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“I’m sorry I yelled. At both of you,” I said.
“Don’t apologize.” Michael turned around. Regret. “I called you selfish, when what you were offering to do for Em was completely selfless.”
“There were extenuating circumstances,” I said, repeating Lily’s words. Meeting his eyes. “We were all jerks. But it’s okay.”
“I hope so.” Michael’s ache disappeared. The sadness had been for me, not for Em.
“It’s really okay.”
I’d expected Dad to take a piece out of my hide. Instead, he’d stared at me as if he were memorizing me.
“I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“What about Michael and the girls?”
“They’re okay, too.” I was surprised he asked about Mike. I figured he’d already know. “Can we go in your office?”
“Sure.”
I followed him in, but instead of sitting down, I walked to the hourglass collection on his bookshelf. I traced my fingertips along the edges of the shelves, again noting the absence of dust. “Are you going to tell me about these?”
“What do you mean?” A weak attempt at evasion.
“What’s with the collections?” He wasn’t going to dodge me this time, and from the defeat on his face, he knew it.
“You’re going to find it simple and silly.”
“Try me.”
“There’s a legend. About an object called the Infinityglass.”
I tensed, working to control my reaction. “The Infinityglass?”
“The Infinityglass is mythical, or most people think so.” He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands across his chest. “There was no evidence to suggest otherwise. Your mother used to tease me about it, her logical husband caught up in a race to find something that didn’t exist.”
“You think it’s real.”
“I became obsessed with it. It caused some issues between your mother and me. Part of the reason I never told you about the Infinityglass was because she forbade it.”
My mom wasn’t the type to forbid anything. “Teague seemed to be pretty obsessed with it herself.”
“How did you … you found her.” He stood so quickly his black leather chair rolled away from him and bounced violently against the back wall. “I gave you permission to go to Memphis to look for paperwork. Not to go on a scavenger hunt through my past.”
“We weren’t looking for your past, we were looking for Jack’s. Teague just happened to be the center point.”
“Did you talk to her? Tell her who you were?”
“No. Lily and I eavesdropped on her from inside a closet. Chronos has set up shop in Memphis. Inside the Pyramid. Gerald Turner came to see her while we were there.” I thought of his silly brown fedora, the turtle ashtray on his desk. All the people who were mourning him.
“Gerald Turner?” Dad asked. Terror and relief.
I nodded.
“He was found dead in his office yesterday,” Dad said slowly, as if his lips were out of commission.
“Guess who found him.”
His anger didn’t shape itself the way mine did. It came fast and hot. “Do you realize what kind of situation you put yourself in? What could have happened to you, to any of you? None of this is a joke. Not to Teague, not to Jack, not to me. Not to whoever killed Dr. Turner.”
