Page 36 of Wild Life (STEAM-y #2)

No Place Like Home

Maris

Three months later—Washington state, U.S.A.

My eyes burned as I clicked through peer-reviewed articles, scanning rows of text like a machine scanning barcodes. The information dumped into my wasteland of a brain, stored for use at a later time. My finger never left the scroll wheel on my mouse, not even to scratch my nose or fidget in my lap. Before, when I’d worked, I had always been in motion, and now I found myself, more often than not, frozen. Still. Too still.

And nothing around me seemed to move, either. Time never changed. No one aged. The university had remained untouched while I was away. My office was still the same, not a pen out of place from how I had left it.

The only difference was inside of me. The part of me that had finally come to life…had died. For years, I had believed I was broken beyond repair. Then I had realized how untrue that assumption had been, that I was capable of so much more than what my environment, the people around me, could give me. And when all of that had changed, I had become free to bloom.

Footsteps echoed outside in the hall, careful and controlled. Perfectly planned. Predictable.

Not to my surprise, they stopped in my doorway. I didn’t look up. I already knew she was standing there and how the visit would go.

“Maris.” No hello. No humor. Just homogeneous gray. I didn’t bother answering because she’d invite herself inside anyway.

“You’ll need glasses soon if you continue to stare at the screen like that.”

My pupils betrayed my brain and flicked to her position as if summoned by the formidable woman standing properly in her charcoal-gray pantsuit. Her silver stud earrings were plain and peeking out from her gray hair. Talk about a gray aura.

I sat back in my chair. “Aunt Sherri. What brings you here?” Nothing good.

She entered without invitation and took a seat on the chair across from me. I saw much of myself in her: the thin and pointed nose, lips that turned down slightly at the corners, eyes with specks of gold. I had inherited more from her than my own mother. It also extended to our strong sense of obligation. Or maybe that had been forced on me by her.

“I came to check on you.”

“That’s very kind of you, yet very off-brand.” She had never been a warm woman. I had always sought her approval, but nothing I’d ever done had earned the affection I so desperately needed as a child—and now as an adult.

“Are you taking your medication?”

“Ahh, that’s it,” I said, realization dawning on me.

“That’s what?” Her nose wrinkled, much like mine did when I was confused.

“The real reason you’re here. You took time from your busy day to play social worker, coming for a wellness check.”

She let out an exasperated sigh that reminded me of when my mother used to do the same thing when I spoke back to her. “You need to take your medications. The doctor warned that they’re important to your recovery.”

After I had threatened to jump overboard, we’d stopped in Fiji and were met by an ambulance, which had rushed me to the emergency room for care. The doctors there wouldn’t listen to my pleas to be let go and had instead sedated me enough to fly me back to the States on a private medical plane comped by the university.

Apparently, my face had been all over the news for months, and my missing case had become high profile as “The American Researcher Lost at Sea.” Wild lore had developed that I had been snagged by mermen and brought to a secret island where I’d been kept as a sex slave. People were waiting for the sex-slave bat girl to do an interview or release a book, but I never fed the sensationalistic media beast. I ended up holing up in my office most of the time to avoid people at all costs.

“That man is a quack.” The doctor who’d taken over my care when I arrived in Washington was completely incompetent. I had known it from the second I’d caught him Googling rabies symptoms after he had found out I was a chiropterologist and had been in contact with wild bats, even though I had relayed to him none had ever bitten me and I was up-to-date on my vaccinations. He’d assumed it was the cause of my mental state until blood panels—that I had demanded—had come back as proof of his stupidity.

Then he’d doped me up on a bunch of antipsychotics and anxiolytics, which had left me dazed and out of my body. After discharge, I had continued them for a while to numb the pain in my chest, but I hated how I felt on them, like I was moving through molasses, slow and tired. So, I had weaned myself off of them and hadn’t taken one in weeks. I wanted to wallow in my heartache, not diminish it.

It was evident that, yet again, Aunt Sherri disapproved of my self- un medicating. “Have you been meeting with your therapist?”

“Nope. Haven’t had time.” I was too busy with research on white-nose syndrome to talk about my feelings or be gaslit for leaving my heart on a deserted island. Plus, the therapist was friends with my aunt, so there was no way I was confiding in her.

“Maris, you had a mental breakdown and suffered trauma.”

I slammed my laptop shut and shoved it into my bag. Those familiar phantom ants crawled on my skin, begging me to get away from this intervention. “We’re done here.” I hurried to the door to leave.

“Don’t walk away while I’m speaking to you.” She remained seated, as if expecting me to obey.

I turned to her. “Then respect my boundaries. I told you never to talk about the island.”

She approached me like I was some curiosity for her to study. “What happened to you there? You haven’t told me anything. Eli told me you were raving about how you had fallen in love with some beastly man who paraded you around some sick bats.”

I shut my lids, and my life on the island, from start to finish, played in fast-forward motion, stopping on the last time I had seen Aleki. My Aleki.

My heart ached as if I was going to die right on the spot.

“His name is Aleki. He isn’t a beast, he is a good man. One who took care of me when I needed him most. One who I fell in love with.” I glared at her. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“There’s no need to be condescending.” The woman was cold as ice. Her niece was clearly in pain, and she wouldn’t break her tough exterior to feel with me.

“For my entire life, you’ve been a pillar. When I was younger, I idolized you as this larger-than-life-being because you were so strong, especially at a time when I felt so small and vulnerable. I had somehow tricked myself into thinking that I should be like you. Work hard, fulfill my duty, and never waste time on human relationships. I learned to bargain with my body to seek the comfort and security I needed but had never received as a child. I pushed away anyone who dared to ask me for more because I was afraid they’d leave me first. A circle my parents started but you continued with your emotional neglect when you took responsibility of me.”

Silently, she swallowed the words I pressed upon her—everything I had wanted to say for far too long.

It had been acceptable for her generation to raise children by any means necessary, even if it denied them basic needs like expressing emotions. Nowadays, that was considered a form of abuse based on how negatively it could impact kids. I was proof of that.

Sure, I had made the choice to sleep around to search for safety and had lived to tell my tale. What if it had taken a turn? What if I slept with the wrong man? Ended up in a physically abusive relationship or with a sexually transmitted disease? I could’ve really harmed myself, and while I would’ve been partly responsible, Aunt Sherri and my parents would have had to share the responsibility, too.

“After I washed ashore, I was forced to deal with the emotional neglect of my childhood for the first time. To truly be solitary and not feed the addiction I had learned…sleeping with men for the comfort I was starving for. But Aleki understood my loneliness. I had been alone in a world filled with people, while he had been completely alone.

“The experience showed me that no matter where I lived, I couldn’t escape the hurt inside. I learned I didn’t need to use sex as a bandage. Aleki gave me everything I needed to heal those wounds without expecting anything in return. And together, I think we cured each other. We fell in love, and I left him out of obligation. Obligation that you taught me. That I had to place duty above human emotion, like I was a machine. That education and work were more important than my heart.”

Aunt Sherri’s bland exterior morphed and her cheeks reddened. It was like watching a black-and-white TV show converted to Technicolor for the first time.

She threw her hands up, finally losing control. “You think I wanted this? To raise a child when I never had any interest in having one of my own?”

Her words cut me deep, but I was already numb. I had always known that I’d never been wanted—not by the people who had made me and not by my guardian.

“Sometimes you have to put your personal regards aside and fulfill your duty. My sister died, and I had an obligation to her. If I hadn’t stepped in, I shudder to think on what street corner you’d have been on by now. I sacrificed a hell of a lot for you, and you’re ungrateful for all the good things you received because of it, like a roof over your head and an excellent education.”

“I didn’t receive a childhood. I’m so thankful that you did take me in, but you couldn’t give me what a kid grieving her parents needed, and it festered. You can’t expect a kid to understand sacrifice and emotional repression. I needed warmth and happiness, but you weren’t capable of giving me those things. And now that you see how that affected me, you expect me to continue to fulfill obligations and repress my emotions, instead of allowing me to mourn another death in my life. This time, I won’t let you. I’m not taking the medication. I want to feel it. I want to feel the heartache of the loss of the love of my life.”

Aunt Sherri sighed, and I was suddenly greatly aware of how tired she seemed.

“I don’t know what to say, Maris. I tried with you. I was never cut out to be a mother.”

I approached her, lowering my voice.

“I know. Some women aren’t, and that’s as valid as some women adoring motherhood. We were both dealt shitty deals when Mom and Dad died. We burdened each other unintentionally. Now, we’re older.” I pulled at my cheeks so the skin was taut, as if giving myself a face lift.

She chuckled. I had never heard her laugh, and it was a nice sound.

“And hopefully wise enough to stop these behaviors that don’t bring us joy.”

My aunt stood before me, for the first time, a defeated woman. She could conquer any task she set her mind to, except her niece.

“I really wanted to do right by you. To make you into a successful person,” she admitted.

“You have. I have a career because of your influence, but my path is different than yours. I am not you.”

Her head hung loosely above her sagging shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Maris. I wish I could have been the guardian you needed.”

“And I wish I could’ve just been your niece. We were forced onto each other in a way that neither of us wanted.”

She did something she’d only ever done once before. She pulled me in for a hug. I closed my eyes, feeling as I had at eight years old, at my parents’ funeral—like I had family.

“You have my support in anything you decide,” she whispered.

And I was finally grateful for that.

***

Aunt Sherri and I said our goodbyes, and she left my office just before I packed up for the day. I took the long way out of the building, needing to clear my head.

She had said she’d support me in everything I did from now on. I couldn’t tell if it had been a loaded message, or if that was how I had received it.

“Hey, Maris.” Malcom waved to me as I was passing his office.

I entered. “You’re back.”

“Just landed a few hours ago,” he said from behind his computer, his fingers moving over the keyboard, rapidly tapping keys.

“And you’re here working, when the workday is nearly over? Did you even stop home to shower off the airplane stink?”

“No rest for science,” he said without glancing up from his screen. That was Malcom, always preferring work over human interaction. Aunt Sherri would have loved to raise him.

I sat down in the chair across from his desk. “Isn’t that the truth.”

“Didn’t expect to see you back to work yet.”

“Yeah, I don’t do well playing patient.” My medical leave hadn’t yet expired, but it didn’t matter to me. I’d rather be at the university than haunted by thoughts in my empty townhome.

“We’re lucky that Eli found you. You were in the middle of nowhere. No one knew there was land there until he picked it up on the radar.”

I needed to reexamine the definition of this luck that everyone kept saying I had so much of, because I sure didn’t feel lucky at the moment.

“Yeah, that Eli is a leprechaun with a shit ton of gold coins.”

That distracted Malcom from his screen. “Still haven’t made up with him?”

“I’d prefer to ignore that he ever existed.”

Eli’s clinginess was a reminder of how destructive my past actions had been, and being around him only brought me back to that time in my life. After we had made it back to the States and I had regained my wits, I’d told him to fuck off. His attention had been suffocating and overstimulating. He hadn’t taken my request well and had berated me again for my relationship with Aleki and how I’d lost my standards when I’d fallen off the boat.

Eli was angry and he was allowed to be. But I couldn’t deal with him when I was hurting so badly, so I had never made contact again. He still worked for the university, and I avoided him at all costs.

“Are you okay?” Malcom asked. He knew all about my hospital stays and mental breakdown because he was the one who had urged the university to comp my travel expenses coming back to the States. It was also because of him that I still had my job despite questions about my competency to remain on the team.

I wasn’t okay, but it was too sticky a topic to dive into with Malcom.

“You know, just reminding myself to breathe. And to lift one foot off the ground at a time while walking. And to not eat glue.”

His gaze softened. “Make sure to pace yourself.”

“So, how was your trip?” I broached the topic gently. While I had been in treatment, Malcom had been the one to facilitate the study of the bats. He’d organized a team, since I had been incapacitated, and they’d leaped into action quickly, using the coordinates that Eli had found on the radar.

For now, we had exclusive rights to study the island since the bat population was suffering from disease. That helped to limit the number of visitors to just employees of the university.

“That place is wild as fuck. How did you possibly survive there for that long? Jesus.”

“Yeah, it was pretty unruly.” My feet were still healing from the blisters.

“We found the colony you discovered and were able to administer the loading dose and the maintenance dose of the antifungal.”

“Oh, good, how did they handle it?”

“Pretty well, from what we can tell.”

“And what about the other species?”

“There are so many varieties that it’s been difficult to track all the roosts down. We’ve tagged as many as we could to monitor them, but it’s turned into a bigger job than I had expected. Identifying all of them could take months before we’re able to ensure that no other species are infected. I tapped in a few graduate interns to stay back with Keats and Mahoney until I can make it back out there next month.”

My head swam with what an enormous undertaking this had turned into. “God, that’s a really big project.”

“No kidding.”

“You know, I’ve been researching the use of beneficial bacteria topically, and I think that could be helpful as an adjunct to maintenance treatment. Perhaps introducing it into their water supply. When I was there, I observed a large number of individuals drinking from a specific water source. Maybe we could lace the water so it’s introduced into their gut biome?”

Malcom tapped his lower lip. “That’s not a bad idea at all, especially if we can protect the ecosystem in the water source from the bacterial treatment.”

I paused, bracing myself for what I was about to ask—what I wanted to ask. “How is he?”

Malcom leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “Are you sure you want to know?”

Oh God, was it that bad?

My heart fell into my stomach as I nodded. “I want to know.”

“He told us where we could shove our nets.”

I laughed so hard that I snorted. It was impolite, but the image of Aleki—the grumpy, half-naked jungle-dweller—telling a group of reserved scientists that they could shove their mist nets up their asses was hilarious. “That sounds like him.”

“How did you live with him for that long? He’s a scary dude. He made Keats cry.”

My mouth fell open. “Oh no, what happened?”

“Keats asked him if he knew where the waterfall was, and Aleki growled at him. Never seen Keats so ghostly pale before—not even when a jaguar almost attacked him.”

I giggled. “He is pretty disagreeable at first meeting… was. You know what I mean.” I sometimes forgot I wasn’t still with Aleki, and when the realization hit, it was like the floor had fallen from under me.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Malcom said, pretending not to notice my stammering. “And his pig is worse.”

My eyes widened. “Poaka?”

Malcom rubbed his head. “Shit, it has a name?”

“What did he do?”

“He tried to eat me.”

“What?!” I couldn’t help the volume of my voice. Poaka was intimidating in size, but his temperament was softer than a puppy’s. “I don’t believe it.”

Malcom flashed his wrist, showing off a two-inch scab below his watch.

“Damn. Are you okay? Poaka was always a bit rough, but he never attacked me.”

He adjusted his cuff over the healing wound. “Okay, maybe I embellished. He tried to eat my watch.”

I settled back, the story now making sense. “That sounds more like the Poaka I know. Always hungry.”

“He misses you,” Malcom said.

“Poaka? I miss him, too.” He was the sweetest companion a girl could have.

Malcom’s voice turned serious. “No, Aleki.”

“Oh.” I blinked rapidly to fight away the tears. The wound was open and threatened to bleed all over Malcom’s desk if I didn’t get a hold of myself. “He said that?”

Malcom shook his head. “But he kept asking if I’d gotten permission from you to do anything with the bats.”

A smile broke through my sadness. I missed him so much.

“He smiles the same way whenever he hears your name. Never fully, like something heavy is weighing down the corners of his mouth, keeping him from doing it freely.”

“He does?” It pained me to know that Aleki was hurting like I was.

“Yeah, then it fades quickly the way yours did, as if he realized it had all just been a dream or something.”

My heart ached for him—to be with him.

Malcom closed a file to the left of his keyboard and placed it at the corner of his desk. “I wanted to talk to you about something, though.”

I pressed my hand on my chest to numb my broken heart. “Shoot.”

“This project is going to take God knows how long. And I’ll have to rework my schedule to fly out there every few months. It’ll blow a large portion of the budget, since I have to staff interns and team members out there. There’s also the matter of how much of the terrain we’ve yet to map.”

I nodded, but wasn’t quite following the direction of the conversation yet. “That sounds like a lot.”

“It is. It would be easier if we had someone who knows the geography. Who knows the wildlife, and the wild human, who lives there.”

I held my breath. “Malcom? Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”

His gaze narrowed at me. “Only if you’re up to it.”

I took a deep breath, and instantly, I smelled the fresh air and felt the tropical sun’s warmth kiss my skin like a fond memory.

“Plus, I think Aleki is planning to steal our boats.”

My brows pinched together so hard that my forehead tugged on my hairline. “Huh?”

“Yeah, he lurks on the beach often, examining them. Once, I even caught him inside of one, messing with the gears. If I hadn’t shown up in time, he would’ve jetted away like James Bond.”

I giggled, humor finally finding me after it had abandoned my body months ago. “Why would he want to drive a boat?”

“Maybe to go find something he lost? Or someone?”

My breath hitched. Aleki was planning to leave the safety of his island…for me.

“So, can I count on you to man the field?” Malcom tapped his finger on his desk, waiting for my answer.

I nodded furiously. “I’m in.”

He clapped his hands, settling the deal. “Good, because you’re scaring the rest of the staff with your zombie-like demeanor.”

I laughed again, my heart beating giddily. “Why is everyone who works for you so weak?”

Malcom offered me a smile. Not as my boss, but as my friend. “Funny, your boyfriend asked me the same question.”