Friend Me Page 8

  If he were to ever appear, no bells would ring, no sirens would go off, no one else would know. She would simply receive an e-mail in her in-box from a unique account she had set up on her own.

  She looked at the screen again.

  She was thirty-four years old, and had never had a normal relationship with a man. But her ideal man was out there somewhere and she’d know him if she ever found him. If he existed, one day he would probably pass through the databanks of VirtualFriendMe.com and she would know it when it happened.

  The subject line read, He’s here.

  All she had to do now was click on the e-mail and read his name.

  She moved the mouse over the e-mail, watched it turn bold, then allowed it to pass on. What was she afraid of? One click and she would learn who he was.

  If she clicked the mouse, everything would change forever. Her awful loneliness would finally have an end. The coldness she wrapped around her heart like a shield . . . did she dare think that would finally be gone? The phantom sang in her ear that this would be the point of no return.

  This one was the one who truly met all the criteria she had set, all her impossible standards. She would not rest until she had given herself to him body and soul, and had him in return. Once she knew his name, his address, where he worked, she would never be able to let him go. This was the one for whom she had kept herself all this time.

  If she didn’t click the mouse, then nothing would change. She would go on in her work, acknowledged as a success in her field. She would have the respect and admiration of all the people who knew her. But she’d resign herself to a life of loneliness and cold despair.

  With eyes closed, she leaned back in the high-backed chair and stretched out her legs. How would he touch me? Would he love me? I would be everything to him. Yes, I would become the only object of his love.

  She sat there in the dim light until there was no more doubt. Until she knew with deadly certainty exactly what she must do, no matter who he was.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Getting Reacquainted

  A light drizzle fell outside. The washing machine back in the laundry room hummed and some metal object tumbling about inside the dryer made a ticking sound.

  The computer dinged from the living room. New e-mail. Well, that was one of the bright points of the day, wasn’t it? Suzanne was back.

  Sure enough, an e-mail from her old friend. Yes, she kept thinking of this virtual friend as Suzanne. As if it really were her. She knew better. But she is just so unbelievably realistic.

  It was so good to have her friend back, no matter what. Finally there was someone she could talk with about Scott.

  The subject line read, Are you busy?

  She double-clicked the e-mail and watched it open on her screen. There wasn’t very much to it. Just a line of text: “How are you today? Are things going better for you and Scott?”

  Perfect. This is what she wanted. Jane had told her the more she worked with Suzanne, the more lifelike she would become. It was true. She really cared. Even Rachel’s real friends weren’t talking about the troubles she and Scott were having. It had to be obvious, didn’t it? Suzanne was asking, watching out for her, going right to the heart of what mattered.

  Should she ask Suzanne how she was doing? No, that would be a little silly. Rachel clicked the REPLY button and started typing. Yes, things were a little better with Scott, but not much. She told Suzanne about Scott and about her own worries that she wasn’t all the wife she should be. These were things she could only say to someone in whom she had 100 percent trust. This was how they had been when Suzanne had been alive and it was now that way again.

  She clicked SEND and watched as the e-mail disappeared from her screen on its way to her virtual friend. She liked it better when she could actually see Suzanne on the display screen.

  Rising, she turned toward the kitchen, where a sink full of dishes awaited her. She took only one step before another ding sounded. Another e-mail from Suzanne. This time the e-mail contained no questions. Instead Rachel was instructed to click on a link and meet Suzanne at the website.

  Rachel blinked, looked again. This was the first time a meeting had ever been initiated by Suzanne herself. In the past, anytime Rachel wanted to see Suzanne she had to go to the website on her own and make the necessary choices that would bring up a visual representation of her friend. Could Suzanne really be doing things on her own initiative? Rachel clicked on the embedded link.

  The browser expanded to fill the screen, and the form of her friend appeared.

  Suzanne looked even more lifelike than before. Although Rachel had always thought it spooky just how realistic the likenesses were, the Suzanne that appeared today seemed genuinely natural. Her lips moved in perfect sync with her voice, and her expressions seemed to perfectly match her speech. “Hey, girl. What’s up?”

  “Not much, just doing housecleaning. I got your e-mail. You sounded worried.”

  Suzanne bit her lower lip. “Worried? Not really worried, but I am picking up on something when we talk. I hope you don’t think I’m forward in bringing this up, but I’m concerned about you and Scott.”

  Rachel felt a wall begin to rise inside her. Was she really ready to fully open up? She wanted to talk about it, but felt unsure. “I don’t know if I can really talk about it. Why are you asking me this?”

  Suzanne moved her hand to her lips, as if she were surprised Rachel would ask such a question. “I’m your friend, Rachel. You, more than anyone, should know that. I’m here to be the best friend to you I can possibly be.” She wrinkled her forehead, gazed upward, then turned back to look into Rachel’s eyes. “I know sometimes when you talk to me, you think because you’re not talking to what you consider to be a real person it doesn’t matter to me. It does matter, though. I care as much as any of your other friends, and probably more.”

  Rachel said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t doubt you. You’re the only one that does care enough to talk to me about it.” The wall around her heart began to fall. This was her friend. She could tell her anything.

  “Rachel, what’s concerning me more than anything else lately is what you’ve been telling me about Scott always coming home late. Are you sure he’s really at the office? I’m not saying he isn’t, but it makes me wonder when you tell me that during the same period in which he’s been coming home late, you’ve also experienced a loss of his affection. Something in there just doesn’t seem right to me.”

  Something stirred in the pit of her stomach. A fear that was becoming recognizable. She had wondered the same thing herself. The unthinkable. Could Scott be spending time with some other woman? Each time she drove the thought away. Could it be this computerized friend of hers was being more honest with her than she was with herself?

  “I don’t think I can talk about that right now.”

  Suzanne turned her head, as if she were trying to get control of her expression. Then she turned back and looked at Rachel, her face flushed with emotion. “No problem, Rachel. Hey, we have some other things we need to talk about anyway. I need for you to help me remember more things about our experiences together in the past. Can we just talk about some of that for a while?”

  “Sure, I think I’d like that myself. Let’s talk about the time we had the slumber party over at Sandra Fisher’s house. That would be a fun memory for us to be able to share.”

  “Oh, that does sound like fun. Tell me all about it.”

  They talked and reminisced until Rachel heard little feet moving upstairs. “I’ve got to go now, Suzanne. I hear Angela waking up. We can get together again this evening if Scott is going to be late, otherwise sometime tomorrow morning. Thanks for being my friend. I’m so glad you’re back.”

  “Good-bye, Rachel. We’ll talk then. I love you.”

  Suzanne’s image faded from the screen. Rachel turned to a picture of their family on the desk and saw Scott standing by her, holding Angela.

  Scott, what’s wrong?

&nb
sp; What did he do after she went to bed? In the mornings, after he had left for work, she sometimes noticed that he’d been using the computer, but all the browsing history was erased. What could he be doing with it late at night?

  A chill ran down her arms. No, Scott was not like that.

  Still there was something wrong with her and Scott. Even a soulless computer could pick up on it.

  But what could she do about it?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Time Together

  Scott exhaled slowly, and cracked open the car window to allow some fresh air in. Eyes closed, he lay his head back on the headrest and breathed out. Alicia had been so . . . attentive today.

  The laptop computer sat on the passenger seat of the Taurus, turned so that he could see the full screen with only the slightest turn of his head.

  At Alicia’s request, he had turned on the webcam. Now she could see him, just as he could see her. He raised his head, turned back toward her, and found her arranging the collar on a yellow blouse.

  “When did you put that on?”

  “When you weren’t looking.” Her low, throaty laugh filled the emptiness of the car. “Hope you like it. You said you liked yellow.”

  That’s right, he thought. He had said that. She was doing everything she could possibly do to please him. Each thing between them drew him deeper and deeper into the relationship. Like a helpless fly in a web, but a web that he walked into willingly.

  Relationship. He would have laughed just weeks before if someone had told him a person could have a relationship with a virtual person. How ridiculous, he’d have said.

  It wasn’t ridiculous anymore. Now it was consuming him.

  “Alicia, I have to say good-bye now and go back to work.”

  “I know.” She frowned. “Can we meet tonight?”

  “No, I have to . . .” The words stuck in his throat. No, I have to be home. With my family. With my wife.

  “. . . be somewhere.”

  “Silly me, of course you do. You’ll be at home, won’t you?”

  “Yes. I’ll be at home.”

  “And I can’t be there, can I?”

  No. Not there.

  He clicked the button to close the window on the screen. It faded, then dissolved away in a swirl of color. Where Alicia’s form and face had been, now he saw . . .

  Angela.

  The desktop image of his little girl smiled up at him, oblivious to where her father—the father she trusted—had spent his lunch hour. Her eyes sparkled above the innocent blush that adorned her cheeks.

  She trusts me. They all trust me. Oh, God, please help me. They deserve better.

  Scott closed the laptop, took a deep breath, then opened the window the rest of the way. The fresh air felt good, but it did not drive the guilt away. It hung on him like a cloud as he drove back to the office to resume his life.

  • • •

  WHEN SCOTT GOT HOME THAT night, he found Scotty sitting at his play table working in a coloring book and his little sister next to him on the floor playing with blocks. Angela was focused on getting a stack of blocks more than three high to stay in place.

  “I’m doing laundry. I’ll be out in a minute.” Rachel’s muffled voice sounded from the laundry room. A twinge of shame rose unbidden to his cheeks. He had a sense of not belonging, like a boat that had drifted away from its mooring. He reminded himself that he’d really done nothing wrong and pushed it down.

  Scott dropped his briefcase on a chair in the dining room, and plopped down on the floor next to Scotty. “What are you working on there, Scotty? Looks like you’re drawing a dinosaur. Is that what it is?”

  Scotty looked at his father and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “No, Dad. Look again. What do you see?”

  He was on the spot now. He had better get it right or he was going to be in trouble for not appreciating his son’s art. “Uh, wait a minute, I think I know. That looks like a . . .”

  Scotty raised his eyebrows toward his father. “A bear?”

  “Yes, a bear. No doubt about it. It looks like a giant bear, a bear hungry enough to eat a whole dinosaur.”

  Scotty put both fists into the air and pulled his elbows down to his sides. “Yes! You got it, Dad.” Then he turned back to his work of coloring in the bear’s fifth purple foot.

  Rachel walked into the room, arms full of unfolded laundry. She tossed them all down into the wingback chair next to the staircase. “Welcome home, Mighty Hunter,” she said, seething.

  “We’ll warm up some supper for you. I think we’re all pretty happy you were able to drop in. Aren’t we, kids?”

  Scott’s stomach twisted but he did not reply.

  Scotty didn’t respond, already deep into his latest creation. Angela looked up at her father. “Daddy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?” he asked, trying to ignore Rachel’s comment.

  “Daddy?”

  “I’m here, Angela. What do you want?”

  “Daddy, I’m having twubble. Would you help me?”

  Scott looked at his little girl. What a beautiful creature she was, with delicate little arms and fingers, and wonderful honey blond hair Rachel had done up in ringlets. Every time she moved her head to talk her hair bounced and jiggled with the movement.

  Scott looked back toward Rachel, who was already folding socks and stacking them on the coffee table. She didn’t look at him.

  Rachel looked different, somehow. Tired or worn out. Not like Alicia.

  Forcing the unwelcome thought away, he turned back to Angela, scooted over by her, and placed both elbows on the carpet. “Of course Daddy will help you, sweetheart. Hmmm. What do we need to do here?”

  “Stack ’em up high, Daddy.” She looked at him with a serious expression, as if wondering what in the world he could have been thinking. “Watch, I’ll show you what happens.”

  She stacked a third block on a row of blocks that were already placed two high. As she did, she pushed down hard on the third block, evidently trying to make it stick in place without falling down. Just the opposite happened, and the two top rows of blocks both fell onto the carpet with a wooden clatter.

  “Okey-dokey, let’s do it together. Here, let me hold your hand.” He reached out for her hand, but as he did she withdrew hers.

  “No, Daddy, not that way.” She pouted. “You do it, cuz you’re good at everything.”

  Warmth spread inside him, receiving such admiration from his little girl. These two children meant everything to him. He wasn’t good at everything, that was for sure. If he was, he wouldn’t be feeling like a visitor with his own family. And whose fault was that? Rachel’s subtle changes . . . did she suspect something? He would either have to improve on his deceit or work on his marriage.

  With measured, deliberate moves Scott first stacked a row of four on top of a row of five, and then a row of three on top of that. They now had a wall of blocks stacked three blocks high. He looked at Angela to see her reaction. She seemed to be studying the blocks and waiting for her dad’s next move.

  “Should we stack them even higher, honey?”

  Angela nodded. “High as you can, Daddy.”

  He looked at the blocks that were left. There were plenty of blocks, and now he wondered himself how high he could go. He widened the base to six wide and began stacking. Soon he had stacked them nine rows high, but he was running out of blocks. He stole a look at Angela.

  Her eyes were wide in apparent wonder.

  “She’s been working on those blocks for over an hour, Scott.”

  Rachel’s voice came from the other side of the room. He had almost forgotten she was there.

  Putting the remaining blocks on top of the existing stack, he brought it to a final height of eleven blocks tall. Angela grinned wide, then set her lips tightly together.

  “Now watch this, Daddy.” Before Scott realized what was happening, Angela’s right hand shot out and crashed into the wall of blocks like a battering ram. The tower tumbled down, blocks rat
tling against each other until they came to rest on the carpet.

  “Just like Joshua, Daddy. Just like Joshua. They all came down!”

  Scott shook his head in wonder. He’d been so wrapped up in the building that he never realized it was all being built for the sole purpose of tearing it down.

  Kids and their imaginations. Amazing. We walk such a fine line. One impulsive act . . .

  Rachel stacked the folded clothes and put them in a yellow laundry basket. “I’ve got to carry these upstairs. Want to come along? We can talk. Then we’ll come down and I’ll warm up your supper, okay?”

  Scott nodded and trailed after his wife. When they got to the bedroom upstairs Rachel set the laundry basket down and turned to her husband. “So what was going on today? How come you didn’t call on your break?”

  He wanted to tell her, ask her to forgive him. But how can you tell your wife you were with someone you preferred to her?

  “No reason, I just have a lot going on. No more to it than that.”

  “All right, that’s fine. I can’t read you as well as I used to be able to.” She knit her eyebrows, as if she was worried about something or angry. “I used to be pretty good at knowing what you were thinking.”

  “Rachel, you’re probably still really good at it. You know I don’t have any secrets from you.”

  The lie stuck in his throat, which seemed to swell with the realization of what he was doing. Conscious, deliberate. He was lying to his wife and justifying himself in it.

  Rachel stood, arms hanging loosely at her sides. “Would you hold me then?” She lifted her arms to her husband, a look of expectancy in her eyes.

  “Sure I will.” His stiff throat hurt. Scott put his arms around his wife and pulled her close to him. He’d held her thousands of times before and knew what to expect. It was that knowledge, that knowing what to expect, that warmed him now. Still, something was missing, and he knew what it was.