wanted to buy a dozen.”
Jill grinned. “I am so glad those are selling. It took me days to get that recipe right.” She gestured out her front windows and across the town square. “But I sell nothing here that I make for Andante. It keeps us from competing. We hope.”
“Oh . . .” Alyssa twisted to look out the window as well. After a moment she turned back to Jill. “But you’re okay, right? You’re okay?”
Something flashed in Jill’s eyes. Alyssa felt herself tip backward, as if physically pulling herself from a metaphorical ledge. “That came out wrong. I’m sorry. I mean your business. Andante isn’t taking too much of your business?”
Jill studied her before answering. “Not at all.”
“Good.” Alyssa looked down at the display case. She couldn’t look at Jill any longer.
“In fact, I think it’s improved it. People see the little sign over there and then remember to come over here. I’ve sold more out of this display case this week than I can remember in a long while, and I’ve got ten birthday cake orders to fill. Usually this time of year brings in about five per week.”
