Free Zero Break by Neil Plakcy Page B

fascinated to hear the details of Mike’s cases; they were a lot like mine, in that they required deductive powers and lots of nose-to-the-grindstone footwork. But there was an extra layer of knowledge he needed, about fire and electricity and combustion. Sometimes the details made my head spin. I was always in awe of his ability to interpret the data and come up with conclusions.
    When we got home, Mike and I relaxed on the couch with Roby. It had been a nice evening, and I wondered how things would change if we had a child to worry about. I saw the way my brothers’ kids dominated everything that went on in their households. They needed to be fed and clothed and driven around, and even when the whole family was at home, they were always asking questions, banging things around, playing music too loud.
    My sisters-in-law were often frazzled, even Liliha, who tried to make everything look effortless. Tatiana, the artsy one, was more haphazard in her parenting, but I had seen her put her painting ability on the sidelines while she focused on her kids. Even now, when her youngest daughter, Akipela, was seven years old and in school all day, Tatiana was swamped with laundry, PTA and chauffeuring duties.
    Did Mike and I want to sacrifice everything in our lives that way? It wasn’t all taking the kids surfing or playing video games with them. Were we too selfish to let ourselves in for years of diapers, homework and then dating dramas?
    I wondered if the idea of kids was percolating through Mike’s brain the way it was with mine. Neither of us brought it up again as we watched TV, but the idea stayed in the back of my mind.

WHAT JUDY KNOWS
     
    On my way in to work Wednesday morning I plugged in my Bluetooth and dialed Anna Yang’s apartment in Chinatown on my cell. When she answered, I heard at least one of the girls crying in the background. “I’ll try and make this quick,” I said. “Did Zoë have an email account?”
    We thought maybe Zoë might have been corresponding with the guy she had dinner with, but I didn’t see the need to pass that information on to Anna until it became relevant. “Yes. She has an account with IslandMail. Her user name is MissNumbered.” She spelled it for me.
    “Clever. Password?”
    “I’m sorry, I don’t know it.”
    “I have a friend who might be able to get into the account. Can you give me some clues? Maybe her birthday, the girls’, that kind of thing?”
    She listed a bunch of dates and a couple of Zoë’s favorite words, and I pulled up in front of Harry Ho’s house and added them to my computer file. I heard her turn to the girl who was crying. “Because I say so,” she said.
    I remembered that one from my own childhood. I guess Anna had heard the same thing, growing up in China, and it had imprinted on her the same way it sunk in to every American kid who grew up to be a parent. I hung up and sat in front of Harry’s house for a minute.
    Harry and Arleen live in the same neighborhood as Mike and me, though their house is a lot nicer than ours. They have a single-family, while ours is a duplex with the added pleasure of having Mike’s parents sharing a wall. We have two bedrooms, while Harry and Arleen have three. We had a nicer bathroom, because Mike had remodeled it a year before he met me, but I knew it was just a matter of time before Harry’s house surpassed ours in that regard, too.
    Arleen had had the kitchen remodeled and expanded before they moved in, with sliding glass doors to the back yard, where they’d had a swimming pool put in as well. Our kitchen was small and dark, but since neither Mike or I cooked much, that didn’t matter. I did want a pool, though.
    In addition to being my best friend, aside from Mike of course, Harry’s a computer genius with degrees from MIT and a bunch of patents in his name. Arleen was just walking out the front door, with Brandon in tow. Harry had met Arleen a couple of years before, when she was working for a man