Page 126 of Kaine

Xavier throws a look at me, and it conveys his similar uneasiness. There’s something so strange about being here without Kaine. Or even Jemima.

He goes straight to Kaine’s desk, going through the letters and papers there, looking for clues.

I don’t really know what to look for. I might have been his personal confidante but I don’t know that much about his business.

I wander around, looking for a light switch. But knowing Kaine and how high tech he is, it could be hidden anywhere, or eyeball activated, or something that will just leave me at a dead end.

There’s a pile on Jemima’s desk and I wander over there. I’m surprised to see how messy it is, compared to the other times I’ve been there. I sit down in her chair and spin it around, surprised at how close Kaine’s desk seems from here, through the glass. I wonder if she spent hours staring at him through it. Dreaming up her day dreams of them being in love, I wonder.

I spin the chair back and my hand slaps up against her computer.

It springs awake. Asking for a password.

“Xavier? Do you know how I can get into Jemima’s computer? There’s a password.”

“Yeah, Kaine has a master password. Only he has it. Let me get it from him.”

I watch him put the phone to his ear, and then faint sound of talking.

I want to run over there and rip the phone from his ear and yell at Kaine, make him tell me why he’s doing this. Keeping me from him. But I don’t. Because I as much as I love him, my heart’s taken a beating.

“Jade? Try this: AI_VA22801_JS,” Xavier calls out to me from Kaine’s desk.

I type it in and as I do, I realize what it is. A combination of his company, my initials, and my grandparent’s zip code in Harrisonburg. The screen goes blurry as I watch it freeze as it attempts log in.

There’s a soft ding, as the company logo appears on the screen, along with some opened programs.

“I’m in!” I announce. “What should I look for?”

“If I knew we wouldn’t be here. I don’t know, see if there’s anything that doesn’t make sense.”

I click on the open programs, there’s an open word document, with a list of names from an internal email server. Nothing that means anything to me.

There’s a browser icon and I click on it. It opens to a Facebook page, Jemima’s. Seeing her face conjures up a mix of emotions. Confusion over where she is, and if she’s okay, to remembering her kissing Kaine that night at the pre-launch party. “She’s done it before,” he said. Like that’s supposed to make it better.

I press hard on the mouse, angrily clicking through her photos. It doesn’t look like she posts much, maybe once a week or so, so it doesn’t take long to go quite far back.

My eyes start to glaze over as I click obsessively through the photos. I don’t know why I’m torturing myself like this. Maybe I’m looking for some evidence that there was more between them than there really was. Something, anything, to explain him suddenly pushing me away.

But there aren’t any picture of her with him.

Just her with friends and family. She seems quite obsessed with tagging and captioning though.

There’s one with a big group of her family.

“Kerry, Joe, Gail, Devon,” I read through the names.

And then one face looks slightly familiar. I zoom in. Where do I know that face from? I zoom in closer. Oh, it’s the man who came to do the installations at the library. Emerald Earring Man. I hadn’t realized he was Jemima’s cousin.

“Xavier? Did you know Jemima’s cousin works for ASH Industries as well? Has someone asked him if he’s heard from her?”

“We don’t have any of Jemima’s cousins working here. Not that I know of, anyway. I can’t be sure but I sincerely doubt it. It’s not like any of them need to work.” His voice gets louder as he comes out to talk to me.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Jemima’s a Pearlman. Of the Pearlmans. Actually, she is in line to be the main heir of the Pearlman line.”

“Oh my God, of Pearlman Fashions?”