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To the many military doctors and nurses who have placed themselves in peril to help save every soul they could. Thank you for your courage and compassion.
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
TriPoint, North Africa
Idon’t hear the scream.
The nurse does. So does the anesthesiologist. I am too deep in the zone, the zone I can only enter in an operating theater, when a sternum is cracked open like this, and my hands are inside the boy’s chest.
This is my home, my office, my sanctuary. I am Zen here. More screams. Gunfire. Helicopters. An explosion. “Doctor?”
I hear the panic in her voice. But I don’t move. I don’t look away. My hands, the oldest medical instruments known to mankind, are inside the chest cavity, my index finger palpitating the pericardium.
I am totally focused on that, only that. No music is playing. That’s weird in an operating room nowadays, I know, but I relish silence in this hallowed space, even when we’ve done heart transplants that last eight hours. It annoys my staff. They need the diversion, the entertainment, the distraction—and that’s the problem for me. I want no distractions. Both my bliss and my excellence come from that singular focus.
But the sounds invade.
REESE WITHERSPOON & HARLAN COBEN
Rapid gunfire. Another explosion. Louder screams. Getting closer now.
“Doctor?” The voice is shaky now, panicked. Then, because I’m clearly not listening: “Marc?”
“Nothing we can do about it,” I say.
Which is hardly a comfort.
Trace and I arrived in Ghadames eight days ago. We flew into Diori Hamani airport, where we were met by a young woman Trace and I knew named Salima, if that is her real name, and a burly driver who never introduced himself or said a word to us. The four of us traveled northeast for two long days, sleeping in a safe house near Agadez and then tents under the stars in Bilma. We left the driver in northern Niger, traveling through the desert by night, until we met another car.
Salima and Trace have eyes for one another. I’m not surprised. Trace is the pure definition of a “playah.” Even surrounded by death . . . well, maybe that’s just it.
When you’re close to death, that’s when you feel your most alive.
Salima kept us moving north, straddling the border between Algeria and Libya. East of Djanet, a half dozen heavily armed militants stopped us. They were all young—teens, I would guess—and tweaking from some sort of potent narcotic. They were called the Child Army. Blood was in the air. Wide- eyed, they grabbed me first, then Trace. The young militants made me kneel.
They put a gun to the back of my skull.
I would be first to die. Trace would watch. Then it would be his turn.
I closed my eyes and pictured Maggie’s face and waited for someone to pull the trigger.
The Child Army didn’t shoot us, obviously. Salima, who speaks at least four languages fluently, fell to her knees and talked fast. I don’t
know exactly what she said—Salima wouldn’t tell us—but the child soldiers moved on.
More screams. More gunfire. Closer now. I try to hurry.
I didn’t tell Maggie the truth about how risky this last mission was on so many levels, not because I thought she would worry but because of the promises we had made to one another—she would have insisted on coming.
That’s how Maggie and I are built.
You wonder what makes a hero? There’s altruism, sure. But there’s also ego and recklessness and thrill-seeking.
We don’t fear danger. We fear normalcy.
Trace, wearing a surgical mask, pokes his head in. “Marc?”
“How much time do we have?”
“They’ve burned down the north side of the camp. Dozens are already dead. Salima is moving everyone out.”
I look at the nurse and the anesthesiologist. “Go,” I tell them.
“You can’t save him,” the nurse says to me, as she pulls away. “Even if you finish in time, even if he could somehow survive the surgery, they won’t let him live.”
I don’t know who “they” are. I don’t know the justifications, the origins, the history, the factions, the tribes, the warlords, the fanatics, the extremists, the innocents. I don’t know who the good guys or the bad guys are, why these people are in this refugee camp, what side is the oppressor or what side is the oppressed. It’s not that I’m not political, but for Maggie and Trace and me, it can’t matter.
I continue to work on my patient, a fifteen-year- old boy named Izil. I hope everyone I treat is an innocent, but I doubt it. It just can’t be our job to figure out who is on what side. Our job, not to get too grandiose, is to save their lives. They say, “Kill them all and let God sort them out.” It’s close to the opposite for us—save them all and let God . . . You get the drift.
REESE
I’m not being “both sides” here. I’m being “no sides.”
“Everyone out,” I say. “I want the room cleared.”
“Marc,” Trace says.
Our eyes meet over the surgical masks. Trace and I have known each other a long time. We did our surgical residency together. We have provided medical aid in humanitarian crises like this one across the globe. He is one of the most gifted cardiothoracic surgeons in the world.
Trace says, “I can help you close.”
“I got it.”
“We’ll wait.”
I shake my head, but he knows.
“Leave me an ambulance,” I say. “They won’t shoot up an ambulance.”
We both know this is no longer true, not in today’s world.
We should never have come. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I should have taken care of business and said goodbye and flown home.
I should be with Maggie.
I don’t say goodbye to Trace. He doesn’t say goodbye to me.
But this will be the last time I ever see him.
Seconds later, it’s only Izil and me in the room. I hurry, stupidly thinking I can make it. I am closing the boy’s chest when the doors burst open.
Armed militants storm in. I don’t know how many. They all have that crazed look in their eyes. I have seen that look before. Too many times. I saw it just a few days ago east of Djanet.
And sometimes I see it when I look in the mirror.
I close my eyes and picture Maggie’s face and wait for someone to pull the trigger.
CHAPTER ONE
Baltimore
ONE YEAR LATER
Maggie McCabe shouldn’t have come.
“Where are you?” Marc asks.
Maggie looks down at her husband’s face on the phone screen. “I told you.”
“Johns Hopkins?”
“Yes.”
“You on the quad?”
“Yes.”
“Where we met,” he says. “Orientation week of medical school. You remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Maggie says.
“I knew you were the one the moment I saw you.”
“Don’t make me gag.”
“I’m trying to boost you up.”
“It’s not working.”
“So what are you doing?”
Maggie flashes back to her fi rst time on campus, all dewy- eyed and fresh-faced, as they say, full of hope and optimism and vim and vigor and all that nonsense. How naive. But then again, when your world
REESE WITHERSPOON & HARLAN COBEN
falls apart—when you had everything and even understood and appreciated that you had everything and never took any of it for granted, not for a second, knew how lucky you were, and because you were so grateful, you somehow naively expected karma to reward you, or at least leave you be—you learn in the hardest of ways that fate is fickle, that life is chaos and no one gets out unscathed, that you can have everything one moment and have it all snatched away so easily . . .
“I’m throwing myself a little pity party,” she says.
“Stop. Go inside.”
“I want to go home.”
Marc frowns. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not ready.”
“Yes, you are. Please? I want you to go. Do it for me.”
“Seriously?”
She looks up at the white cupola sitting atop Shriver Hall and blinks back a tear. An hour ago, she’d reluctantly put on a long-sleeve, navy blue, mid- calf-length formal dress. Not black. That would be too morbid. Navy seems like a safe bet— respectful of the occasion, but not trying to pull attention. In fact, she would rather melt into the floor than be anywhere in the vicinity of conspicuous on this particular night.
“Maggie?”
“I’m here.”
“Go inside. It would mean a lot to me. And your mother.”
“Wow,” Maggie says.
“What?”
“You never used to be this sentimental and manipulative.”
“Sure, I was,” Marc says.
Her voice is soft. “Sure, you were.” Then: “This sucks.”
“What?”
“Nothing, never mind.”
Twenty-two years ago, Maggie had graduated from these esteemed
halls with every kind of honor they could bestow upon a medical student. She did her surgical residency at NewYork-Presbyterian, became a renowned reconstructive surgeon, served her country on the front lines in Afghanistan and the Middle East as a Field Surgeon 62B, married Marc, moved with him overseas to heal the underserved.
Marc’s voice from the phone: “Hello?”
“They’ll stare.”
“Of course they’ll stare,” he says. “You’re smoking hot.”
Maggie frowns. Some things never change.
“Go,” he says again.
She nods because he’s right and disconnects the app. Her phone case features two M&M candy characters, the Yellow M&M guy holding flowers to the Green M&M woman. Marc had given her the phone case as a half-serious/half-gag gift. Maggie & Marc. M&M. Marc bought M&M pillowcases. He bought M&M throw pillows. Marc thought it was adorable. Maggie thought it was pure cringe, which, of course, only encouraged him.
“Maggie?”
She startles at the sound of the voice and drops her phone in her purse. She turns and sees her old classmate Larry Magid, a dermatologist. The last time she’d seen Larry was five years ago in Nepal when he’d flown over to help her and Marc with an outbreak of Hansen’s disease, more commonly known as leprosy. They both ended up working out of the same hospital, even working out of the same floor, so he was intimately familiar with her current woes.
“Hey, Larry.”
He squirms. “Are you here for . . . I mean, uh, are you going . . . ?”
He semi-gestures toward the building.
“Sure,” Maggie says.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
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“They’ve named a scholarship in my mother’s memory,” she says. “Right, I heard.”
“So that’s why I’m here.”
“Right. Gotta go. Mickey will be waiting for me.”
He hurries away as though, Maggie is tempted to shout out loud, she has leprosy. She wants to grab her phone, get Marc on again, and whine, “See what I mean?” but the phone is already in her bag and now she’s a little annoyed so to hell with it.
Maggie hesitantly trudges up the same steps she’d enthusiastically marched up to get her diploma two decades ago. The banner pinned above the door reads:
The hall is buzzing. The music, a string quartet of current students, plays Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C Major. Her hands at her sides, Maggie can’t help half consciously moving her fi ngers along with the music, as though there’s a violin in her hand. There are something like five hundred people— physicians and scholarship winners— milling about the esteemed hall. You know it’s a medical event because too many men are wearing bow ties. That’s a big look with doctors, mostly because regular ties hang loosely and get in the way during exams. Her father, an army surgeon who also saw combat as a Field Surgeon 62B— in his case, in Vietnam— always wore bright flowery ones. He claimed it let his patients see him as a bit goofy and thus comfortingly human.
When Maggie fi nally enters the grand hall, the room doesn’t stop or go silent or any of that, but there is defi nitely some hesitation in the air.
She stands there for a few long seconds, feeling beyond awkward, as though her hands were suddenly too big. Her face flushes. Why had
she come? She looks for a friendly or at least familiar face, but the only one she sees is from the poster on an easel up on the dais. Mom.
God, her mother had been beautiful.
The photo they’d blown up had been taken for the school directory five years ago, Mom’s last year teaching here. This was right before the diagnosis, something she hid from her two daughters for the next three years, until she fi nally called Maggie at their new clinic in Ghana and said, “I’m going to tell you something if you promise you won’t come home when I do. Your work is too important.” So Maggie promised and Mom told her and they both cried but Maggie kept her promise until her sister Sharon called and said, “It’s almost time.” Then Maggie kissed Marc goodbye at Dubai International, told him to fi nish up and come home soon, and flew home to sit vigil with Sharon for her mother’s fi nal days.
Maggie locks eyes with her poster-mother because right now it is the only friendly face in the room. She holds her head high as she walks toward the dais. She hopes that it’s narcissism on her part, but conversations seem to halt or at least quiet as she passes. Murmurs ensue, or again maybe that’s just in her head. Still she does not look away, does not let herself use her peripheral vision. Her eyes stay on her mother’s, but she feels the stares now.
A familiar figure steps in her way and says, “Surprised you’d show your face.”
It’s Steve Schipner, aka Sleazy Steve, another reconstructive surgeon like herself and yet hopefully nothing like herself. He has over a million followers on an Instagram account where he displays “before and after” photos and calls himself the Boob Whisperer. She and Steve graduated in the same class and did a surgical rotation together at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University under the tutelage of Dr. Evan Barlow. Steve is that guy who can’t say good morning without making it sound like a sleazy double entendre, ergo the nickname.
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He lives in Dubai now and specializes in, to quote his profi le bio, “ambitious influencers looking to enhance their social media hits, their lives— and their cup size.”
“Yeah, well, I’m full of surprises,” Maggie says.
He looks around, notices the hostile stares. “At least I’m happy to see you.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
“You seen Barlow?”
“Have you?” she asks.
“Nope.”
“I doubt he’ll be here.”
“I heard he was showing up,” he says. “I want to talk to him about a sweet partnership deal and . . . ” He stops, turns, gives her the fullwattage smile. “Oh, guess where I’m working now.”
She doesn’t want to, but it would be worse not to play along. “I heard Dubai.”
“Yes, but where in Dubai?”
“I don’t know, Steve. Where?”
He leans in and whispers. “Apollo Longevity.”
Maggie tries to keep her face blank. It takes some effort.
Steve continues: “Isn’t that where you and Marc used to— ?”
“I’m not involved anymore.”
Maggie tries to process this. Apollo Longevity is still active. Even now. Even after all that’s happened.
That’s not a good thing.
Steve looks her up and down, his gaze crawling all over her like earthworms after a rainstorm. “You look good, Mags.” He arches one eyebrow, before he adds, “Real good. So good.”
Maggie makes a noncommittal noise like “Uh-huh.”
“So toned, so fit,” Steve continues, doing a bicep curl to illustrate the point. “What do you do, free weights? Pilates?” Another eyebrow arch. “Sweaty, hot yoga?”
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
She shakes her head. “Do these lines ever work, Steve?”
“All the time, Mags. You know why?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Maggie says, “but I bet you will.”
He leans in toward her ear. “Because I’m a rich, successful fortyseven-year- old surgeon now. I can pull much younger tail than you.”
She makes a face. “Did you just say ‘younger tail’?”
“You’re not too good for me,” he says. Then he adds in a cruel whisper, “Not anymore.”
With that, Steve oozes away.
Steve’s trail of ooze leads to a cluster of their old classmates in the right-hand corner. She knows them all, but when she looks over, they all huddle up and do their best to pretend they don’t see her. Part of Maggie is furious and wants to confront them, but a bigger part— a more honest part—wonders whether she’d be part of that eye-avoidance huddle had another classmate been this shamed instead of her.
Screw it.
Maggie heads straight into the heart of the huddle and says, “Hey, everyone.”
Silence.
She looks from face to face. No one meets her eye.
“Stephanie,” Maggie says to an old friend who is staring at her champagne as though it holds a secret, “how’s Olivia?”
Olivia is Stephanie’s daughter.
“Oh, she’s, uh, she’s doing well.”
“Did my recommendation letter help?”
Maggie knows that it did. She’d written the letter a year ago, when her name opened rather than slammed doors, and she knew of course that Olivia had gotten in, but right now Maggie is not in the mood to let anyone off the hook.
“Stephanie?”
Before Stephanie can answer, another classmate, Bonnie Tillman, takes Maggie’s elbow. “Can we talk privately for a moment, Maggie?”
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Bonnie is an ophthalmologist in Washington, DC, and still (and forever) their class president. Her helmet of hair is fi rmly shellacked into place. She forces up a smile. It’s a big effort to hold it. They say it takes seventeen muscles to smile and forty-three to frown. In Bonnie’s case, it’s clearly the opposite.
They move through a set of old glass doors onto a terrace.
“We all feel bad about your recent troubles,” Bonnie begins in a voice that couldn’t be more condescending without some kind of surgical help, “but it doesn’t excuse what you did.”
Maggie says nothing.
“This event,” Bonnie continues, “is for esteemed physicians.”
“It’s for graduates.”
“You know better.”
Silence.
“Your medical license was revoked,” Bonnie continues.
“Suspended,” Maggie corrects. “Pending a review.”
“Oh, so you’re innocent?”
Maggie says nothing.
“You should leave.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“It’s unfair to your mother’s memory.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t own her memory, Maggie. Not on this campus. She meant a lot to many of us students. Your being here? It’s a blemish on her memory.”
“I was asked to present the scholarship,” Maggie says.
“That was before.”
“No one rescinded the invitation.”
“No one thought it was necessary.”
“So who’s doing it?”
Bonnie straightens her spine.
“Wait, you?”
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
“The administration thought it best.”
“But my mother always thought you were a stuck-up tight-ass bitch, Bonnie.”
Bonnie’s eyes widen as though she’d been slapped. “Well!”
Maggie says nothing. Bonnie recovers.
“Either way,” Bonnie says, “you should leave. Your being here sullies the reputation of our class.”
Bonnie spins to leave. Maggie closes her eyes, opens them, stares out.
“Bonnie?”
Bonnie stops and turns back to Maggie.
“My mother never said that. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. She always spoke well of you. You’re a good choice to do this.”
Bonnie swallows. “I’ll do my best. I promise you that.”
She leaves Maggie alone on the terrace. From inside, someone starts clinking their champagne flute with a fork to get people’s attention. The crowd quiets. Someone asks people to gather around so they can begin. Maggie stays out on the terrace.
Bonnie is right. She shouldn’t be here.
She stares out at the foliage. From behind her, someone closes the glass doors so that she no longer hears what’s going on in the room. That’s okay. She is tempted to reach into her purse and contact Marc again, but that’s an awful crutch and just makes her feel worse.
“Hello, Maggie.”
The man wears a bespoke tailored suit of cobalt blue with a tie so perfectly knotted that one assumes he had divine help. His hair is gray, parted perfectly on the left. Maggie knows that he’s in his early seventies— he’d been a classmate of her mother’s and she’d been invited to his seventieth birthday party a few years back, but she’d been overseas and couldn’t attend.
“Hello, Doctor Barlow.”
“You haven’t been my student for a long time, Maggie. Can’t you call me by my fi rst name?”
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“I don’t think I can, no.”
Evan Barlow smiles. He has a good smile. He looks, to quote a sleazy classmate, so toned, so fit. She almost asks him if he does sweaty hot yoga. Evan Barlow heads up the Barlow Cosmetic Center, perhaps the most prestigious and discreet cosmetic surgery fi rm in the country. When celebrities want the work done so that no one knows, they trust Evan Barlow.
They stand now side by side, staring out at the quad. “Do you know this is my fi rst time back on campus since I graduated?” he says.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“So why are you back?”
“I think you can guess.”
“Mom?”
“I loved her, you know.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“She and your father are both gone, so I can admit it now.”
“I thought you two just dated for a few weeks.”
“We were in our second year. But she broke my heart.”
Maggie frowns. “Haven’t you been married three times?”
“Four,” he says.
“And isn’t your current wife like thirty years old?”
“Thirty-two,” he says, spreading his hands. “See what a broken heart does to a person?”
Maggie can’t help but smile. Barlow does the same.
“Your father was such a good man, a much better choice for her. So I settled for friendship. But . . . ” He shakes his head. “You get old, you get sentimental and philosophical. I’m trying to be glib, but I’m also revealing a truth.” When he smiles at her, she flashes back to surgical rounds at NewYork-Presbyterian, what a generous teacher he’d been to her, how exhausting and exhilarating it was just to be in his
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
presence. Evan Barlow had been a pure hit of crackling energy. You wanted to be around that.
As though reading her mind, Barlow says, “You’re the best student I ever had. You know that. You’re a surgeon, so you have the ego to know that what I’m saying is true.”
“Correction: I was a surgeon.”
She squeezes her eyes shut. She feels his hand on her shoulder. His voice is so gentle. “Maggie?”
The tears push into her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I let you down.” She opens her eyes. “I let her ”— no need to say who her referred to—“down.”
“You didn’t,” he says. “Wait, okay, sorry, that’s condescending. You did. I won’t lie. May I speak frankly? You did mess up. Big-time. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m not following.”
“I don’t need a scholarship ceremony to honor your mother’s memory. I can do it in a much more concrete way.” Barlow holds up his hand. “Wait, I’m not saying this right. Let me start again. I came tonight to see you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
When he doesn’t immediately continue, Maggie says, “Go ahead.”
“I’d like you to come by my office on Monday.”
“This Monday?”
“Yes. Ten a.m.”
“You have a Barlow Center in Baltimore now?”
“No, but maybe soon. Right now, they’re in Palm Beach, Los Angeles, and New York City. I’d like you to come up to New York City. I’ll arrange a private car to drive you, and I have a suite reserved at the Aman.”
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“I don’t understand. Why do you want me to come to New York?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
“I just . . . it’s not my place.”
Maggie makes a face. “Then whose place is it?”
“It’s an intriguing offer. That’s all I can tell you right now.”
“I don’t have a medical license anymore.”
“I know. The offer is a tad”— Barlow looks up as though searching for a better word but fi nally shrugs—“unusual.”
“Can’t you just tell me now?”
“I can’t, no.”
She thinks about it. “If you don’t mind me saying, Doctor Barlow, this is all a little weird.”
“I know.”
“More than a little weird, in fact.”
“It is, I admit that. Look, I know you and Sharon are having serious fi nancial difficulties— ”
“How do you know that?”
“— but I’ll write you a check right now for twenty thousand dollars. Just to show up.”
He reaches into his suit pocket and pulls out a pen and . . .
“Is that a checkbook?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“What is this, 1987? Who still carries around a checkbook?”
Barlow can’t help but smile. “I wanted to be prepared.”
He starts scribbling on the check.
“You don’t need to do that,” she says.
“No, I do. You should be compensated for your time.”
“Don’t,” she says a little more forcibly. “I’m going to say it again: You’re being weird.”
“I know.” He puts the checkbook back in his pocket. “Do you trust me, Maggie?”
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
In truth she trusts no one anymore. Well, almost no one.
“One more thing,” he says.
“What?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about this.”
“I have to tell my sister.”
“It would be better if you didn’t.”
“I’m living with her. I just can’t vanish to New York City.”
“Sure, you can.” He hands her a card. “I’ll have someone text you to arrange the car pickup.”
“I’d rather take Amtrak,” Maggie says.
“If that’s what you prefer. There’ll be a reservation under your name at the Aman hotel on Fifty- Seventh Street starting tomorrow night. We’ll be in touch about the details for Monday.”
Maggie takes the embossed business card, looks at it, looks at him. Dr. Evan Barlow runs one of the most successful high- end cosmetic surgery practices in the world. He is worth millions and reeks of it. She tries to read his face. It’s smooth, professional, handsome, full of gravitas.
But does she also see fear?
“What’s really going on, Doctor Barlow?”
“I can’t say more, Maggie. Take it or leave it.”
“And if I leave it?”
He shrugs. “It was nice to see you.”
Barlow kisses her on the cheek and heads to the door.
“How did you know I’d be here?” she asks.
Something crosses his face, something she can’t read. He gives his head a small shake and turns the knob.
“You’ll fi nd out all on Monday,” Barlow says, and then he heads back inside.
CHAPTER TWO
Marc says, “You’ll hem and haw, but we both know you’re going to go.”
He’s right. Again.
Maggie is walking across campus. She’d stayed long enough so it would not appear that anyone had run her off, but as soon as the speeches were done and the mingling began again in earnest, Maggie slipped out.
“So,” Marc continues, “what do you think Doctor Barlow wants?”
“I was hoping you’d have an answer,” Maggie says.
“Hmm, let me do a quick search on him . . . whoa.”
“What?”
“Did you know Evan Barlow is on the Forbes list of richest doctors?” Maggie makes a face. “Forbes has a list of richest doctors?”
“Top one hundred, yeah.”
“And Barlow is on it?”
“Number forty-two. Net worth estimated at nearly a billion dollars.”
“He makes that as a doctor?”
“Not really, no. He makes it as, I don’t know, I guess you’d call him a medical entrepreneur. Barlow Cosmetics is a major brand. Plastic surgery is still their mainstay, but they’ve gotten into home remedies and beauty products. Ironic.”
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
“What?”
“None of the richest doctors made their money seeing patients. It’s either from pharmaceuticals or insurance or patents. A few doing biotech, pushing the bounds of medicine, as their slogan says.”
“So what does Doctor Barlow want with me?”
On the too-small screen, Marc shrugs. “He was your favorite teacher, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your mentor. Close to your family.”
Maggie nods. “He told me tonight that he’d always been in love with my mother.”
“So maybe that’s it. Maybe he just wants to help you out.”
“How?”
“Give you a job at Barlow Cosmetics.”
“But I lost my license. I can’t do surgery.”
“You could still do some other kind of work for him.”
“Like what? I’m only good at one thing.” Maggie sees the smirk on Marc’s face. She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Don’t say it.”
Marc smiles. “What?”
“Just don’t.”
“You mean about you only being good at one thing?”
“Stop.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, raising his hand in mock surrender. “But I still think it’s most likely Barlow knows your situation and wants to help.”
Because her head is down and her eyes are on the screen, Maggie nearly bumps into a group of students walking in the other direction. One of them mutters something about watching where she’s going, and she offers a sincere apology because, to be fair, she hates when people are walking with their heads down and eyes on the screen.
“What else do you see?” she asks.
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“He opened the fi rst Barlow Cosmetic Center seventeen years ago. Supposedly it’s cutting- edge and state- of-the-art.”
“What’s the difference between those?” Maggie asks.
“What?”
“They always say that in ads. ‘Cutting- edge and state- of-the-art.’ Aren’t they the same thing?”
“Cutting edge refers to the most recent and advanced tools or platforms in a particular field. State of the art refers to the best technology or techniques made up of the most modern methods.”
Maggie makes a face. “You just looked that up.”
“I did, yes.”
“He wasn’t a billionaire when we were at Columbia,” she says. “He did cleft lift and palates, burns, reconstructive surgery. Worked almost exclusively with the underserved.”
“Like you,” Marc says.
Maggie shakes her head. “Like us.”
“I never did a cleft— ”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, yeah. Either way, all that is probably in his past. My guess is, Barlow does mostly breast augmentation and facelifts now. The details on his practice are pretty secretive.”
“He’s got some famous clients,” she says. “They probably demand discretion.”
“Probably.”
She thinks about it and then fi gures, Why not? “I saw Sleazy Steve.”
“Did he hit on you?”
“Yes, but he can pull younger tail now.”
“Younger tail?”
“Apparently that’s a thing.” Then she says, “He said he works at Apollo Longevity.” When there’s no reply, she says, “I thought it closed down.”
“It still has its original mission: longevity. Blood spinning, ozone
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therapies, cell regeneration, stem cell, EBOO therapy.” He grins. “All cutting-edge and state-of-the-art.”
“But WorldCures is out?”
“There is no more WorldCures, Maggie.”
Just like that. Matter- of-fact as can be.
“Right,” she says. “I know.”
“So when are you going up to New York?”
“Tomorrow morning,” she says. “I’m going to call your dad at Vipers, see if he’s around.”
“Have you seen him recently?”
“Not since he and the gang road-tripped through here last month.”
“How’s he doing?”
“You know Porkchop,” she says.
Marc doesn’t say anything, just waits.
“He’s good,” she lies.
Maggie turns the fi nal corner. Up ahead is the saltbox colonial she grew up in and where she now resides with her sister Sharon and nephew Cole.
“Maggie?”
“Yes?”
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
She stops. “About the meeting with Barlow?”
“Yes.”
A cold fi nger traces down her spine. “What makes you say that?”
“Nothing. I mean, no facts or anything.”
“Just a bad feeling?”
“Yes.”
“Except,” Maggie says, “you don’t work off feelings.”
No reply.
When Maggie sees her nephew step out of the house, she hits the red disconnect icon and drops the phone in her pocket. Cole pops on a huge smile when he sees his aunt. It’s been a tough year for the
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kid— too much death, divorce, and debt for a fi fteen-year- old boy— but Cole always manages a smile for his aunt and his mother. Maggie doesn’t know whether the smiles are authentic or not. She suspects not. Cole is so damn kind and perceptive, Maggie suspects that he sees the stress his mother and aunt are under and does his utter best not to add to it.
“Hey, Aunt Maggie.”
She gives Cole a hey back. He starts a gangly, endearing trudge toward her. It tweaks her heart, the humanness of his sputtering movements, his youth and vulnerability.
“How’s Mom?” Maggie asks.
His face falls. “She’s at the kitchen table again.”
“It’ll be okay,” Maggie tells him. Then: “She’ll be okay.”
“Your being here, with us— I know it’s not your responsibility— ”
“It’s my responsibility,” Maggie says.
Cole nods, forces the smile back onto his face. The honk of a horn draws their attention. A car pulls up with a bunch of teens hanging out the windows. They call to Cole, who looks an apology at her, but Maggie smiles and waves him off.
“Go,” she says.
“You sure?”
“I got this.”
Cole does the gangly trudge toward the car, though this time with more speed. Maggie watches, glad for this bit of normalcy. Her nephew deserves this. The back door opens and swallows him whole. When the car vanishes down the road, she takes out her phone and calls Vipers. She hears the ringing of the retro black payphone in the corner of the bar with a sign reading out of order so no patrons use it. This is Porkchop’s version of a Batphone. Her father-in-law, Porkchop—yes, that’s what everyone, even his son, calls him— redefi nes old school. He doesn’t own a mobile phone or computer. For that matter he doesn’t own a house or car or television. Porkchop
GONE BEFORE GOODBYE
once told her, “All I own is a motorcycle and the open road,” and when she made a face, he shrugged and said, “I read that on a matchbook in some biker bar in Sturgis.”
When the phone is picked up, a woman speaks. She sounds somehow both young and like she’s seen it all. “Vipers for Bikers.”
Maggie can hear the customary background racket of the biker bar. “Bat Out of Hell” is on the jukebox, one of Porkchop’s favorites, Meatloaf right now rocking that when the night is over, he’ll be gone, gone, gone. Maggie and Marc played the song at their wedding, she and Marc and Porkchop and Sharon standing in a circle on the dance floor, shouting every lyric at the top of their lungs until Marc pulled her close and the world vanished and the song softened for a moment and Marc sang along that she’s the only thing in this whole world that’s pure and good and right. And then they stared at each other until the song picked back up again and she’s reminded that Meatloaf is really singing about their last night together and the stanza ends with him screaming, “We’ll both be so alone.”
“Is Porkchop there?”
“No.”
Maggie can see the scene— that jukebox in the corner, the sawdust on the floor, the collection of neon beer signs, the heady smell of worn leather, diesel fuel, and testosterone.
“Can I leave a message for him?”
“Depends. You one of his old ladies?”
“Old ladies,” Maggie repeats. “Did Porkchop tell you to say that?”
“Yeah.”
The man never changes.
“Tell him it’s Maggie.”
The woman doesn’t bother with an “Okay” or “I will.” She just hangs up.
Maggie puts away her phone and enters the house, nearly tripping over a pair of Cole’s sneakers the size of small canoes. “Hello?”
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“In the kitchen,” Sharon calls back.
The house is stuck somewhere in the . . . Maggie wasn’t even sure of the era. Seventies? Eighties? When you grow up in it, you don’t get how dated your own home is, and of course there is nothing wrong with that. The green-beige curtains are too heavy with tassels. The Persian carpets are pattern- complicated and threadbare. The antique “knickknack cabinet”— that’s what Mom had called it— has dozens of small, silver-framed photographs, most of them black-and-white, along with various cheesy fi gurines like Hummel children— boy in apple tree, girl with umbrella, that kind of thing. They had always been there, as far as Maggie knew. She didn’t remember her parents ever buying or putting one up or moving one or changing any. None of the knickknacks seemed to hold any particular significance to her parents. They never talked about where the Hummels came from, but Maggie assumes, knowing her parents, that someone had gifted them or they’d inherited them and their fate was either storage in the basement or placement on the knickknack cabinet.
It wasn’t that her parents were cash-strapped or, to be more blunt, tacky, but it was more that the “Doctors McCabe” couldn’t be bothered. Mom and Dad didn’t care about the dated wallpaper or the worn shag carpeting. Her parents were wonderful and kind and distracted; they were readers and healers and academics. They spent their money on books and experiences, not upholstery or décor. She could still see them in this living room with their friends, maybe fueled by a little too much alcohol, the debates lasting into the wee hours of the morning in the days when disagreeing was considered a good thing, when differing viewpoints were welcomed because they challenged and honed your thinking rather than producing anger and scorn.
But Maggie isn’t in the mood right now for that kind of . . . Was it nostalgia? What do you call a longing for critical thinking and common sense and decency?
Maggie’s family history is still told via framed photos on the
fi replace mantel— she and Sharon at their dance recital when Maggie was eight and Sharon was six, various graduations, weddings, births, you know the deal. We have all seen it before. Maggie stops at the largest photograph— a horizontal group shot from her and Marc’s wedding. She and Marc are beaming in the center. Next to Maggie is Sharon, her obvious maid of honor. Next to Marc is his best man, Trace Packer. Trace could have been on either side of them, really. Trace had met Maggie fi rst, serving with her as a Field Surgeon 62B in combat for two tour duties.
When she introduced Trace and Marc, the two men hit it off immediately. Eventually the three of them— Marc, Trace, Maggie—would create WorldCures Alliance, one of the world’s most dynamic charities, specializing in providing medical services for the most impoverished.
In the photo, Maggie’s parents are on the far right, looking heartbreakingly alive and healthy. Now that she looks again, does Maggie see hesitancy in her mother’s body language? Or is that “had I but known” projection on her part? Porkchop, Marc’s father, is on the far left. All the men wear matching tuxedos, except for Porkchop, who did don the bow tie and piqué bib white shirt but kept on the leather biker jacket and the smile-skull jewelry, and Maggie would have wanted it no other way.
As though on cue, her phone rings. The incoming call simply says payphone
“Hello?”
Porkchop’s gruff voice barks. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Maggie says, still looking at Porkchop’s image in the old wedding photograph. “Well, except that whoever answered your phone is referring to fellow women as your ‘old ladies.’”
“What, you prefer my ‘girlfriends’?”
“Not really.”
“What then? My ‘hotties’? ‘Main squeezes’? ‘Love monkeys—’ ”
“Did you say ‘love monkeys’?”
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“My bae, my boo, cuddle muffi ns— ”
“Please stop.”
“Some of the youngins call them ‘shorties,’” Porkchop continues.
“That better?”
“No,” Maggie says. “And never use the term ‘youngins’ again.”
“It’s cute when I say it.”
“Yeah, it’s really not.”
“Sooooo,” Porkchop says, dragging out the word, “this has been a fun icebreaker. What’s wrong, Maggie?”
“Can’t I call to say hello?”
“Sure.”
Silence.
“I’m coming up to Manhattan tomorrow,” Maggie says.
“Taking the Amtrak?”
“Yes.”
“Time?”
“The seven fourteen.”
“I’ll pick you up. You’ll tell me all then.”
Porkchop disconnects the call. Maggie’s eyes travel across the wedding photograph again, her mind blank and everywhere all at once.
From the kitchen, Sharon calls out, “Maggie?”
She wrestles her eyes from the photograph, inhales, and, taking a cue from her nephew, forces up a smile. When Maggie enters the kitchen, Sharon is sitting at the table, per what Cole said, her laptop open, papers strewn as though someone had dropped them from a great height. There is an open bottle of red from the Château HautBailly. Just seeing it leads to a deep pang in her chest that has nothing to do with her sister’s recent desire to drink to excess.
“What are you doing?” Maggie asks.
Sharon looks up. “Coding to enable a hyperdimensional generative
