“I volunteered,” he said proudly. “It sounded like an adventure. My youngest daughter just left for college in the fall and she made me promise to have more fun in my life.”
“Fun?” Devers asked. “You call this fun?” He turned to McCarter. “What do you think, Professor, you having any fun yet?”
McCarter’s face was grim. The helicopter had started a steep turn to the right, tilting him toward the open cargo door. He gripped the rails of the seat with both hands, fearing that his belt might give way at any moment and send him tumbling out the hatch. “This flight’s only a short one,” he managed. “I’m sure things will be a lot more enjoyable once we get in the field.”
“Right,” Devers said. “Sweating our balls off in a hundred degrees of heat and humidity—that’s when the fun starts.”
Devers leaned back in his seat, laughing even harder at his own comment.
“Don’t listen to him,” McCarter said. “It’s probably no more than ninety-five degrees out there. Ninety-six, ninety-seven, tops.”
As another wave of laughter moved through the group, McCarter thought of his own reasons for joining the expedition. For a moment he felt the grip of sadness creeping in, but then the helicopter began to slow and the treetops gave way to acres of manicured grass and sculptured botanical gardens. A leisurely turn to the left revealed the main buildings of the Hotel San Cristo, and a moment later they were touching down on the helipad.
McCarter climbed out, thankful to be stretching his legs. He saw a young woman in black slacks and a sleeveless khaki shirt walking toward them from the hotel.
“Welcome to Brazil,” she said. “I’m Danielle Laidlaw.”
CHAPTER 5
That night, Danielle brought the team together for dinner in one of the hotel’s private dining rooms. The atmosphere was pleasant, the food outstanding and the camaraderie genuine. As far as she could tell, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves … everyone except for Professor McCarter.
She watched him as he grew progressively more introspective, and when he left the table before dessert, stating he wanted to get to bed early, she excused herself and followed him, trailing him to the hotel’s main bar.
A drink before going to bed, she thought. Not a bad idea.
She walked up behind him as the soft music swirled around them and the bartender rushed off to grab a new bottle of whatever McCarter had ordered.
“Can I pay for that?” she asked. “The prices at this place are outrageous and the dollar’s not what it used to be.”
He turned, leaning against the polished mahogany and looking at her with a glint in his eye. “I should be ashamed to ask,” he said, smiling. “But what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
She laughed lightly at the cliché. It was something Bogart might have said, something her own father might have thought would pass for the height of cool. At least it made for easy conversation. “Who says I’m a nice girl?” she replied.
“Vicious rumor,” he said.
“I see,” she said, thinking, If he only knew her better. “I’ll have to do something about that. I’m here for a nightcap, actually. Sometimes it’s the only way for me to sleep. Something tells me you feel the same.”
McCarter sighed. “Just getting used to being alone,” he admitted.
She nodded. The NRI background check on McCarter had revealed many things, most important of which was the crisis he’d been through for much of the last five years. His wife had been in and out of hospitals, battling cancer, eventually losing to it. She could sense in him the emptiness that such a loss brought on, the questioning.
Upon learning this, Moore had suggested they find someone else, but Danielle knew a little bit about what McCarter was going through. She believed that once he reengaged with life he would throw himself into the project more fully than another scholar might. She thought that would be to his benefit and was certain it would be to theirs. And so even though McCarter had turned them down initially, Danielle had convinced Moore that they needed to go after him again. Now here he was.
“I know about your wife,” she said, finally. “For what it’s worth, I know how you feel.”
“Do you,” he said, giving her that look, the one that said he’d heard those words from so many people and most of them had no idea.
“My father died when I was twenty,” she explained. “Lung cancer from smoking two packs a day. He was sick for a year and a half before he passed and my mother didn’t deal with it very well, so I left school to come home and help.”
McCarter’s face softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … Were you close?”
That was a question, she thought. One she’d asked herself a thousand times. “Yes and no. More so when I was younger. I think he wanted boys, but instead he got stuck with just me. By the time I was ten, I knew how to throw a spiral and hit a fastball. On my twelfth birthday we changed the oil in the family car. But once I hit fifteen he kind of couldn’t pretend anymore. I was wearing makeup and dying my hair … and dating. We didn’t do too much after that. At least until I came back to take care of him.”
McCarter nodded. “I’m sure he appreciated that.”
She shook her head. “Actually, he considered me a quitter for letting his sickness affect me. For walking away from a scholarship, missing out on a year of academics. It made him furious, especially as he was too weak to force me to go back.”
As she spoke, the sting of that day hit her again. To her father, quitter was the worst thing you could call someone. Failing was one thing, quitting was a disgrace. It had always been his most bitter attack.
“He probably just—”
She put a hand on his arm to stop him. “He had a lot of misplaced anger,” she explained. “But he had a right to be angry, even if it was directed in the wrong way. And you and I have a right to be sad … and also to go on.”
McCarter took a sip of his drink. “You know, one counselor told me to accept it. Accept aging, accept dying, even embrace it, he said. That seemed like a bunch of defeatist crap to me. So I said, to hell with that, but I still have this sense of purposelessness. You’re young, you have different goals and drives. But when you get to be my age you’ll realize you do everything in life for the people you love. For your spouse and kids. Now the kids are grown, they don’t need you anymore, they kind of pat you on the head when you offer advice or try to help. And your partner is gone and you …”
He looked more directly at her. “And you can do anything you want to. Anything. But there doesn’t seem to be any point to it. You’re suddenly afraid to die and at the same time acutely aware of your own mortality. But instead of prodding you to live, it just sucks the joy out of life and you’re not really living anymore anyway.”
Danielle nodded. She remembered going back to school and finishing a double major in two and a half years just to prove she wasn’t a quitter, charging forward on autopilot, keeping herself so busy that she couldn’t think about her loss. And then, after graduating, she’d gone in a different direction, entering a profession totally unrelated to all that she’d learned. “You just have to keep looking,” she said. “You’ll find something. And in the meantime you can help me.”
McCarter laughed and then looked at her with a sort of astonishment in his eyes at what she’d said. “How old are you again?”
“Older than I look,” she replied. “And younger than I feel.”
Laughing lightly, McCarter agreed. “I know how that goes.”
As the bartender returned with her drink, McCarter held up his glass. “To the expedition,” he offered. “May we go on and find the truth.”