Read Chapter 5: — PROFESSOR WARD

Professor Martin Ward arrived in Lakeshore with an infectious-disease advisory team and did not call his daughter.

He did, however, meet Adrian.

They spoke in a hotel room crowded with folders, half-eaten sandwiches, and the exhausted debris of people moving too quickly through uncertain information.

Martin was sixty-two, grey-haired, brilliant, and emotionally inept in the precise way Lena had spent her life resenting.

“You’re really joining Lakeshore University?” he asked Adrian.

“Yes.”

“Toronto offered you a position.”

“So did Montreal.”

“And you chose Lakeshore.”

Adrian did not answer.

Martin sighed.

“For Lena?”

“Not only.”

“That means yes.”

Adrian smiled despite himself.

Martin’s phone rang. Another hospital had reported a cluster. Genetic sequencing suggested a novel coronavirus related to SARS-like viruses. Transmission between people was no longer a theoretical concern.

Martin’s face changed as he listened.

After the call, he said quietly, “We’re behind it.”

“How far?”

“We don’t know. That’s the problem.”

He explained that the first recognized cases probably represented only the visible edge of transmission. Lakeshore was a rail and air hub. Winter travel had been heavy. If infected people were contagious before severe symptoms, containment might already be failing.

Adrian thought of Lena’s crowded ward.

“I’m starting today.”

Martin looked at him.

“At the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Tell Lena to be careful.”

“You could tell her.”

Martin looked away.

That old fracture again.

Years before, when Lena and Adrian had broken up, Martin had discovered the relationship only after Adrian had fallen apart. He had confronted his daughter with more anger than tenderness.

Why had she ended a five-year relationship? Why had she hidden it? Did she understand what she was doing to Adrian’s career?

Lena finally shouted the question she had been carrying for years.

“Why do you care more about him than me?”

Then came the family history.

Helen had once believed Martin had loved Adrian’s mother, Rebecca Shaw. Martin denied an affair. He and Rebecca had been close friends long before either marriage; Rebecca’s late husband had also been Martin’s closest friend. After divorce, Martin happened to remain in the same university housing complex where the Shaws lived.

To Lena, already insecure about her father’s affection, the relationships looked unbearable. She had begun to fear that Adrian might be entangled in a family secret neither of them understood.

When she asked Martin whether Adrian could somehow be his son, Martin slapped her.

He regretted it before his hand fell.

Lena left anyway.

Adrian learned only that she could not continue.

He left for Germany months later.

Now Martin stared at the hotel carpet.

“I was a poor father,” he said.

Adrian did not rescue him from the sentence.

Martin nodded, accepting that.

“Tell her I came,” he said. “And tell her I wanted to see her.”

“You should tell her yourself.”

A second call came in before Martin could answer. The advisory team was leaving immediately for another province.

He grabbed his coat.

“Then tell her I ran out of time.”

Adrian watched the door close.

Some families spent years confusing lack of skill with lack of love.