Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) by C. E. Tobisman Read Free Book Online Page A

whatever had driven her to take a leave of absence from her laboratory and miss the symposium, must have been really serious. Perhaps an illness or surgery? Or a close friend or relative’s illness?
    Google offered no answers.
    Caroline frowned at the laptop. The Internet really should contain the answers to everything. To all secrets, to all questions. She knew it didn’t, but the volume of content available online created the illusion of omnipotence. She hated when that illusion failed.
    Especially when her job depended on it.
    Trepidation tugged at Caroline’s mind like a riptide, and a wave of worry crested before her, towering and dark.
    She had no article. No author. No direct link between SuperSoy and kidney damage. All she had were fragments of inferential reasoning. Rags she was tasked with sewing into a wedding dress. In two short days.
    Her phone rang in her bag.
    Yanking it out, she checked the screen. Her mother.
    “Sorry to bother you,” Joanne Auden began when her daughter answered, “but I need a favor.”
    “Sure,” Caroline said, grateful for the distraction.
    “I’m thinking of taking Elaine up on her invitation. She just e-mailed me a ticket to fly up today. Morning or evening, my choice.”
    “You want me to keep an eye on Uncle Hitch while you’re gone,” Caroline surmised.
    “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble . . .”
    “I’m happy to.” Caroline knew her mom’s best friend had been trying to lure her mother up to Portland to go camping. She also knew why her mother hesitated.
    “How’s Uncle Hitch doing?” Caroline asked. Ever since her uncle had lost his job with the police, he’d been staying at her mom’s house. But unlike Caroline’s laudable goal of saving up enough money to move out, her uncle’s stay represented a way station on a steep slide into the bottom of a bottle.
    “Hungover like usual, but alive,” Joanne said.
    “Good, so then go to Oregon. We’ll be fine while you’re gone.” She imagined the household without her mother’s organizing presence. Vodka bottles and law books. Grim.
    “But Elaine’s going to try to set me up with some guy while I’m up there,” Joanne said.
    “Let her,” Caroline verbally shrugged. It had been a long time since her father had left her mother, and even longer since he’d moved to Connecticut with his second wife. It was time for her mom to move on. Or to begin to, anyway. A date with a geographically impractical man handpicked by her mother’s best friend seemed like a perfect step.
    Silence, as Joanne tried to figure out how her daughter was wrong.
    “If you don’t go this morning, I’ll help you pack when I get home,” Caroline said, silently wishing she’d be packing herself up instead.
    “You’re a good kid,” Joanne said.
    “Not really,” Caroline answered. While she had good moments, she wasn’t good. Not entirely. No one could be if they’d done the things she’d done . . .
    “What’s wrong, honey?”
    “Just a rough first day,” Caroline said, attempting to redirect the conversation. But at her admission, her temples began to throb. Louis had a reputation for success. His clients banked on it. Now he was going to lose, and fairly or not, he might see it as her fault.
    “Honey, you can do this,” Joanne Auden said, interrupting her daughter’s spiral of self-doubt. “You’re my special girl. You’re the kid who dressed up like Thor with a pasta strainer for a helmet and a red towel for a cape.”
    Caroline remembered. In her mind’s eye, she’d been seven feet tall, muscular, and immortal. Simple things like chores and sleep and the need to pee didn’t concern Thor. He had more important things to do. It had been a good feeling.
    “You do know I’m not eight years old anymore, right?” Caroline asked.
    “Fine,” said Joanne. “You’re the young woman who got a science grant to go to Harvard and who graduated second in her law school class from UCLA.”
    Now it was