Thomas and most of his family returned to Montana the next day. Ana and Edna stayed on in cabin 15 for three weeks, while Ana recovered and tried to figure out how to pick up the pieces of her life. She was eighteen, with the education of a twelve-year-old and almost six years of servitude that she would need to put behind her. I didn’t envy her for the road she had ahead of her, but at least she would have strong support from her family. The other girls that I’d rescued weren’t all so lucky.

One of them, Elizabeth, had been taken when she was seven and her parents had divorced shortly after. They fought over which one of them should take her in and mom had hung up on them. Over the next weeks, mom took a special interest in Elizabeth and helped her get re-started on her education.

Having taken almost a week off from my studies, I resumed my medical schooling the day after the barbeque and kept it up until it was time to meet up with Mark in New York on his tour of McKenzie Resources US mines. Between all the rescues and studying of the last few months, I was looking forward to this much-needed break. I felt bad for medical students who had to keep up this kind of schedule for over a decade.

It turned out that I’d over-planned for my break. There were just too many things that I was trying to cram into each day. Add new companies to my investment list, study new surgical techniques at the best hospitals in every city, scan the mines that we visited and the surrounding areas for opportunities, scan-read a book every day, and keep up with my Kung Fu training. All this was supposed to be accomplished before six in the evening so that Mark and I could go out for the evening.

There was just no way to get it all done and I had to cut, drop or change my plans. The first thing to go were the additions to my investment portfolio. I’d created a list of twenty companies for each of the three cities. I cut that down to three companies and I made sure that they were in close proximity to the one hospital that I would be visiting in each city, in order to reduce travel time. Next, I decided to use my new pulse scans on the surrounding properties at the mines. Instead of the full scans that showed me everything in the ground, I only searched for the one ore that the mine was already producing. This meant that I could scan those properties in minutes, instead of hours. If I found any good prospects, I’d do the full scan of that property. I cut the scan-reading to one book every two days, unless I happened to get up early, and I kept my Kung Fu training to one hour per day.

The one part of my plan that I wasn’t going to compromise on was my time with Mark. Every night, after work, Mark drove back from the mine into whichever city were staying in and we’d go out for dinner. In New York, we watched a play on Broadway and walked around Times Square. In Cleveland, we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and visited some food markets. In Minneapolis, we spent an evening at the Mall of the Americas. Some nights, we headed back to the hotel and watched movies on TV. I didn’t much care what we did, as long as we were together.

One night, we were lying down on the couch in his room, watching “Meet the Parents”. When we got to the part where Ben Stiller’s character is strapped to a lie detector machine by Robert De Niro’s character, my mind lit up with an idea. Could I use my field as a lie detector? I could read the body’s reaction better than any machine could. I sat up and grabbed my phone. What did a lie detection machine measure? Blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity. I’d never measured skin conductivity, so I looked it up. ‘Electrodermal Response’. Apparently, the skin conducts electricity differently depending on your psychological state. From a cursory glance, the theory seemed to be that there was a way to tell if someone was lying by measuring the changes in the conductivity of the skin and combining these finding with the heart rate and respiration changes.

“What’s got you so fired up, Abby?”

“I was just wondering if I could detect if someone is lying based on changes in their heart rate and respiration. Hold one a minute, I’ll be right back.” I walked through the connecting door to my room and grabbed my stethoscope from my medical backpack.

When I returned to his room, Mark asked, “Don’t you need some sort of contraption like they had in the movie?”

“Nah, this should be fine.”

Mark shook his head in resignation. “Of course, you would come up with an Abby way of doing things.”

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“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked curiously.

“Well, there’s the regular way of doing things and then there’s the Abby way. Normal people need equipment and preparation and years of study to master new techniques. You, not so much. Mine exploration, magic, investing, and medicine. It makes no sense at all, but it seems to work for you. Now you’re about to find a way to steal away the last bastion of self-preservation in a good relationship.”

“What?”

“Lying Abby. You’re trying to find a way to determine if I’m lying to you or not. What am I supposed to say when you’ve eaten five bowls of stew and then ask me if your outfit makes you look fat?”

I sent a pillow flying at his face. He managed to block it with his forearm. He though he was safe, but that was just my distraction. Before he could bring his arm down, I was already reaching in to tickle him. He tried to get up as I ticked his sides but I held him tightly and repositioned my legs around him. Soon our wrestling devolved into kissing and sometime later I managed to get back to figuring out if I could detect lies with my field.

Placing the stethoscope back on his chest and wrapping him in a field, I curled up next to him on the couch and placed my head on his chest. I started asking Mark questions. My three minutes of research had told me that I needed to ask him some basic questions first, in order to get a baseline. Once I knew what his normal physiological state was, I could watch to see how much it changed when he answered certain questions. The theory went that the degree of change could indicate that the person was anxious about his answer and was probably lying. However, the process seemed to be more art than science, in that there could be many factors causing the physiological changes and lying was only one of them. It’s possible that a past traumatic memory may have been triggered by the question and the physiological reactions could be due to that.

“For the record, please state your full name.”

“Abby. There is no record. We’re not in court.”

“Just answer the question. What’s your full name?”

“Mark McKenzie”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-two”

I kept asking him questions that I knew the answers to and watched his reactions through the field.

“Now I need you to lie to me, so I can see if there’s a difference.”

“The sky is plaid.”

“What kind of a lie is that? And who chooses plaid? It’s not even a color. It’s a pattern.”

“Well, the sky is definitely not plaid. If you don’t like my choice of lies, ask me a question that I can lie about.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“Three”

“Where did you go to university?”

“Yale for my undergraduate degree and Harvard to get my master’s degree.”

“What’s seven times eight?”

“Sixty-four”

I wasn’t registering any significant differences with these lies. Mark was relaxed throughout. Maybe he needed something more significant to lie about.

“Tell me why you’d rather have a zinc mine than a diamond mine.”

“Well, I wouldn’t. Zinc is a commodity and…oh, I forgot I was supposed to lie. Sorry.”

I sighed audibly and tried again. “What chemical compound is most commonly used in the gold leeching process?”

“Uhm…baking soda.” Big spike in readings. Pulse rate up.

“You’re a terrible liar. I didn’t need to read your physiological changes to catch that one. Also, let’s move on, because I can see you’re just dying to correct your answer and tell me that it’s cyanide.”

“There are newer processes, but cyanide is still the most widely used. It’s very effective in terms of removing the gold from the rock and in terms of cost. However, it’s lousy for the environment.”

I face-palmed. “Ugh! I was trying to find something significant for you to lie about so I’d get a clearer reaction. I may have gone too far. Let’s try something else. How many girlfriends have you had?”

“A hundred and fifty-seven, including you.”

We’d never discussed past boyfriends or girlfriends, but I was pretty sure he was lying because of the outrageous number. There was a spike in some of readings, but that may just be due to the subject matter.

“You’re my favorite out of all of them.” Some spikes, some no change. Was he lying now?

“You have to wait for a question, Mark”

“I think you’re wonderful, Abby.” No spikes at all.

“Still haven’t asked a question”.

“I love you.”

Huge spikes! His pulse was way up. Was he lying or just nervous about saying if for the first time? I lifted my head up off of his chest and looked him in the eyes. He wasn’t lying. No way.

“I love you too.” I’d never said that to a boyfriend before and I felt myself starting to tear up. Mark put a stop to that with his next choice of words.

“Just remember who said it first.” My indignant expression set him off laughing again and he wrapped me in his arms before I could recover and beat him to a pulp.

“I can’t believe that you quoted a line from a hockey movie to me at a time like this!”

“It wasn’t just any hockey movie. It was a romantic hockey movie!” And then he kissed me and I forgot what I was going to say next.