Seven
TO: Miranda Grey ([email protected])
FROM: Kat ([email protected])
SUBJECT: MIA?
Hey girl,
I know you said you were out of town but when you get back can we please have lunch? I really think we should talk. I’m worried about you, Mira-Mira. You don’t have to deal with this stuff alone. Just let me know you’re okay, okay? I miss you lots, sugarbean.
Hugs,
Kat
TO: Kat ([email protected])
FROM: Miranda Grey ([email protected])
SUBJECT: Re: MIA?
I’m okay. I’m staying with a friend in the country. I promise I’ll call as soon as I get back into Austin. Please don’t worry about me (even though I know you’re going to anyway). Miss you too.
~M
She clicked SEND and watched, amazed, as the message flew out of her outbox and into the digital ether a hundred times faster than it would have the last time she worked on her laptop.
“You’re pretty handy to have around,” Miranda commented.
Across the table, David looked up from the computer he was fixing and offered a smile.
She had mentioned, in passing, that her computer was a dinosaur; she’d bought it used off Craigslist, and though she’d loved it, it was slow and lumbering and almost full to the gills with music files. David had offered to have a look at it before they started their training session that night, and in approximately thirty minutes had it purring like a brand-new machine. While she tried it out, he cracked open the case of some server or another and spilled its guts all over the table, going after it with a set of tiny screwdrivers to replace some kind of . . . chip? She couldn’t even begin to name the small, rectangular piece of hardware.
As usual he felt her eyes and said, without looking up, “It’s a security device to help keep predators out of the network.”
“Has anyone else broken in?”
“No, and they won’t.”
He was being a little short with her tonight, though she sensed it wasn’t anything she had done . . . although he had been giving her some odd looks when he thought she didn’t notice . . . speculative looks, almost wary, and what in any other person’s face might have been interpreted as fear.
She hummed softly as she cleaned out her inbox until she glanced up to see him looking aggrieved. “Do you mind?” he asked.
“Sorry,” she muttered. She almost started doing it again just to piss him off, but decided that probably wasn’t a good idea.
What was left of her good mood evaporated when she saw the sender of the next e-mail.
TO: Miranda Grey ([email protected])
FROM: Marianne Grey-Weston (marianne.weston@comtex .dallas.com)
SUBJECT: Dad’s birthday
Miranda,
If you’re planning to attend Dad’s 60th birthday party next month, please let me know so I can send an accurate count to the caterer.
I hope you’re doing well.
Sincerely,
Marianne Grey-Weston
She stared at the monitor for a long moment, biting her lip, before she shut the computer and pushed it away from her.
“What’s wrong?” David asked, finally looking up from his work.
“Oh . . . nothing. Just my sister.” At his surprised expression she added, “Older sister. She still lives in Dallas where we moved after our mother died. We don’t talk much.”
“Why not?”
She ran her finger around the Apple logo in the center of the laptop, trying to talk around the heavy feeling that always formed in her stomach when she heard from Marianne.
“We’ve never been close.” She knew he could hear the lie in her voice, but he didn’t comment. A moment later she said, almost unwillingly, “There was this thing, when we were younger . . . our mother, she . . . went crazy, sort of.”
“Crazy,” he repeated, the coolness of the tone he’d used all night warming just a tad. “Crazy like you went crazy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It happened when we were kids. Nobody would ever tell me what was really wrong with her. She was always so normal—she packed lunches, she went to school plays, all of that. Marianne was involved in everything. She was the good daughter.”
Miranda let her eyes drift around the room as she talked, staring at the servers, the monitors, anything but him. “Then one day Mama just sort of . . . stopped. She stared off into space and didn’t recognize any of us. They did every medical test they could think of and found nothing. Dad put her in the county hospital, and she died there when I was fourteen.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been hard for you, so young.”
“The worst part was Marianne and Dad. They both wanted to pretend nothing ever happened and act like she was dead even when she wasn’t. They were embarrassed. I think she caused some sort of scene in public once. They were both more concerned with what people thought than with what happened to Mama. I went to visit her once, but I couldn’t go back there. It was . . . it was hell. It was hell and she was locked up there forever.”
Miranda swallowed her tears, forcing her voice to stay steady. “Marianne and I had a lot of fights about it. Dad refused to talk about it at all. He still won’t. So I moved back here to Austin as soon as I graduated high school. I only see them once a year or so, and it’s always miserable. When I see her, all she wants to know is if I’m getting married and how much money I make, even though for years it’s been the same answer. She just has to lord over me the fact that she’s a rich pediatrician with a lawyer husband.”
“Then why do you talk to her at all?”
She smiled helplessly. “I have no idea. They’re like . . . they’re like Hero and Claudio. The Blandersons of Blandville.”
“Then don’t answer,” David said reasonably, snapping the case back on the computer, then zipping the tools into their own case. “We don’t get to choose how we’re born, Miranda, and very rarely how we die; but we get to choose how we live. Life is too short to spend in dread and guilt.”
She cocked her head to one side and gave him a look. “You do realize that you lack any sort of credibility in the ‘life is too short’ cliché department.”
“Conceded,” he replied, rising. “But I’m still right. Shall we?”
Miranda sighed. “Now that we’re one for one on sharing our life stories, I guess we should get to the fun part of the evening.”
She slipped her laptop back into its bag and slung it over her shoulder, following him out of his workroom and down the hallway. She expected him to take her back to the suite, but he headed in the opposite direction, stopping in front of a locked door that was almost hidden in a corridor.