Inland by Kat Rosenfield Read Free Book Online Page A

Foster’s words spill out of the receiver uninterrupted, and my father only listens. Each time, he lets him go on just a little longer. Each time, his “No” has just a little less force.
    And tonight, for the first time, he takes the phone into his study and shuts the door.
    —
    I know, of course, why they want him now. For weeks, I watched the tragedy unfold. Something had broken in the deep, dark blue, and the oil poured unchecked into the sea. Billowing, streaming, a river of million-dollar blackness cutting like a blade through the underwater world. In the late-night glow of my laptop’s screen, the numbers ticked high, then higher. Death toll. Lawsuits. Damage. Miles of sea and seashore, lost to a torrent of insoluble catastrophe. I saw waves, cresting like liquid rust, pouring oil-slicked foam across the sand. Oozing pools of viscous brown, curling like Rorschach watercolor as the tide recedes. Animals, their airways clogged and fins weighed down by sludge, belly-up and gasping and covered in grease. Red, dead tides of floating fish, pale and with one glazed eye aimed skyward. They lie fin-to-fin like cobblestones, an iridescent landscape of wasted life.
    The flow has stopped, but not the damage control. The public’s wary eye is open wide, and everyone has something to prove.
    —
    Mike Foster doesn’t just want my father’s knowledge. He wants his name, to attach to his project and drop when necessary, to prove that he means business. That the men he works for are thinking of the future, of the children. They want to make amends. Green, clean energy is what the people want now, and Alan Twaddle, PhD, with his long absence from for-profit pursuits and his long history of publication, is more than just a talent; he’s a mascot. A beacon. A poster boy for academic integrity and unselfish good works.
    And, best of all, he’s interested.
    I can tell. The energy in our beige, bland house has changed. Even before tonight, with the study door shut tight and his voice rising with earnestness behind it, I had been finding small sketches scribbled on a Post-it note, or on the back of an envelope, or in the margins of the newspaper. A long vertex topped by pinwheel wings, bracketed by diagrams showing directional force. And bisecting that straight, slim length, a wavy horizon that can only be water.
    When all is said and done, there will be a hundred, all in rows. Spindly towers that spread their three-pronged silhouettes against the blazing southern sun, rising gently above the water like strange white birds.
    An offshore wind farm in the gulf.
    The sea is calling, and my father is listening.
    —
    It’s after ten when I hear the door open, the click of the light switch as the bottom floor grows dark. I burrow down in bed, faking sleep, listening to the soft sound of stocking feet on the dove-colored staircase carpet. He is muttering, still with the phone to his ear, lowering his voice as he nears my doorway.
    “Mike, it’s a great opportunity. I know it, and you know I know it. But my daughter—”
    The man on the other end answers so forcefully that for a moment, it’s as though he’s right there in the room. Tinny, but clear, he interrupts with his final pitch.
    “We understand that, Alan. I’ve looked into it—discreetly, don’t worry—and the university hospital . . .” His voice grows lower now, as though he knows I’m listening. I strain to hear, tilting my head toward the door, watching my father’s shadow bleed and amble over the carpet as he paces. He settles closer to the door and then the tinny voice is back, clear and loud: “. . . cutting-edge. She’ll have the best care.”
    “But the move—”
    “And,” the voice breaks though, “it will be paid for. Everything, one hundred percent. You won’t even see a bill.”
    My father doesn’t answer, and the silence draws out, until Mike Foster answers for him.
    “You can’t tell me that all these years haven’t taken their toll,