“My hypobaric chamber!” she squealed. She removed its tarp and spent the greater part of the day clearing the area around the chamber. Twenty years earlier, it had been her first foray into the world of eternal youth. Oxygen was vital to keeping skin looking young.
Her cleaning done, Milicent peered out the door of the carriage house to see if any of the handlers were around. When she thought she was alone, she hopped in and quickly fell asleep. It was her first good nap in decades.
The chamber quickly became her new obsession; she was in it constantly for over a week. She would have brought it into the house, but it was impossible to move on her own and she didn’t want to ask for help.
After she had sufficiently indulged in the rejuvenation sleep brings, she admitted to herself that she needed a job. She’d have to go to Rosen.
She dressed in her finest purple linen suit and sauntered into the Quine, ready to resume her post as head of Equine Management at Rosen. The dean was eager to have her back.
Her first day, she spent most of her time staring at the computer screen or out the window. She was alone. Her husband was gone; her son was gone. Noah was gone. Everyone she’d thought she loved was gone. She didn’t know what this feeling was that had nagged her since she’d been back in the States. As she stared out the window, a small voice inside her named the foreign feeling … loneliness.
She shook it off and sat back down in her purple leather chair. She didn’t make any movement toward working.
She stared at the ornate features decorating her office. “It’s overdone,” she said out loud. She got out of her chair and started taking down the artwork and removing the pillows from the settee and chairs. She opened the closet. It was already stuffed with spare pillows for seasonal updating. She slammed the closet door. Her heart was beating faster than she’d ever felt it, and the thought of a panic attack entered her mind. “Anxiety is a fallacy,” she said to herself, now mad at her bodily reactions. She swung open her office door and tossed all of the pillows into the hallway.
“Redecorating already?” Noah asked, catching the last one in his hand. He looked around at the bare walls and the curtains lying on the floor.
Her heart leapt to see him but she refused to show it. “I thought you were making Italy your new home?” she said, her back turned. She headed toward her chair of command. She felt in control in that chair.
“The rainy season started,” he said. “It was dreadful. On the fifth straight day of no sun, I decided to pack it in.” He glanced toward the window. “Although I see I brought it back with me.”
“Ah, well, do you expect to just come back here and be welcomed home like the prodigal son?”
“Face it, Mil, I’m all you’ve got,” he said.
“Fine,” she said. “You can have the office next door, but truthfully, Noah, I don’t know how long I’ll be here. It’s boring as hell.”
“That’s because I haven’t been here,” he said. “Everything’s looking up now. Except the weather.”
She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. “No, it’s just a small life here. I feel this is a step backward.”
He thought for a moment. “Maybe it’s just a pause. You’re a full-throttle kinda gal, and maybe this is a forced respite before your next chapter.”
Milicent pressed the intercom. “Suki!”
Seconds later, Suki appeared in the doorway. “You barked, ma’am?” All visible fear of Milicent seemed to have vanished.
Milicent ignored her comment. “I need a debrief of all the goings on since I’ve been away.”
“Yes, ma’am, and then I have some news,” Suki said.
“Debrief first,” Milicent said.
“Truthfully, it’s been quiet—almost boring, actually. I’ve tried to keep myself busy since Skylar’s been gone. The staff is pretty on top of the stable. The horses are thriving. I’ve been through the whole library, did some organizing and tidying. Haven’t seen the dean much.”
Milicent studied Suki as she drilled her fingertips on the desktop. “Organizing?”
“Yes, many of the scrolls and manuscripts were out of order, so I fixed them.”
“How could you tell?” Milicent asked.
Suki didn’t answer.
Milicent bounced out of her chair. “Come with me,” she said to them both.
The three of them rode the elevator to the basement in silence. Suki opened her mouth twice but no words came out.
The dim light of the Quine library gradually grew brighter as they entered. “Why did you ever care to dig into the National Archives when you had all this at your fingertips?” Noah asked.
“There’s always more secrets out there, Noah,” Milicent said. “And they’re scattered all around the globe.” She turned to Suki. “Show me what you’ve done here.”
“I didn’t remove anything, just reorganized,” Suki said. “You had some manuscripts in the wrong location, wrong time frame. I put everything in chronological order within each geographical location. And I created an index. It will be much easier to find things now.”
Milicent gave her a hard look. “The majority of these are incomprehensible. How did you read them?”
Suki shrugged. “At first I couldn’t read anything and just enjoyed looking at them, but then it was as if I was remembering them, not as documents but as living things that I could understand without actually reading the language. I know that sounds crazy.” She walked over to Ancient Egypt and pulled a papyrus tied with a thin braided rope. She unrolled it and placed it on the research desk. “This is the actual original of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The proper name is Book of Becoming.”
“Yes, I know that,” Milicent said. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“You can read this, Mil?” Noah asked.
She frowned. “No, I’ve had a translated spell book since I was a teenager. I’ve always been searching for immortality. I’m counting on curiosity to keep me young, because I certainly haven’t found it any other way.” She brushed at the loose skin on her neck with her manicured fingertips. “And I’ve spent the last thirty years diving into many things that almost worked. But it’s always eluded me.”
“Well,” Suki continued, “I found that if I sat with the works for a bit, I could hear them, feel their energy, absorb what they were trying to tell me.” She took Noah’s hand and placed it on the parchment. “Close your eyes and feel the paper. Listen and tell me what you hear.”
Noah obliged and waited for a second or two, then opened his eyes. “Nothing.” He pulled his hand away.
“You have to be open to it,” Suki said. “It’s irony at its best. This is Skylar’s domain, not mine.”
Milicent wandered over to the Freemason shelf and ran her hands along every spine of every book. “Let’s see what I get from these,” she said with anger in her voice. “Devlin still burns my ass, even after death. I was so mad when he found that genome. Science isn’t supposed to find it first. Immortality belongs to the spirit realm.” Her hand rested on a large volume and she got lost in thought.