“My friends and I followed all that. All the rogue Twitter accounts that popped up to counter the official park accounts are awesome.”
“I wasn’t behind those, though I know a bunch of folks who were.”
“Modern day heroes seeing that the truth gets told, no matter the consequences.”
Beckett grunted. “Don’t romanticize it. That particular brand of heroism made it rather hard to pay the bills. That’s how I ended up here. Michael did me a favor.”
That must be the chance he’d been given.
God bless Michael Tully.
He put the second bin of ascenders back on the shelf and grabbed two lengths of rope. “What about you? You said you collected degrees.”
“Oh, well, it’s possible my parents—proud though they were of the first three—might also be veering toward a different descriptor of my pursuits at this point.”
“Three?”
“Working on my fourth.” When he went brows up in expectation she sighed. “I’ve got bachelor’s degrees in psychology, art, and nutrition. Right now I’m finishing up my master’s degree in neurobiology and behavior.”
“One of these things is not like the other.”
Sarah laughed. “I love photography. I really wanted to be a photographer when I was younger, but, sadly, I have zero desire to shoot weddings or be a photojournalist, and there’s not really any other great way to make a living as a photographer. But I threw in as many photography classes as I could for fun all through undergrad. Enough that it gave me another degree.”
“So the passion is neurobiology?”
Sarah thought of the thesis she was ready to set on fire. “I’m not sure ‘passion’ is the right word.”
“You don’t like it?”
“I’m not sure you like anything by the time you get halfway through your thesis. I think despising your topic is part of the graduate school process.”
Beckett hummed a noncommittal noise. “So you finish your master’s degree. Then what?”
She thought longingly of the cabin she was sharing for the week and wished she were going to be here longer. “A vacation would be nice, but a Ph.D. is the plan.”
“More graduate school in a subject you just admitted you despise?”
“A career in research seems to demand it.”
“Is a career in research what you want?”
The practiced answer she’d been giving her parents for years was hovering on the tip of her tongue. But this was a man who’d walked away from Dartmouth. “I don’t know what I want. Not business. I don’t like that any more than you do. But I’m kinda too far down this path to jump off.” Lord knew, if she changed fields again, her parents might kill her, even if they’d long since stopped paying her way.
“It’s never too late to jump off.”
The idea of it was simply mind-boggling. “I’m not as brave as you.”
“I think you’re plenty brave. Look at what you’re doing here for your sister.”
“That’s not brave. It’s foolhardy, as we established yesterday.”
“Still. Takes guts. Deciding to admit you’re on the wrong path—if you are,” he qualified, “takes guts. It’s not for me to say one way or the other. But seems to me if you’re not happy doing it, if you don’t get excited about going in to do the job or the class or whatever, you’re probably not in the best field.”
When was the last time she’d been excited about her studies? Her first semester probably. Before they put her through the hell classes meant to weed out those who couldn’t hack it. She’d proved she could more than hack it, but everything since then had been a grind. Especially this last semester. But if she didn’t stick with neurobiology, if she didn’t go on for her Ph.D., then what the hell would she do with her life?
“This is way too heavy a conversation for this hour of the morning,” she declared.
“Fair enough. It’s time we got started anyway.”