Lynda scratched where a new bud was growing, but stops herself before picking it off. She sat down on Clyde’s futon. “What if this Cress woman is my real mom or something?” Clyde took out his cellphone, offering it to her, “Want to use this?”
“You know what? I do have some questions.”
Maybe she could find something out about her condition. Carol cheered her friend on as she took the phone from her brother and began to dial. She was saying something Lynda was only partially able to hear about finches but she didn’t think was probably that important.
The phone rang just a few times before going to voicemail. Lynda put it on speaker anyway.
“Thank you for calling the Erysimum Corporation Laboratory of Plant Breeding and Genetics…”
“Oi. This is some company or something,” Carol says with a snort. Lynda and Clyde shush her and barely catch the main facility address at the end of the message.
It took little effort on Lynda’s part to convince her brother and Carol to go with her to the plant genetics lab. They were curious why this mysterious Cress woman would include it’s phone number in the letter and, quite frankly, were bored and with nothing important to do.
The trio went in Clyde’s nineteen-eighties wood panel station wagon with the girls riding in back. At about the halfway point Carol brought up Lynda’s recent break up and the two friends stayed on that subject for what Clyde considered to be an uncomfortable amount of time.
In total it took them about forty-five minutes to reach the mystery location. It was situated close to where the city became the country, just a distance from a scattering of small businesses. They all got out of the car and went up to the unremarkable brown building with immaculate hedges.
Inside the building was a front desk stationed by a slightly grey haired middle-aged lady. Behind her a door was open to a room of filing cabinets. Lynda guessed the labs must be upstairs. When Lynda asked for Penny Cress the lady smiled and went off to get her personally rather than calling. That seemed a little unusual. They waited in silence for her to return and exchanged somewhat uncomfortable looks.
A minute passed before an elevator bell was heard in the distance. Shortly after a curvaceous woman with loosely curled, raven dyed hair, and a dark gaze sharpened with liquid eyeliner was seen walking down the hall, the sound of her heels striking the floor tile echoing off the walls. Her blazer and pencil skirt were carefully pressed and her lips are painted as vibrant a red as her stilettos. “I certainly hope she’s not my mother,” Lynda thought with the corner of her lips curling mischievously. She wiped the look from her face as the woman approached.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Penny Cress. Are you Lynda?” She addressed Carol.
“No, I’m the abominable snowman. I know you’re probably thinking it’s pretty warm around here for a monster like m-”
“Hi, I’m Lydia. This is my friend and my brother.”
Dr. Cress frowned a little, her expression thoughtful as she looked from Carol, to Clyde, and finally at Lydia. She brushed whatever she was thinking off and offered Lydia her hand, “It’s very nice to meet you,” she says with a bleached smile. Lydia shook the doctor’s hand, awkwardly returning her smile.
“Would you please come with me. I would like to talk a to you about something in private.”
“Um, sure?”
“What about us?” Clyde asked while gesturing to Carol and himself, “What’s so secret that her brother can’t know? What about our parents?”
Dr. Cress’s expression soured, but turned genial again in the blink of an eye. “Why don’t you two go somewhere else? You’re all obviously close, but you didn’t really need to tag along. Why don’t you come back in an hour or two?”
Clyde and Carol looked to Lynda, who shrugged, looked at each other, then finally gave Dr. Cress the stink eye in unison. They obviously weren’t fans. “We’ll be back,” says Clyde while Carol backs him up with a firm nod of the head.
Out the front door went Clyde and Carol, but together they were giving Lynda a look she knew meant they wouldn’t go far. Dr. Cress drew in a breath as the door shut behind them. “Shall we?” she asks, ready to lead the way.
Rats and Hats 