Free A Question of Ghosts by Cate Culpepper Page B

of embarrassment, which didn’t surprise her, followed by a pang of disappointment, which did. “We won’t act on this attraction because we’re working together? Or because I’m alone in feeling it?”
    “Becca, what difference does it make?” Jo switched on a small screen in the box, which cast her austere features in a ghostly amber glow. It was an unfortunate effect that rendered her almost alien. “I don’t sleep with the subjects in my studies. That’s a basic tenet of ethics in any credible research.”
    “Joanne, I wasn’t suggesting we ravish each other tonight on the Pendleton rug.” Becca felt her cheeks flush with heat. Even knowing Jo’s limitations, it hurt, putting herself out there honestly and meeting such brusque rejection. “I just don’t believe in ignoring my feelings when they’re this strong. Not when I believe you might share them.” Good Lord, had Patricia spiked her manicotti? What in the world was she doing?
    Jo’s back straightened slowly and she pivoted to face her, moving with the feline grace Becca couldn’t stop noticing. “You’re the most transparent person I’ve ever met, Becca, so I’ll respond in kind. I’m not capable of the kind of emotion you’re talking about. I never have been. I don’t do people. I can be your guide in this project, and your ally, even your protector. But I can’t be your friend or your lover. I’ll never be those things.”
    Jo turned back to the radio.
    Becca lowered herself carefully into the deep sofa, that strange fog surging through her again. What kind of linguistic warp was wandering through this conversation? Becca had been talking about sexual attraction. Hadn’t she? Good old red-blooded lesbian lust. They had both felt it in the cemetery, in the car, she was pretty sure of this. But Jo was telling her she was incapable of love—emotional connection, devotion, etcetera. A miscommunication of the highest order. There wasn’t the faintest possibility on the planet that Becca was falling in love with Jo. She was almost certain of this.
    They were quiet for a long while. Jo moved methodically to each of the small radios she had set up around the room, including the yellow ball that had blasted her dead mother’s voice the day before. She adjusted them until they all hissed softly with low-key, empty static, much like Becca’s brain.
    Becca waited until the grandfather clock in the corner chimed ten and her mind had settled a little. She wanted to be sure that pang of hurt had faded. There were things she needed to know now, for all kinds of reasons, but she wanted to be sure she would speak from kindness alone. “Do you know anything about Nonverbal Learning Disorder, Jo?”
    Jo’s hands stilled on the silver machine, and the corner of her mouth lifted. She smiled rarely, and Becca had never seen this particular smile. She remembered her first impression of this woman—a tall, dark wraith who seemed quite capable of cruelty.
    “Most people guess autism. You’re closer.”
    Becca nodded. “I don’t know if you give much credence to labels like that.”
    “I don’t fit forty percent of the diagnostic criteria for Nonverbal Learning Disorder.” Jo lifted a white cloth from her satchel and rubbed her hands in it. “I have no problem with eye contact or spatial awareness. I’m not physically clumsy. I’ve worked hard to compensate for my inability to read facial expressions.”
    Becca suppressed an urge to apologize, and a stronger one to offer comfort. The anger was draining from Jo’s voice.
    “I guess I give credence to the label Rachel Perry used tonight. She said some minds are too inscrutable for modern psychiatry to help. That’s the diagnosis the best of those useless doctors gave me. That’s what they told my parents.”
    “Inscrutable?” Becca remembered the stark change in Jo’s expression when Rachel used that term. “A psychiatrist told your parents you were inscrutable?”
    “Yes, when I was ten