Using the key, I gingerly ease the lid back. By the time it’s halfway up, I’m pretty sure nothing is going to explode, that no gas is suddenly going to fill the room, and that it’s not laced with a Novichok agent.
When the box is fully open, I walk around the table and look into it without touching it.
There is only one thing in there, and when I see it, I understand why the box itself was so small. There’s no letter, no explanatory note. Just an old CD-ROM in a plastic cover.
I take a chance and pick it up, turn it over. There’s no label on it and nothing to suggest what it might contain. And there’sdefinitelynothing else in the box. I’ll have to put this thing into a computer to find out what’s on it.
I don’t even think wehavea computer at home that takes disks.
“Dammit, Mom,” I mutter. “Way to be fucking infuriating.”
* * *
Back at the mansion,where we have instinctively made our home base in the kitchen again, Luca stares intently at the disk lying between us on the table as though he can transmit its contents into his brain by glare-power.
“And she never saidanythingabout it?” he asks for the third time.
“Honey, if I knew what was on it, I would have told you already. Believe me.”
We’re waiting for Teo Vitali to come over. He has a laptop that will hook up to a CD-ROM external drive, and the laptop has various encryption programs on it—just in case. Mom was never what I’d call technology-forward, but I also had no idea she was secretly a member of an Irish terrorist group, either, so you never know.
I can’t stand sitting around waiting, so I go try to figure out our fancy new coffee machine, and feel my way around the still-unfamiliar kitchen. I wonder whether Connie Taylor ever wandered around this kitchen making coffee for Tino Morelli, and the thought of it makes me smile. For just a moment, I feel a warm glow at my back, as though Luca’s snuck up behind me, about to hug me, but when I glance over my shoulder, he’s still at the kitchen table.
Huh. Weird.
Teo, when he arrives, refuses a coffee, which is probably smart, based on the way mine tastes. Teo is all business today, after answering my questions about how Aidan’s doing. Luca puts a comforting hand over mine on the table, because he knows what I’m doing.
Procrastinating.
“Okay,” I say glumly. “Let’s do it.”
Teo makes sure his laptop isn’t connected to the internet before he picks up the disk and prepares to put it in the drive. “Just so you know,” he says casually, “I’m kind of expecting this to destroy the computer.”
“Teo,” I sigh, “can you just get on with it?”
We all hold our breath as he slots it in. The light on the drive lights up and it begins to whir and buzz—a good sign, based on Teo’s expression—and then he opens the drive from the desktop, and clicks into the disk.
His face goes into frown mode.
“What is it?” I ask. “Has it fucked everything up?”
“No,” he says slowly. “It’s just…they’re pretty old files. If they’re still compatible, I can open them—but I might need to save them in a different format…”
Luca and I wait impatiently as he works, saving the files from the disk to the hard drive and then finding the right program to open them. After a few minutes, I see a file pop open on the screen. It looks like a standard spreadsheet.
“This is just the first one listed on the disk,” he explains, turning it around to show me and Luca. “See anything interesting?”
I find myself frowning as I scan it myself as well. “It’s a list of names and numbers…oh wait, and…” I trail off as I start reading the notes next to the first name. “Oh,” I breathe. “Oh, shit.”
Luca pulls the laptop sharply towards him, reading intently.
Teo’s eyebrows go up. “Okay,” he says, disconnecting the external drive and putting the CD back into its plastic case. “I set it up so you can just double-click the files from the desktop and they’ll open. So I think my job here is done?” He looks at me. I’m still too shocked to take it in right away. “Mr. D?” Teo prompts me.
“Thanks, Vitali,” Luca says dismissively. “We’ll call again if we need you. You can leave this here with us.” Once Teo has left, Luca finally looks to me. “Your mother must have been one hell of a woman,” he says, admiration tugging up one corner of his mouth.
I lean in to take another look. It’s not a note to me, or any of my sisters. It’s not any kind of explanation for what my mother did in her life, or a message about what she hoped I would do in mine.
But it might just be better than any of those things.
