Ripley recovers first, tugging the package from his grip.Keep Shoes Tied!the top of the box shouts in a loopy, seventies-style font.
“What are these for?”
He exhales crisply, seeming to reclaim his body. “I’m keeping you alive, Ripley Adams,” he replies calmly, picking up the bag and heading for the exit. “For science.”
8
June 7:
Eighty-Two Days Until the End of the Summer Excavation Season
From the second he arrives at Clever Girl Fossils on Saturday afternoon, Smithson is everywhere Ripley looks.
Which pretty well ruins the dig.
With the exception of Matteo, who only sometimes pretends to care about paleontology, her entire crew loses their minds when they meet an Oxford professor whose two TED Talks have a million views each. His casual “Call me James” deepens their hopeless hero worship, as does his polite refusal to join them for their regular Saturday-night shenanigans in Hercules.
The crew’s night out mysteriously gets canceled for the first time ever.
On Sunday morning, his celebrity status is further cemented by the arrival of a town car with multiple boxes of documents, a Wi-Fi hotspot device, and a solar battery. She has to pull him aside and tell him to get his things delivered to the ranch house or the PO box in town. He’s apologetic, but it doesn’t feel like a good sign that he’s compromised dig security so quickly.
At lunch, Ripley chews mechanically, not really tasting her club sandwich, while the crew bombards Smithson with adoring questions. Jordin blushes madly while bringing up specific points from his most recent taxonomy, managing to mention most ofher many, many scholarships and awards. Griff wants advice about transitioning from seasonal digging in Montana, China, and Argentina to year-round opportunities closer to Hercules.
The twins stare silently at Smithson for so long, he eventually starts asking them about themselves, probably to make sure they’re not going to murder him in his sleep. Finn and Fiona enthusiastically give him twenty minutes of finishing each other’s sentences while showing him phone pics of their attempts to replicate the illustrations in his publications.
Everyone but her calls him James. Even Cara, who’s warmly friendly without crossing the line into fawning.
It stings a little to watch Smithson mentor her crew the way she once desperately hoped he’d mentor her. He’s great at encouraging everyone into a state of joyful, unabashed geeking out over dinosaurs. That shared love was one of her favorite things about grad school.
He reminds her of a lot of things she used to love, actually. Finding Beauty was better than sex—Sorry, not sorry, Will—but there’s a cramp in Ripley’s heart where the afterglow should be. If she were still in academia, she’d have years to study Beauty’s every facet and flaw the way she’d memorize freckles on a lover’s skin. As a private collector, she has no time for long, loving looks, only rushed preps, quick sales, and learning to move on.
Now is a good time to move on, actually. Ripley grabs her plate and untangles her legs from the pushed-together picnic tables they use as a communal dining area. Nobody will notice if she heads down to scout the canyon for an hour or three.
“Ripley.”
She startles, her knife rattling on her plate. No one was beside her ten seconds ago, but sure enough, Smithson’s standing there now.
The man is preposterous. Did he fucking teleport himself around the table to frighten a year off her life? Does he have to enunciateRipleylike he’s the love interest inAliens? Preposterous.
“Any chance of a look around the dig?”
The table breaks into chaos, and as usual, Jordin comes out on top. “James, youhaveto see my deinonychus jaw.”
“James, can you check out an extremity? I think I have a forelimb, could be a hindlimb,” Griff says casually, his man crush on full display.
“James, could you show us how deep to pedestal before we plaster?” the twins chorus in eerie unison.
Everyone turns hopefully to Ripley.
There’s no point in putting it off. The sooner he can start shaking the money tree on her behalf, the better. “We’ll tour the dig once the lunch chores are done.”
Two years ago, Ripley and Cara spent a day together hammering wooden steps into the canyon wall. Afterward, they sat on the new staircase drinking godawful light beer and watching the sunset. She remembers loving this place immediately. Feeling sohopeful.
Now, Ripley hesitates at the top step.
A dig is special, almost magical. It’s a hot, dusty, mind-numbing way to spend the summer, brutal on the joints and unpredictable as hell. Yet paleontologists’ souls ache for it through the other three long seasons in the lab.
This is the first site Ripley scouted herself, developed herself, co-manages herself. It’s where she put her life back together after Will. It’s been her precious secret, the thing she didn’t have to share with anyone she didn’t choose.
