She pores over the drawing, trying to decide what it portends. I can see the thoughts forming as she traces the confident lines of Regina’s portrait. Then she shakes her head like she’s warding off a chill and asks, “Is that Regina’s computer?”
At first, I’m not sure how she knows, until I see the bumper stickers on the back that reveal it to be the computer of a young person. Younger, anyway.
“There’s a password. I’m not sure, this might be it.” I flip through the sketchbook, Aram’s picture disappearing between its pages until I find the list of passwords, all crossed out except the last.
Details from the crossed-out list hit me right away.Pet turtle 767676@@@. Her turtle Charlie Brown, whom she loved but never remembered to feed. Isaac and I replaced the red-eared slider three times before she decided to set him free.Fave color nickname !*!*!. Orange, because it was no one’s favorite color.Mascot address#***, which could be her high school mascot, a colonial man she’d found patriarchal and successfully petitioned the school to change, or the eagle the school replaced him with, equally patriotic without the misogynistic undertones. At the bottom of the list, one password stands:favecolor+Nickname+!*!*!+mom’s birthday (MMDD). Mom’s birthday. I was right to worry when she didn’t call. I’m right to worry now.
Tessa is a generation younger than I am, and it shows in her ability to handle the computer.
“Macs give you thirty chances to unlock your computer,” she explains, cracking her swollen knuckles to prepare for the task at hand. “Only, it’s not that simple. You get ten attempts here, then another ten in recovery mode, and ten again in the cloud. Since we don’t know her iCloud password, we really only have twenty tries.” She taps her nails against the metal table, plotting her next move.
The barista calls my name, and I hop up to get our smoothies. While I’m up, Tessa takes out her phone, something I’ve never seen her do. She’s an old soul. At least she seemed that way, until I find her scanning social media from the moment I walk away. It strikes me as rude until I realize she’s scrolling through photographs of Regina on Instagram. It steals my breath, those candid moments of her at the beach with Maisy, at restaurants with other friends I don’t know.
“If you look through the comments, all her friends call her Reggie.”
“How did you—” I can’t finish my sentence, so I point to Regina on Tessa’s screen.
“Her account was private, but I found Maisy’s.” Maisy’s timeline displays photo after photo of Regina. My daughter really did break her heart.
“Any thoughts on her favorite color?” Tessa asks, so focused on our agenda that she doesn’t notice I can barely breathe, barely exist.
“Orange?” I manage to whisper. “It was orange when she was a kid.”
“Hey.” Tessa puts the phone on the table so a picture of Regina and Maisy holding tacos stares up at us. “Should we stop?”
I shake my head no.
“Let’s try orange,” Tessa says, typing. “Your favorite color usually stays the same, right? So,orange,Reggie—when’s your birthday?”
“June 4.”
Tessa shudders, knowing what happened on June 5 as well as I do. She waits for me to say something. I’m not prepared to talk about this or the fact that I will never remember my birthday without mourning my daughter’s death. I point to the series of exclamation marks and ask Tessa what they mean.
“Most passwords require special symbols.” Tessa types, angling the screen toward me so I can readorangeReggie0604!!***. “How’s this?”
We hold our breaths as she presses the Return key.
The screen wobbles. Of course it’s not that simple. I think back to that book with the tech-savvy protagonist. I can see her tattoos, the descriptions of her litheness as she runs from the killer, but not the steps she took to unmask him.
“She does wear a lot of blue,” I say.
Tessa types in the same password withblueinstead, and it’s wrong again. We still have eighteen more chances.
Moments later, without even realizing it, we’ve exhausted the ten chances from the home screen and have to reboot the computer in recovery mode.
“You’re sure there wasn’t a particular shade of orange she liked?”
“Maybe pumpkin? Is that a shade?”
Tessa shrugs, gives it a try. We now have seven chances left. Tessa slurps loudly from her smoothie, then abruptly puts it down and types. Regina’s desktop fills the screen, the background picture some anonymous photograph of mountains that likely came with the computer.
“Gigi,” she whispers. The nickname. It’s notReggie. It’sGigi. “I knew he recognized her.” There’s no satisfaction in being right now, not for either of us.
On the desktop, everything is meticulously stored. There are folders for essays and scripts, photographs, receipts, medical records, tutoring clients, taxes. We try to open the Clients folder. It’s password protected, as are the medical records. Neither of us is ready for another round of guess-the-password.
I may be merely the ex-wife of one, but I know how to think like an accountant. I motion for Tessa to click on the Taxes folder. If you know how to read them, tax returns can tell the story of who a person is.
On her most recent tax return, Regina’s taxable income was solidly in the six figures. She had no W-2 pay, only 1099 work. I scroll down to find the names of the companies she worked for, then overshoot, arriving at the end of the form, where Regina gave Geller Tax Ltd. permission to complete her taxes. Isaac. He knew how much money she was making and never mentioned it.
