Page 6 of Tributary

“Is that what you’re working on in your research,” he asks. “Growing hops?”

I know the question comes from a place of interest, and that unlike my brother, Asa sees that I am working on cultivating answers to societal problems. Asa is, after all, an investor in scientific research. But he’s also a man, and that makes him suspect. Too much risk associated with men, especially men who turn me on. I sigh. “I don’t talk about my larger research goals,” I say. I make sure I’m logged out of my monitoring app and stand up.

“I’m going to bed.”

I walk down the hall to my childhood bedroom and collapse onto the twin bed. It wasn’t so long ago I would have let my guard down for a man who seemed interested in me as a scientist, who seemed to take delight in the ways my mind works. It wasn’t so long ago a man shattered my ability to trust. Asa might be charming and clever, with a good memory for detail. But I have to remind myself that at his core, Asa is no different from Jay.

Asa is a venture capitalist. His entire intention is to profit from the work of others. Sure, he might seem like he’s out to “form partnerships” and help my brother out, but in the end, Asa Wexler is going to make a killing and my brother will be the ghost writer of his own life’s work.

I hear the door to the neighboring room open, then close, and I know he’s lying there, inches from me. I try not to imagine what he’s wearing to bed, what his body looks like as he lies there in Fletcher’s old room. This can’t be a man that I think about sexually. My mother depends on him for funding—he’s not going anywhere. And I’m not putting myself out there again like I did with Jay.

I pull out my phone again and monitor my lab one more time. I have a bad feeling this might be the last batch of medical marijuana I’m able to work on for my research partners from Pittsburgh. The state is changing legislation left and right, creating new rules about who can and cannot grow cannabis for medical research, let alone for sale in the official dispensaries.

I know that this Sativa strain I’ve cultivated is ideal to help control seizures. I knew it the last time, too, and it turned out I was right. Not that the name Crawford appears anywhere on any bank account benefitting from that successful seizure med. Hell, Asa was probably the investor who took that to big Pharma and legitimized it.

I can’t dwell on all that. I shake my head and check the humidity, the light, the temperature. I check the doorways—nobody has been in or out since I locked up earlier. My work is safe. Dr. Khalsa is still contracted for this harvest. It becomes a refrain I repeat to myself as I try to fall asleep.

The next thing I know, I’m being woken by my mother’s shouts to my father to hurry up with breakfast.

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