Prologue

Prologue

“It’s infuriating! He treats me like I’m eight!”

Dr. Sykora smiled secretively, as he often did, listening to the teen girls talk about the difficulties of their lives. Fiona, a friend of his daughter’s, had the spotlight now as the three girls made their way to the swimming pool.

“I’ve tried to tell him that I’ve grown up, but I swear any time I even mention boys or driver’s licenses, he acts like I’ve made a joke and then he changes the subject!”

“To be fair,” Gretchen reluctantly argued, “your voice is super-girly. And you are into a lot of childish things.”

“Manga is not childish!” Fiona rebuked. “And I can’t help it that my voice is like this!”

Dr. Sykora reflected on the girl’s complaint. Standing there with her hand on her hip in a bikini, no reasonable person could deny that she was well on her way into womanhood. But then, fathers being unreasonable about their teen-aged daughters was one of the cornerstones of a functioning society.

He figured she was a good 60% Korean, but the remaining 40% was a mishmash of ethnicities from all over the globe. They had combined quite nicely into a slender, beautiful girl, whose face and voice would probably belie her age for her entire life.

“Can you get your mom to talk to him about it?” Elyssa asked. Elyssa was Dr. Sykora’s daughter, and his proudest achievement so far.

“No,” Fiona replied. “They can barely get through visitation planning without getting into a shouting match.”

The conversation moved with the girls into the swimming pool, and Dr. Sykora went back to reading medical journals.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet me, Dr. Sykora,” Fiona’s father, Adam Delancey, told the doctor as the waitress delivered their beers. Dr. Sykora was wearing the same secretive grin that he had a few days earlier by the pool.

“I just don’t know what to do,” the frustrated man explained. “Fifi just won’t talk to me. We got along so well when she was younger, but now...? I know there are things going on in her life, but I just can’t get her to tell me about them. I was hoping that you might have some insights. You know, maybe she’s less guarded when she’s visiting Elyssa at your house? Maybe you’ve overheard something?”

“For starters,” Dr. Sykora said after taking a long drink of his beer, “you might not want to call her Fifi.” Adam looked at Dr. Sykora expectantly; his initial piece of advice had flown so far over Adam’s head that he had failed to notice it at all. The man is a simpleton, Dr. Sykora thought: there’s no point in trying to tell this person anything.

“You’re not Fiona’s biological father, are you?” Dr. Sykora asked.

“How did you know?” Adam asked, surprised.

“I dabble in genetics,” the doctor said with a smirk.

“Ah,” Adam said. “No, I married her mother when Fifi was six. We divorced two years ago.”

“Well, I’m afraid that I haven’t heard anything that will help you,” Dr. Sykora said, pausing again for a long drink. “But I want to help. Let me see if I can come up with any ideas. If the opportunity presents itself, be sure to make the most of it.” The wheels were already turning in Dr. Sykora’s mind, planning his next experiment.