Read Online Double Helix by Nancy Werlin - Free Book Online Page A

I’d been discussing with Dr. Wyatt the other night, as we spoke about free will and human genetic destiny. “It’s pretty impressive, what you do here,” I said, and meant it.
    In actual fact, Larry and Mary Alice hadn’t told me anything that I didn’t already know, from researching Dr. Wyatt and from reading the company’s promotional literature on their website and in my employment packet. But it was different, hearing it from the people who worked there, hearing it while standing in the lab where I myself was going to work.
    I belong here, I thought. I really do. Larry is even interested in the same superhero stuff that Viv and I talk about. I bet Viv would like to talk to him sometime about her soul theories.
    I was full of eagerness and excitement.
    â€œCome meet the rabbits,” said Mary Alice. “And I’ll explain to you about the specific proteins that we’re hoping to get them to express.”
    â€œLet’s go,” I said.

CHAPTER 11
    IT WAS A GOOD WEEK, a rare week. I found myself springing from bed each morning like a piece of toast from the toaster, and my legs seemed to have made an independent decision to run all the way to work. On Thursday, after two consecutive mornings of waiting outside our lab door for someone to arrive and unlock it, I was presented with an access card key of my own, and the next morning, well before nine a.m., I had fed all of the Flopsy, Cottontail, MarchHare, Foo-foo, and Bugs rabbits (there were several with the same names, distinguished by numerical suffixes), recorded the weight of their feces, and set aside sections for routine analysis. In the late afternoon, I had to be shooed out, and I had so much to tell Viv, I thought I would explode before I could see her.
    I love this, I thought. I love being an adult.
    I was so happy that it even crossed my mind to try to talk to my father, to let him know how good a decision this had been. But there was no sense tampering with the silent truce at home. No, it was enough that my father had wordlessly agreed to just let me do what I had decided to do. I wouldn’t ask for more—wouldn’t risk more conversation—and, maybe, neither would he.
    If I also kept wondering what my father was concealing about Dr. Wyatt, what he had against him, I didn’t let myself dwell on it. I was well practiced in not dwelling on things . . . and despite my father’s denial, I continued to believe this had something to do with my mother.
    I cleaned out rabbit cages with zeal, and created a new computer report that sorted the historical data over animal generations and was easier to read.
    â€œAll this youthful enthusiasm,” Larry said to Mary Alice. “It will wear off. Please, tell me it will wear off.”
    The only thing keeping the job from complete perfection was the fact that I hadn’t seen Dr. Wyatt. I routed my steps past his office three or four times that week, but his door was always closed, and I didn’t hear from him.
    I tried to reason away my disappointment. He was a busy man, and he’d already done so much for me. It was ridiculous of me, juvenile, to have expected anything more, no matter what he’d implied about seeing more of me, having more conversations, even—did I dare hope for it?—acting as a mentor.
    Judith Ryan in Human Resources made that perfectly clear on Friday afternoon, when I went there to drop off signed employment forms and to watch a video for new employees about retirement savings and stock option plans. On my way out—even though I knew better—I stuck my head in her office, said a tentative hey, and waited for her to raise her cobra head. Which, eventually, she did.
    I’d been planning to be offhand and casual, but under her stare it was not possible. “Remember me? Dr. Wyatt brought me down here to meet you? I’m working with Larry Donohue now. I just started this week . . .” I had an