What woman has the time or space or interest in such solipsistic fantasies? When I write, it is not to take on the guise of some solitary, long-dead genius, but instead to commune with life in its entirety, to feel the gorgeous, trembling ache of every heart that beats right now, in time with mine.
Ah well, as long as I’m here and they’re young and sprung and handsome, I might as well take the most poetic one home with me …
Dez laughs at some of the pages she gets from Paul Rowan, and her heart breaks at others. She uses the script as a guide to cull scenes from the Vault that reflect the woman she’s coming to know. She weaves together formative experiences from Lexa O’Rourke’s life—a kiss in the rain at Vassar, a tick delivering Lyme disease.
Then, after breaking for a fast lunch, Dez spends the rest of her day on Mo.
Time vanishes when she’s working on her brother’s film. Dez will feel she’s been in her Lens for moments, only to retract the screen and realize she’s the last one left in the Vault and has missed dinneragain. At first, it was a relief for a day to disappear like that. But now Dez feels the pressure of the looming deadline Moriah set for them, November first. Even after the pages from Paul Rowan stop coming—a sign that he’s moved on to his next assignment—Dez still can’t envision the ending of her film about O’Rourke.
She’s working even slower on her brother’s film. Without a Scribe submitting pages of a script for her to follow, she has more freedom to shape the film however she likes. And Mo’s archive is so vast. Dez has never wanted to get something right so much in her life.
A week into her days on the Vault, a title presents itself. She calls Mo’s filmLazarus, inspired by a poem of Lexa O’Rourke’s. Her favorite line: “A sickness/not unto death/but above it.” Dez is proud of what she’s making. She can’t wait to share it with Mo.
She aches for her brother. For her mother, too. Though Dez hasn’t been able to access any scenes from Mo’s Lifeline after the horrifying hospital scene, she has to believe he’s alive and healing, that her mom and the doctors are taking good care of him, that some part of him can feel her watching his life.
She sits with him. She cries with him. She prays for him. And then she gets back to work.
“Can I get you anything? Sparkling water? Oolong tea?” Acheron’s lead attorney Donegal is striking, a tailored pinstripe suit wrapping his lanky frame, which he leans against the edge of his chic, vintage wooden desk.
Dez sits down in an upholstered Scandinavian chair. Her instinct is to say no to fancy beverage offers, whether she’s thirsty or not.
But working in the Vault this week has given her new confidence. “Matcha, please,” she says. “If you have it.”
Donegal smiles, reaching behind him and pressing a button. “Olivia, bring Ms. Rae some matcha tea.”
All the paintings on Donegal’s walls depict people being stabbed in the back—with knives, scissors, swords, fountain pens. Lawyer humor.
“I’ve read your file,” Donegal says breezily, as if describing a trendy novel. “There are a lot of moving parts.”
“Well, my brother isn’t moving,” Dez says. “That’s why I want to visit him.”
“Thanks, Olivia,” Donegal says as his assistant arrives with Dez’s tea. “The problem with going back to Death Valley is you’ll immediately be arrested.”
“That’s my problem,” Dez says. “I can handle it.”
“Maybe so,” Donegal says. “But Acheron can’t risk it.” The lawyer rises and strides around his desk to stand before her. “Acheron would expose itself to the charge of aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice.”
“Isn’t Acheron doing that, anyway?” Dez asks.
“You signed an acceptance letter when you agreed to come here,” the lawyer reminds her. “Of your own volition.”
“It didn’t say you wouldn’t let me leave!” Dez says. “If it had, I wouldn’t have signed it.” But whathadthe acceptance letter said exactly? She remembers it was brief enough not to add to her long list of worries at the time.
But … was it also vague enough that Dez could have signed away, without realizing it, some essential right to see her family? Her stomach roils.
“All we’re doing is trying to protect you,” Donegal says. “To keep you out of prison.”
“I’mnot the criminal,” she insists. “A man with a gun tried to—”
“Your tea is getting cold.”
Dez frowns down at the beige ceramic mug in her hands, the dim green liquid inside. It looks swampy, obscure, like a moat around a castle. “I didn’t burn my brother on purpose,” she says.
“I’ve read your file,” Donegal says again.
“Do you believe me?” Dez asks.
“I’m on your side,” Donegal says. “That’s enough. And it doesn’t come cheap.”
