The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

“Yet you shower after daybreak,” he blurted out. Embarrassed, his cheeks flushed.

“That was reckless.” She bit her lip. “I used the fact that it was summer as an excuse to let down my guard. The only visitors during the nesting season shouldn’t be here and thus won’t report me. I have had a few run-ins. In most cases I was able to convince them I wasn’t alone.”

Finn bit the inside of his cheek. He didn’t want to know what had happened to the others. Only through winning her trust would he stand a chance of getting home, he reminded himself. “Let me help you prep for the storm.”

She rolled her head as if considering the offer.

“Come to think of it, Kristian never mentioned you, either,” she said, glancing toward the window.

“So, you do know my brother.”

“Yes,” she said, staring into her right palm, “though I wish I didn’t.”

The muscles in his chest tightened. Once free, Finn would confront Kristian. “He can be a little socially awkward, but he’s all right.”

“What was he like,” she asked, clearing her throat, “when he was little?”

“I wasn’t around then.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“I know he was a curious kid, who loved taking things apart to see how they worked. His old toys came to me in bins full of pieces, which was fine by me. I liked putting them back together.”

She hugged her middle. “Kristian’s a good man, to have helped those 9/11 survivors the way he did.”

Finn cocked his head. He knew his brother had been working at the hospital that day, but he hadn’t mentioned treating any of the victims. If he had, he would have been too proud of that fact not to have shared it. “What do you mean?”

“He told me what happened to those poor, trapped people after the aliens crashed their spaceships into the top floors. It’s terrible. I hope they never return.”

Incredulous, he wagged his jaw. Although Kristian could be a smart-ass, disrespecting the 9/11 victims didn’t sound like him. Even more disconcerting: she hadn’t seen through his con, which meant she actually might have been living here since at least 2001.

Quite possibly, Finn thought, balling his hands into fists, their discontinuation of the project had been nothing more than a brief pause. They could have used both Sylvia’s illness and SARS, which had killed almost eight hundred people during 2002 and 2003, as justification for furtively resuming their work. No longer could he believe anything they’d told him about this island and their research.

“Yeah, those poor, trapped people.” He waved his hand at the dead-bolted door.

She chuckled. “Irony can be a bitch, huh?”

“Can you at least tell me your name?”

Reflexively, she patted her pouch of scalpels. “It’s obvious what you’re up to, but it’s pointless. Everyone who gets close to me dies,” she said, grunting, “one way or another.”

A breeze tickled the back of his throbbing neck, and he shuddered. “How about I guess it? Is it . . . Elle? As in E-L-L-E. Not L, as in ‘lovely,’ though you are. Lovely, I mean.” Where did that come from? Suddenly the room felt ten degrees hotter.

“No, I’m hideous,” she said, crossing her arms to hide her scars. “And the inside’s even worse.”

She jumped back from the observation window.

Bewildered, he listened for whatever new threat she’d perceived.

Detecting nothing, he looked down and realized that he’d stepped toward her, but didn’t retreat. His throat ached. Over the past three weeks, he’d been so fixated on what she’d been through physically, he hadn’t considered the abuse’s impact on her psyche. Suddenly, he felt compelled to counter the negative self-talk she’d just revealed.

“You must have noticed I can’t stop staring at you,” he said in a gentle voice.

“Of course I did. Who wouldn’t stare at a freak?”

“I don’t know how you pull it off, but the scars make you look more beautiful.” He moved his foot in an arc along the dust. “It’s sad that you wear pain so well.”

He looked up and noted the glisten of a tear on her cheek.

“Coraline,” she said through the glass, “but all my friends call me Cora.” She laughed, and he could tell by her hollow tone that she’d meant it as a joke.

“Nice to meet you, Cora.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he felt their connection snap. “No Gettler is a friend of mine.”

“Then think of me as Finn. Just Finn.”

“Why didn’t your father give you a German name?”

“My mom wanted to name me after Huckleberry in Tom Sawyer. Her second love is American lit.”

“Ulrich must have hated that her Romanian genes muddied his perfect line of Aryan descendants,” she said nonchalantly.

How could she know that? Playing it off, Finn laughed. “He never seemed to mind that I was a mutt. Gramps was good to me, aside from when I was causing trouble.”

Her face had darkened.

Sensing he’d hit a nerve, he backtracked: “Irregardless,” he flashed her a smile, “I like my name. It fits.”

“I loved that character. The way he helped Jim…” she said, a lightness returning to her eyes.

He grinned.

“That doesn’t mean I like you,” she said, glowering, then looked toward the exterior. “I gotta go.”

His heart thudded. “Why?”

“The sun’s about to set.” She stepped out of sight.

“Wait.”

“I never miss a sunset,” she said from the far side of the wall.

The sound of footfalls echoed in the corridor.

Finn darted to the door and yelled through the slit. “When will you be back?!”

“Not sure I will.” Her voice had sounded faint.

1907

The beginning of Typhoid Mary’s exile on North Brother Island

October 1907

oncealed against the church, Cora pulled back the hood of her cloak and searched the blackness for an unlit boat. The flashing beacon at North Brother’s southern tip was little help. Downriver, the star-pocked night faded to an indigo hue as it neared the Gotham skyline. The mansions along Fifth Avenue and Broadway were illuminated by electric streetlamps—she could just make out their orange halos—and an occasional taller building glistened with nocturnal activity. Of the million lights in that city, only one