Betsy Eliot - The Brain and The Beauty

Abby took a deep breath and wondered what it was about her that made people want to tell her what to do. Her ex-husband had made the skill into an art form, always explaining to her in that smarter-than-thou tone that she should leave the thinking to him.

She wasn’t about to give up so easily. “Isn’t this the Still Waters School?”

“No.”

She frowned at his answer until she realized that technically it wasn’t a school anymore. “Is Dr. Waters here?” she tried again.

“I’m the only one here.”

Just her luck. She’d come all this way and he wasn’t even home. “Do you expect him back soon?”

It wasn’t a difficult question, but it appeared to give him trouble. Just when she was sure he wasn’t going to respond, he answered, “He’s not coming back.”

“Ever?”

He shrugged. “I suppose if he left he would have to come back sometime.”

“I see.” That was as clear as mud. “Maybe I could come back later. I want to talk to him about—”

“Talking’s not going to do you any good. Go away!”

This wasn’t just ill-mannered. This was rude. No wonder this man was working out here all alone, in the middle of nowhere. “I’m only asking for a minute of his time. Don’t you think he could give me that much?”

“Time can’t be given away.”

Abby paused. It was strange but his comment sounded like something Robbie would say. “That’s true, I suppose,” she responded finally. “Maybe I could borrow some.”

His frown deepened. “Are you making fun of me?”

Her mouth dropped. She’d be the last person to criticize. “Of course not. I’m just trying to explain…”

Once again, he interrupted her. “Were you invited?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then that’s not my problem.” He turned away as if their conversation had come to an end.

Abby resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “Look, I’ve come a very long way—”

“Five hundred and sixty-three miles to be exact,” Robbie clarified, approaching from around the house. “At an average forty-seven point six miles per hour, it took us seven hours and thirty-eight minutes, including rest stops. It would have been only three hundred and seventy-two miles if we could have flown with the crows.”

Her son, Abby thought, as she turned to look at him crossing the yard, saw the world a little differently than most five-year-olds. She felt the swell of pride as well as the ever-present shock that she’d managed to produce such a remarkable child. Physically she knew he resembled her, his blond hair curling around his head like a bobbing halo, his eyes bright with curiosity and intelligence that no jewel could hold. For her, those looks had been what made her special, but for Robbie they were barely a consideration. She often wondered what hiccup in her gene pool had made him her son.

She stepped closer, automatically drawing him to her side and placing a hand on his shoulder. She wasn’t even aware of the protective action until she saw the way the man observed her, coldly eyeing them both as if they were the ones who posed a threat.

“Honey, I told you to stay in the car,” she admonished gently. She didn’t want to expose Robbie to yet another disappointment and she’d already come to the conclusion that this man had no intention of helping them.

“I was bored.”

She couldn’t claim to be surprised. He’d flown through the collections of puzzles and brainteasers she’d painstakingly gathered for the trip in the first hour. Despite having the mind of a brilliant adult, he was still a little boy.

“Hello,” Robbie greeted the man with a maturity that would have made her doubt his youth if she hadn’t actually been a participant in his birth.

“Hello.”

Thankfully Abby noted the hostility was missing from the man’s voice. Without it, the deep, husky rumble sounded a touch more accessible—and somehow vastly more dangerous.

“My name is Robbie Melrose. We’ve come to see Dr. Jeremy Waters.”

“What do you want him for?” the man asked.

Robbie thought about the question for a moment, while meeting the man’s gaze. “I’m not completely certain. My mother has chosen to keep her reasoning undisclosed from me.”

So much for secrets, Abby thought. She should have known she shouldn’t try to outsmart her son.

“I’m sure, whatever her reasons, she’s doing the right thing. My mother always knows what’s best.”

Abby’s eyes widened at the compliment. But then again, she was his mom. He had no idea how overwhelmed she was. And she intended to keep it that way. She would never allow her son to think he was a burden. She was all he had—heaven help him—and she wouldn’t let him down.

“However, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’ve chosen this area of the Berkshires for our vacation,” Robbie continued. “Although it’s certainly a beautiful place, I have a feeling that the appeal has more to do with the intelligence quotient of Dr. Waters. He’s got an IQ over two hundred, the highest ever recorded. Mine is only in the one-eighty range.”

The man looked at him blankly.

Abby felt the need to defend the claims. “I’ve got test scores and evaluations. He really is an extraordinary child.”

He frowned, appearing almost angry. “Those numbers mean nothing to me.”

Robbie nodded. “They’re subjective, it’s true. But at least they give the testers something to do.”

She could have sworn she saw the man’s lips twitch into something resembling a smile before his face settled back into a vacant stare. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you. But I wish you the best of luck finding whatever you’re looking for.”

“Thank you,” Robbie answered, missing the obvious brush-off.

Abby didn’t miss it, but she chose to consider her decision to retreat a tactical maneuver rather than a defeat. She wasn’t finished yet.

She didn’t bother with goodbyes as she took her son’s hand and turned back toward the car. Once she had settled Robbie in the back seat, she began the next leg of her trip into the town that would be their home for the summer, struggling now to manage the fatigue that seemed to have finally caught up with her. It was almost as if the stranger had had some dangerous power after all, with the ability to somehow sap her of the rest of her energy.

“Are we going back to Pittsburgh, Mom?” Robbie asked tentatively.

Abby took a moment to make sure her voice would be calm when she answered. “I’m not going to give up on our summer plans so easily.” Or her own. “There will be another chance to talk to the famous doctor sometime in the future.”

Robbie paused, digesting her answer before following with another. “Dr. Waters didn’t seem too willing to help us this time.”

Abby nodded in agreement. She wasn’t surprised that her son had also figured out who they’d been talking to. He often saw things that other people missed.

“Well, if he thinks we’re just going to go away then he’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” she vowed.

Jeremy Waters listened to the car pull away and dropped the hoe on the ground. So that was the annoying Mrs. Melrose. She’d been pestering him with letters for months, describing how unusual her son was, how different, how extraordinary.

He’d heard it all before.

Not once had she mentioned whether or not he liked baseball or if he collected stamps. It was always the same, as if the child was one big brain with no other traits of importance.

He’d been expecting the pushy Mrs. Melrose to show up eventually, but he had to admit that her physical appearance had caught him completely by surprise. He’d been expecting the academic world’s equivalent of a stage mother, not a fairy princess. She’d been younger than he’d anticipated, probably in her mid-twenties assuming she hadn’t had a child when she was a baby herself. Her luminous eyes were fringed with dark lashes. And that stunning blond hair of hers, floating like a cloud around her face—he’d had to restrain himself from asking her to turn around so he could see whether it grew all the way down her back. Then, when she’d turned to leave, he couldn’t suppress a glimpse that had given him his answer in the affirmative. As always, it was the quest for knowledge that led to his downfall.

And the boy. Looking at him had been like looking in a mirror. Of course there was very little physical resemblance from the odd little minicomputer he’d been as a child, but the eyes had been the same, wide and inquisitive, taking in everything, thirsty for knowledge. His face was alive with intelligence, forever branding him as different from other “normal” little boys. He recognized the defensive angle of his shoulders, as if the boy could somehow protect himself.

Jeremy knew what it was like to be tested and probed, to be put on display. He’d given up being the main attraction in the freak show of life.

He didn’t want people around, especially a woman who looked like Abby Melrose. Although he didn’t care to admit it, he couldn’t deny that she’d induced a physical reaction from him. It was a conditioned response, he knew, programmed into his DNA to help propagate the species. But knowing the biology of his reaction didn’t make him feel it any less.

He supposed, in a way, it was fortunate that he would be unable to help her. Not only would it save his sanity, but it would protect both of them.

Because he would never again involve himself with a young person who had so much potential.

There was too much at stake if he failed. Again.

Two days later, when she returned to Spooky Mansion, as she’d come to think of Dr. Waters’s home, it took five long and annoying rings of the doorbell before it was finally answered—although answered was a tame description of the way he threw open the door and sent it crashing against the wall. Abby got the impression she might have interrupted something by the way he was dressed: rubber gloves reaching nearly to his elbows, a multicolor-spattered rubber smock and plastic goggles covering his eyes.

What could he possibly be doing, dressed like that? Conjuring up the cure to cancer, perhaps, or on the brink of some messy scientific breakthrough? Abby didn’t ask. First, because he didn’t look in the mood for idle chatter and second because she was certain the details would be beyond her comprehension. It was hard enough keeping up with her five-year-old son. She couldn’t imagine what went on in the head of a man who, at age ten, had solved one of the mathematic equations previously thought to be unsolvable.

One thing was for certain. If he hoped to give the appearance of a mad scientist, he was succeeding.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

A maaad scientist.

“I came to talk to you.”

Beneath the goggles, his eyebrows lifted comically. She couldn’t be sure if he was surprised that she’d dared to return or by the stupidity of her answer.

“You don’t take a hint, do you?”

“You mean the hint I got from the gardener?”

“So you figured it out,” he sneered. “That doesn’t make you a rocket scientist.”

He wasn’t the first to point out that fact. He was right, of course. She didn’t have a fraction of the intelligence he had been born with. “But Robbie might be. A rocket scientist or a brain surgeon or heaven knows what else.”

“That’s not my problem.” He ripped the gloves from his hands and yanked off the goggles.

Abby could only stare as she got a closer look at the man who had been called a human computer. He certainly didn’t fit her image of a brainy nerd. His face was creased with ragged lines and planes, his mouth wide and sensual, though it twisted now in a snarl. But it was his eyes that really drew her attention. Standing this near, she could see their color, a soft, gentle brown. They made her want to step closer instead of away, as if they held some secret that was vital for her to understand. Remembering the picture of him as a child with oversize glasses, she concluded that it must be contact lenses that gave him the impression of vulnerability.