Page 19 of The Five Year Lie

I put the last dish in the dishwasher and close the door.

When I was four months pregnant, the obstetrician told me I was having a boy. Right away I knew I’d call him Buzz. It was such an easy decision—my little boy and I were left behind, too. Just like the toys in the story.

You’d have to believe in miracles to think that I’d ever see Drew again. Yet I went to the candelabra tree anyway. The perfect fool.

Upstairs, the whistling trails off. I put our leftovers in the refrigerator, and then I pull out a bottle of pink wine that wasn’t opened the last time Larri came over.

I don’t usually drink alone. It’s a little rule I made for myself, because I’m often lonely. It would be way too easy to get into the habit of sipping wine every night in front of the TV.

But tonight I twist the top right off and pour myself a full glass.

And then I almost drop the bottle when someone knocks on my door. I whip my head around to see who it is.

Sorry!Zain mouths from the other side of the little square windowpane.

Heart pounding, I open the door. “What are you doing here?” It’s not the most polite question I’ve ever asked. But I wouldn’t have thought Zain even knew where to find me.

He looks over his shoulder at the main house. “Can I come in? I’m probably on, like, seven different Chime Co. cameras right now.”

“You’re not,” I say, opening the door wider to let him step inside. “Mine is disabled.”

“Really?” He smirks as he closes the door behind himself. “Why?”

A memory—my father screaming into my cell phone one September night when I was fifteen. He caught me on camera, leaving for a party that he’d forbidden me to go to after I dropped out of a computer programming class without telling him.Get back here, you ungrateful little bitch.

I became sneakier after that incident. But that’s beside the point. “... For the same reason you’re eager to get out of the driveway. I don’t want my home to become a surveillance state.” That’s how it had felt growing up as Edward’s daughter. He was alwayswatching me, waiting for me to make another mistake. I’ve always associated the cameras with his personality.

Zain shakes his head, that smirk still playing on his lips. “But Chime Co. saves lives. That better be true, or else I’m spending seventy hours a week on a scam.”

“How’d you find me anyway?”

He shrugs. “Hackers never reveal their secrets.”

“Want some pink wine?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I pour him some, setting both our glasses on the kitchen counter. The couch seems too cozy for a chat with a man I don’t really know. “So... why the visit?”

“Well...” He fidgets with his wineglass. “I pulled a tape and looked it over for you. Found some weird data, and didn’t really want to talk about it in the office.”

“Okay... a tape?”

Zain’s chuckle is an awkward staccato sound. “That’s what we call them, although it’s not really ontape. It’s a digital log of entries to the database. And it’s stored on these.” He pulls a gray, oblong thing out of his backpack. It looks like an external hard drive, without the cord. I’ve seen them before in my uncle’s office.

Now I stare at the thing. “Are you supposed to carry those around?”

“Heck no. So don’t tell anyone,” he says, a crease appearing on his forehead. “Do you want to know what I found in Drew’s HR file or not?”

“You know I do.” I take a gulp of wine.

Zain’s expression animates as he begins to explain. “The tape keeps a coded record of every change to the database and a record of whose log-in made it. This one includes Drew’s hire date. So Iscanned it for new log-ins, and I found the day they created his.” He pulls a sticky note out of his pocket. “Drew was employee number 311. And I found every keystroke Ray’s assistant made when she set up his file.” He pulls a laptop out of his backpack and sets it on my countertop.

“That’s not a Chime Co. machine, is it?”

Zain gives me an eye roll. “Did you seriously just ask me that?”

“Sorry.”