The Tesla Legacy by Rebecca Cantrell Read Free Book Online Page A

hours.” Patel smiled. “Give some old men hope.”
    “I’m a colleague of his son’s,” she said. “I never met Professor Tesla, Senior.”
    Egger looked as if he held back a smile. “Ah, Professor Tesla.”
    He stressed the last name in a way that piqued her interest. “He didn’t like being a Tesla?”
    “To the contrary, he loved being a Tesla very much.” Egger straightened his bow tie.
    “He wasn’t, of course.” Patel had a slight Indian accent.
    “Wasn’t what?” Vivian wished she’d turned the phone off. She had a feeling Joe wouldn’t want to hear whatever was coming.
    “In America, you can change your name to whatever you want.” Egger fussed with his yellow tie again. “I could be George Washington if I wanted to.”

Chapter 6
    People swirled around Joe, heading for the doors, the tracks, the shops. Everyone was in transit to somewhere else. He was as stuck here as the clock or the light fixtures.
    He sighed. He’d get back outside again someday. For now, he was waiting to meet his mother for dinner. They’d set the time and place when he talked to her at the funeral, but he’d kept his phone out of its Faraday cage since in case she changed the plans.
    His phone rang, and he glanced at the screen, expecting to see a picture of his mother, but it was Celeste. A picture of her from the days when they dated in college flashed across the screen. Her smile still gave him butterflies.
    He couldn’t talk to her here. Her voice was hard to hear under the best conditions.
    With Edison at his heels, he scooted across the concourse to the Biltmore Room, also known as the Kissing Room. Originally, passengers met in this room to travel to the luxurious Biltmore Hotel. Later, it became a meeting place for families waiting for incoming troops—a place to kiss them hello. These days the room was usually deserted, but the station had plans to restore it into a new hub. For now, it was the only quiet place in the concourse.
    He sat down next to an abandoned shoeshine stand. He liked the Biltmore Room, not just because he cherished the quiet, but also because it was a time capsule—from its old-fashioned signs to the slate board with the arrival and departure times of long-forgotten trains printed in dusty chalk.
    He called Celeste back and listened to the faraway ringing. Edison sat next to him, attentive and on duty.
    “Hello!” said Celeste in her now-breathy voice. She had good days and bad days since she’d been diagnosed with ALS, but even the good days weren’t that good anymore. Still, she sounded stronger than yesterday.
    “Greetings,” he answered.
    “Are you home?” she asked. “Haunting the old boards?”
    “I can’t go down right now. They’re inspecting the elevator, so I can plummet to my death with the proper inspection certificate in front of me.”
    “That elevator is perfectly safe! It hasn’t killed anyone in over a hundred years.”
    “Makes it due. Those ancient cables will snap. Game over.”
    “I think that’s only happened one time. The Empire State Building, in 1945 when a B-25 bomber crashed into it and damaged the cables. How likely is that to happen underground ?” A quick wheeze told him she’d spoken too long.
    “Have to be prepared for every eventuality.” His sentences always got shorter when she was out of breath, as if he could make hers shorter, too.
    “Including the final one. How was the funeral?”
    “Lightly attended. And I found out my father, and by extension me, isn’t descended from the great Tesla at all.”
    “All those years of ‘do better, you’re a Tesla’ have come to naught?” She didn’t sound as shocked as he felt.
    “My father’s last name was Smith. I looked it up online, and I think I might be descended from Tesla’s pigeon keeper.”
    Tinkles of laughter came down the phone line, followed by coughs.
    Joe glanced over at a sign that read eppie’s shoeshine & repair . The little man on the sign was poised to drive a