“No. You stay here. I’ll bring you back your book, too.”
She went inside, moved silently to David’s room. She found the copy of A Wrinkle in Time and tucked it under her arm; now glad she hadn’t thrown it away. She opened the desk drawer and found the green drive in the pile of leftover red ones; she remembered he needed them for school and was often losing them. The musical note was on it.
She awoke his computer and slid the drive into the port.
It definitely wasn’t music. It was a series of programs. KeyBreaker. KeystrokeMonitor. PasswordCracker. HackingLog.
This was stuff to help you break into a computer. Why would David have this? If it had been her father’s, why did Brent have it?
And David and Brent, both dead from accidents. She looked in the operations log. It made no sense to her, numbers and ports and words she didn’t understand. She ejected the drive from the computer and turned it off, and Cal said, “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” she said, slipping the drive into her robe pocket. “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see what the Internet was saying about me.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good way to go back to sleep.”
“It’s not. It’s a terrible idea, like you said.”
“On David’s computer? Your laptop is downstairs.”
“I know.” Why are you lying to him? She decided, in a flash, that her dealings with Jane were hers alone. Cal would come in, take over. No. This was hers.
“Go back to bed,” she said. “I’m going myself.” Please, Jane, don’t come in. Don’t knock at the door. Just wait.
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“I am. Like you said, best not to look. I think Jane might be willing to help me make a public apology.”
“Jane helping you? I think you should stay away from her.”
“I didn’t expect you to say that. Don’t you want us to make peace?”
“I guess so. We’ll talk in the morning.” He went back to the guest room and she said, “I’m just getting a drink of water.” He made a noise of sleepy acknowledgment and closed the door.
She hurried down the steps and went out the front door as quietly as she could. Jane still sat in her chair, the piece of paper on her lap where Perri couldn’t see what was on the other side.
“I found it. You lied to me. It has programs on it.”
“Programs to hack a computer. Adam Kessler gave it to my dad shortly before he died.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Randy Franklin was following my father around in the weeks before his death. He had a picture of Adam giving this to my dad. Adam said my dad bought it from him. He said he had a computer an employee left behind that he wanted to hack. But I think that was a lie.”
“Why?” She could barely breathe.
Jane hesitated. “I…I’m trying to figure that out. It all ties back to why people connected to the crash have been targeted.” She held her hand out for the drive and after a moment Perri dropped it into her hand. “I’ve been investigating that night.” And she told Perri what she’d learned: from her taking the files from Randy’s office to what she had heard from Kamala and Amari and Adam and Trevor and Billy Sing at Happy Taco, in piecing together that night. She told her everything, except about the photo of Cal and Laurel kissing—she decided to talk to her mother first about that. Perri listened, a stunned look on her face.
“So, I have more things to find out,” Jane said. She stood.
“What’s that you wanted to show me? Is that it?” Perri pointed to the paper. It looked like the back of a photo.
“I think I’ve dropped enough anvils on you tonight. Thanks for the coffee. I’ll post a video on my Faceplace page tonight. I think if you share it, since people are leaving mean comments on your page, it will put a stop to the attacks against you.”
“Thank you.” Two words she never would have imagined saying to Jane Norton.
Jane stood up and left without another word.
50
SO WHAT ARE your plans for today, Mom?” Jane asked. She hadn’t slept well and her mother was up early, brewing coffee, and bustling around.
“Um. I have some meetings at the charity office.”
“On Sunday?” She kept her voice neutral. The meeting, she knew, was with Kevin.
“Yes, well, that’s when people could meet,” she said vaguely. “My donors tend to be extremely busy. How about you?”
“I’m going to make a video forgiving Mrs. Hall and post it to Faceplace.”
“Oh, I think that’s a bad idea, darling.”
“Forgiveness is a bad idea?”
“Look, she’s finally getting a taste of what real blame feels like. Let her taste it. Have you read the comments on her page? I wonder sometimes who these people are, who have all the spare time to hate on a stranger. We know that feeling.” She bit into her toast.
Jane stared at her. “I think you wrote several times about forgiveness on the mom blog.”
“I did, but that was more about forgiving one’s self.”
“You’re good at that.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing, Mom.”
“I’m so glad you’re home.” She tried a smile.
“Adam has a roommate now. So I might be back on the street.”
“No, you’ll stay here.”
She tested her mother. “I don’t like being next door to the Halls.”
“You are not going back on the streets, Jane. We’ll find a different solution. I’ll get you an apartment.”
“You will? You said I had to either be in school or here.”
“Well, I was wrong. I won’t have you in that situation anymore.”
“Thanks, Mom.” She wasn’t sure if she could believe this new promise.
“But don’t make that video. It’s a bad idea. At least not now.”
Jane didn’t say any more.
“How do breakfast tacos sound? I’ll run over to the Baconery and get us some.”
“Wonderful,” Jane said.
Her mother left and Jane went straight to Laurel’s computer. She awoke it and it asked for a password. She slid the hacker flash drive into the port. The windows for the various programs opened. She selected the PasswordCracker; it asked for information such as pet names, anniversaries and birthdays of family members, streets one lived on, and other common denominators of passwords. She entered all that and within two minutes the password was cracked. She went to her mother’s e-mail application. Her mother had a home address; one for the charity; and a couple of others, spares Jane supposed, that she didn’t seem to use much.
She searched for “Cal.” She found old e-mails, from before and after her dad died, but nothing romantic. Many offers of help and solace from the Halls after Brent’s death. Nothing suspicious. She searched for “Perri”—more of the same. She found a few e-mail exchanges after the crash, pleas that Jane tell what happened, angry e-mails doubting her amnesia, rejections of Laurel’s pleas to publicly forgive Jane. Those were hard to read. And then nothing.