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19.

The next morning, when I stumbled into the kitchen, I found my father still sitting at the laptop. Judging by his clothes and the red-rimmed state of his eyes, he’d been there all night.

He barely looked at me as I walked across the room and put on the coffeepot.

“You look terrible,” I said.

He grunted in agreement, but didn’t lift his head. There was a notebook at his elbow, and I wondered what he’d been writing in it. The silence in the room was as thick as a layer of snow, and just as cold.

When the coffee was done percolating, I handed him a cup. He took a big swallow, and it seemed to thaw him. “Plows came through last night,” he said, “so I’m going to head out again soon. Not sure how long I’ll be gone this time.”

The coffee, too strong, burned my throat. “You’re leaving…today?”

“In the next few days, before the next storm comes through and shuts down the roads again. Got to put together a few plans first.”

“What are you doing out there, Dad?”

My question seemed to exhaust him. “Same thing I do here. Trying to make the world a better place. Trying to save humanity from itself.”

I hated him, then, for his ability to come and go as he pleased while I remained stuck here in my seven-hundred-square-foot jail. It occurred to me that if I was ever going to get out of here in the dead of winter, the only way it would ever happen was with him. If I could just piggyback on my father’s next trip to wherever the hell it was he went, perhaps I would find an opportunity to slip away. I had the two hundred dollars stashed in my go bag; that would surely get me wherever I needed togo.

As for where that was, exactly? Well, this remained fuzzy, being as I was working with limited information, the vaguest grasp of geography, and absolutely no real-world experience. But my half-cocked plan went something like this: Go to Silicon Valley. Find a library; go to all of them if necessary. Search for my mom’s obituary. And if there was no obituary, I’d look for her .

“Take me with you.” I put my hand on his shoulder, and gave it a tight squeeze, the way he always squeezed mine. “Whatever it is you’re doing out there, I can help you.”

He shook his head. “Jane. You don’t want to get caught up in my business. You’re still just a kid.”

“You’re the one who likes to say that age is just an abstract construct. And haven’t I helped you already? With the manifesto. I’m already a part of whatever it is you’re doing, whether you like it or not. So you might as well include me in the rest of it.”

He flinched, as though I’d just flicked water in his face. The opaque expression in his eyes faded, and was replaced by one that was ruminative, maybe even…mournful? He squinted hard at me, apparently seeing something unexpected in my familiar features, and that was when I knew I’d won.

“OK,” he said. “You’re right.”