—

As soon as he’s gone, you turn on the phone. Tim still won’t talk about what happened to you, but perhaps there’s something here that will satisfy your curiosity.

You go into the texts. The most recent one was five years ago, sent to someone called Jacinta G. Sure! Count me in for Pinot and character assassination! Abs xx

You’ve no idea who Jacinta is. But here you were, planning a girls’ night. And then you died. Out of the blue, never expecting that text to be your last.

You keep scrolling. Most of the names mean nothing, lost in the fog. Then, suddenly, one pops out.

Lisa.

Your sister. Your finger hovers over the CALL button. But then you wonder how much Tim has told her. She may know nothing about this. About you. You can’t just phone her out of the blue without some sort of warning. Reluctantly, you move on.

You see Tim’s name. Your last text to him simply read:

Things going well here. OK if I stay another day? xx

His reply came just a few minutes later:

Of course. As long as you like. x

You scroll up further, stopping at random.

Still up for date night? Reservation’s @7 Axx

   Tim’s answer was badly typed—under the table of a meeting, perhaps:

Sadly mty date toniht will b w Ted’s bozo coders. Going tp pull a late one.

 No worries. Takeout? Xx

 I’ll piuck up grocries. Steak? candles? wine? choc dess?

 You had me at choc dess. Xx

It was a happy marriage, you think. Despite Danny, despite Tim’s type-A personality, the two of you made it work.

You scroll on, stopping occasionally, until you reach a whole decade ago.

Thank you for a beautiful evening. And an even more beautiful night. Tim x

 The pleasure was all mine, believe me! Axx

You feel a sudden pang of emotion. Eventually you and Tim may be able to go on date nights together. You can dance, hold hands, even kiss. But the special physical connection of lovemaking is another matter.

Unbidden, the exact word for what you feel about that lands in your thoughts, ready-made.

Your emotion about those texts is envy.

* * *

—

You’re about to put the phone down when you spot the Safari icon on the menu bar. You tap it and a search engine appears, the box blank and inviting.

   At last. Quickly you type in Abbie Cullen-Scott San Francisco death accident? How?

An agonizing moment while it searches. And then—

Page Blocked.

You look at it, wondering. Blocked by who?

Then you realize. Tim must have set up some kind of filter. Like one of those parental-control apps, with the details of your own death as the blacklisted content.

It’s because he loves you, you tell yourself. He guessed the temptation would be too great. It’s a sign of how well he knows you. How much he cares about protecting you from pain.

You wonder if he’ll get sent some kind of alert now. You hope not. It would be nice to keep your weakness to yourself.

And nicer still if my husband had trusted me in the first place, you can’t help thinking. Even as you ruefully acknowledge that he was right not to.

You wonder what else he’s screened from you. Picking up the phone again, you try Facebook, then Twitter, then Instagram. Only Instagram loads, and even then, links to certain accounts seem to be blocked.

Are there horrors here he has chosen to shield you from? What insinuations does he not want the roiling, restless multitudes of the Web to whisper in your ears?

Then you remember the disgust in the eyes of the Prius driver who brought you home. Imagine that, being flung at you online!

Tim’s right, you decide. Too much reality right now might not be a good thing.

THREE

   Abbie Cullen didn’t do very much, to begin with. She sat at a spare desk. We pointed out to her the break room, the free bagels and tubs of cream cheese, the restrooms, and where to put the recycling. Jenny Austin—Mike’s wife—brought over a spare laptop, and there was a rush to be the one to help Abbie connect it to our network. (Tim refused to have an IT administrator, on the basis that if you weren’t smart enough to do that kind of stuff yourself, you shouldn’t be working for him.) And then she just kind of sat around, chatting.

There was a pool table in the office, but it almost never got used. Nobody wanted to be the person who was shooting pool when Tim Scott walked by. It was generally just a convenient place to stack late-night pizza deliveries, and its soft blue baize was stained like an old mattress with their leakings. But when Abbie Cullen picked up a cue, turned to the nearest person—who happened to be Rajesh—and said “Wanna play?” we not only tolerated it, we went to watch.

She was not even quiet. When she won a shot, she whooped.

   Pretty soon she developed a program of going around and asking people to explain to her what they did. She would squat down next to our chairs, so she didn’t tower over us, or sit on our desks, swinging her long legs, asking us questions. And she seemed genuinely interested, even amazed, by what to us was now fairly everyday and mundane. She was sweet. She had a way of reaching out and resting her hand on our arms to make a point that was—well, flirtatious would be the wrong word. It was more like she saw no reason not to be tactile, and no one in her life had ever seen any reason to make her feel self-conscious about it.

We didn’t, either, of course. We were charmed.

The second day, she wore a Debbie Harry T-shirt under an old leather jacket, and ripped jeans. Some of us did wonder if that was a bit too casual, for the office. But then she was an artist, not a regular employee.

Someone asked her if she knew what her first project would be, and she shook her head. “I’m still waiting for an idea.” Not I’m working on it, or even It’ll come, just that she was waiting for something to show up and announce itself. We admired her confidence, but we also worried for her. What if no idea ever came? At what point would she give up? And if she gave up, would she leave us?

So we waited along with her, and gradually What Abbie Might Do became a topic—perhaps even the topic—of conversation in the break room. “She’s talking to the form-cutters this morning. I expect she’ll want to use the three-D printer.” “I heard she’s thinking of doing some portraits of us.” “She’s interested in how the bots are coded. I bet she’ll incorporate that into her project.”