Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Tycor Labs negotiated a settlement with claimants, and then the company filed for bankruptcy, though the owners were still worth billions.
Autumn was asked to testify before Congress, and she did, but then she returned to her sleepy little town in the mountains, the one where the townspeople protected her from the news cameras that attempted to disrupt her requested privacy. And her grief.
It hadn’t only been doctors and pharmaceutical executives who’d known of the lies and abuses and done nothing, it’d been nurses and administrators, too afraid to put their careers or pensions on the line, too fearful to stand alone in the face of giants.
The extent of the experimentation done on the children later sent out into the world as hired assassins, false flag operators, and agents provocateurs was mostly kept classified. After all, the crimes they’d committed, though driven by years of mental, physical, and psychological torture, were only slowly being uncovered. Jak had been meant to be one of those assassins before his grandfather essentially ended the experiment. Sam had not been so lucky. Neither had the rest of them, some of whom were surely still out there, doing their captors’ bidding and believing they worked toward some form of greater good they did not care about nor question.
While the global conversation regarding the ADHM babies and those who’d been falsely diagnosed as such mainly surrounded medical ethics and pharmaceutical corruption, the greater story, to Mark and the small group of men and women he worked with, was about the mastermind who continued to evade capture. Dr. Swift, who preyed on innocence and sniffed out other morally empty individuals looking to enrich themselves on the backs of children, remained at large. And with him, the names of those who were malevolent enough to purchase their services.
Autumn paid attention to some of the coverage, but mostly she didn’t. After all, she’d lived it. Instead, she focused on her patients, her family, her friends, and the small garden she’d planted at the back of her house.
Most mornings, she woke slowly, a memory, a knowing, skirting through the rooms of her mind, telling her something was wrong but not exactly what. An inborn coping mechanism, that brief delay. A biological kindness. Brace, it whispered. Brace. And then reality came flooding in, like the tide she imagined had delivered his body to the bottom of the ocean.
He was gone.
Only…she had another feeling too—one she couldn’t shake. One she didn’t want to. He was gone, yes, only he wasn’t dead. She was sure of it. Somewhere out there, he picked apples or plowed fields or unloaded cargo. Some days as she knelt in her garden, she’d picture him. She’d close her eyes and turn her face to the sun, and she’d feel him, just as sure as she felt the kiss of warmth on her skin. Not beside her or down the street but somewhere. Somewhere. Still alive, still breathing, still holding her heart carefully in his large, calloused hands.
But it wasn’t until six months later that she received the proof that confirmed her feeling. It was a picture of the Grand Canyon, and when she turned it over, she saw his handwriting, which she knew well from her recreated journal. Her breath caught, and she let out a small gasp, tears springing to her eyes. Her hand came to her mouth as she read:
Answer: With others. Anything done in love is never finished. It goes on and on, handed from one generation to the next. So all we can do is put our whole heart into the small corner that is ours.
She leaned back against the counter, bringing the card to her chest, shaking with both laughter and tears. He was alive. He was alive. And it suddenly clicked into place what his message meant. He’d answered her question from so long ago. How do you build a temple that takes a hundred years to build?
The next postcard came from Monument Valley, and it said:
A: By not wishing it forward or regretting what is already gone.
Autumn grinned, her heart rejoicing. “How do you conquer time?” she whispered. Indeed, Sam. He was answering her unanswerable questions, one by one as he overlooked a sunlit canyon or sat beneath the dappled shade of a tree or gazed at a waterfall at dawn.
“He’s on a pilgrimage,” Harper said, the sound of baby Faye’s happy coos in the background making Autumn smile. “It’s necessary, Autumn, but I know it’s hard. Hey, what would you think about coming out to Montana for a long weekend this month?”
She only needed a moment to think about it. “Yes,” she said. “That sounds wonderful.”
Later, she looked up the definition of a pilgrimage: a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where the person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self. Her heart squeezed tightly. He was rebuilding himself. And she was overcome by his strength and his sensitivity, two things no one could take from him or cut from him or exchange for steel. Untouchable. Oh, Sam. If only you knew how hard I’m rooting for you.