“I have no idea,” I said, but I was wondering the same thing. The neighborhood kids pulling a prank theory never made sense to me. But I could imagine someone breaking in looking for something specific, then leaving when he didn’t find it because that something was still in the zippered compartment of my purse. “When you talk to your uncle, does he usually ask about me?”

“I dunno. Why? You want me to tell him you was asking about him? I don’t think Mr. Guardia’s gonna like that.”

I laughed. “What do you know about me and Mr. Guardia?” MJ had been there the day we ran into each other at the beach, but he hadn’t seen us together since.

“I hear things,” he said. “I got ears, ya know.”

I didn’t need to see the grin on his face. I could hear it in his voice. “Oh yeah, what kind of things?”

MJ made smooching sounds into the phone, and I laughed again.

“You’re pretty good at that. You wouldn’t be practicing on Olivia, would you?”

I imagined MJ turning bright red because that’s what happened the last time I asked him about Olivia. Although he swore they weren’t dating, just hanging out together sometimes. Whatever that meant. I received a similar answer when I’d asked Olivia about MJ.

“Goodnight, Lawyer Mom,” MJ said in a singsong voice.

“Goodnight, MJ.”

I was smiling when I ended the call, but then I thought of Alex’s cryptic message and my smile disappeared. The “it” Alex wanted out of my house had to be the flash drive. There was nothing else. But why did he think whatever was on the flash drive was valuable enough to steal? He had no more knowledge of what it contained than I did.

I considered calling Daniel back but dismissed the idea. I knew if I told him about MJ’s message, he would get mad at me all over again that I’d allowed Alex to come to my house, then he’d tell me the break-in had nothing to do with the flash drive and I was being paranoid.

I hoped he was right about the paranoia because the alternative was terrifying. If someone was willing to break into my house to steal the flash drive, what else were they willing to do?

Chapter 20

I stopped at the bank the next morning. Maybe Alex was being paranoid and maybe I was too, but it wouldn’t hurt to err on the side of caution. My safe deposit box was the most secure place I could think of to store the flash drive until I could figure out what to do next.

After the bank manager directed me to a tiny windowless room, I lifted the lid on the long metal safe deposit box and pulled out the contents one by one. The last time I’d opened the box was the week after Jonah and Amelia’s funeral. That’s when I’d discovered the second life insurance policy. I didn’t expect to find anything that earth shattering today. No open-in-the-event-of-my-death letter I’d somehow missed before. But I did wonder if perhaps Jonah had left something inside the box that in my haze of shock and grief I’d overlooked. Something that could help explain why he felt the need to tape a flash drive to the bottom of Amelia’s diaper caddy.

I pulled out all three of our birth certificates, social security cards, copies of our passports, my grandmother’s pearls, and the deed to our house. There were no post-it notes stuck between the pages or passwords written in the margins. Nothing was amiss. I stared at the copy of Jonah’s passport. The photo was old, taken before we got engaged, when our future together was filled with possibility. I would never have imagined ten years later Jonah wouldn’t be alive to renew.

I smiled as I remembered how Jonah had fooled me with this passport. It was my birthday and we’d gone to one of those special-occasion restaurants for dinner. When he placed the flat rectangular box on the table while we waited for our dessert, I’d thought he’d bought me the pendant necklace he knew I wanted. We’d spotted it together when we’d been out shopping a few weeks earlier. I’d tried it on and asked him if he thought I should buy it. He was noncommittal, which I’d interpreted as maybe I’ll buy it for you since my birthday was coming up.

The box was the right size and shape for a necklace, so when I’d ripped off the silver wrapping paper and lifted the lid, I was sure I was going to find the pendant inside. I didn’t even try to hide my disappointment as I unfolded the tissue paper and discovered the slim blue book. “Oh. You finally got a passport.”

I’d been surprised when he first told he didn’t have a passport. My parents got me one when I was a baby. Jonah had explained he’d only left the country once on a road trip to Mexico with his brother, and at the time you didn’t need a passport if you crossed the southern border by land.

I’d checked underneath the passport, hoping there were some airline tickets too, but there weren’t any. The box was empty.

“I thought you’d be happy,” he said, taking in the, no doubt, unhappy expression on my face. “Now we can travel.”

“I am happy,” I lied.

“Damnit, I knew I should’ve bought you that necklace.”

I shrugged. I’d just buy it for myself. I should’ve done so to begin with instead of hoping he’d take the hint.

Then the waiter arrived with a plate of profiteroles, which he set down in the center of the table with two forks. I tasted them first and moaned. “These are so good.”

Jonah took a bite. “Not bad.”

“Not bad? Are you kidding me?” Jonah wasn’t a dessert person. He only ordered it for me.

“You think they’re as good here as they are in France?”

“How would I know,” I mumbled with my mouth full of pastry. I’d only been to France once, when I was seven. My parents were forced to take me on their long-planned anniversary trip because my aunt, who was supposed to babysit me while they were away, got stuck in some war-torn country and couldn’t get back in time. All I really remembered about France were the many art museums my parents dragged me to and then not getting to see the Palace of Versailles, the one tourist site I’d actually wanted to visit, because we’d gotten lost on our last day in Paris and missed the train.

“I think we should find out. Tu veux aller à Paris avec moi?”

Would you like to go to Paris with me? I knew that’s what Jonah had been trying to say. But Jonah had never learned French in school and didn’t know the accent, so it sounded more like Two-vex-allery-Paris-ovek-mwa.

I swallowed my profiterole and said, “I would love to go to Paris with you.”

Jonah’s shoulders dropped several inches and he sighed. “Thank god. Because the tickets I bought are non-refundable.”

I smiled to myself as I let the memory of our trip wash over me. Jonah made sure this time I got to see the Palace of Versailles. He had the hotel concierge mark the route to the train station on our map, then write down exactly which train we were supposed to take and the time schedule. We visited the Palace of Versailles on our first full day in Paris, even before we visited the Eiffel Tower.

Jonah proposed to me on the patio overlooking the palace’s gardens. When he dropped down on one knee with a blue velvet box and I said yes, all the other visitors clapped, even the ones who didn’t speak English.

“Tu me manques, mon amour,” I whispered to the photocopy of Jonah’s passport, then I kissed the grainy black and white image of his face. After I wiped my eyes, I placed all the documents back in the box. Then I reached into the zippered compartment of my purse for the flash drive and placed it on top. I closed the lid on the metal box and stood up to leave when I had an idea.

Chapter 21

I sat down and pulled my laptop out of my briefcase. I plugged the flash drive into the USB port and typed Tu veux aller à Paris avec moi? into the password bar and pressed enter. Of course, it didn’t work. I retyped it without any spaces or accent marks. The same error message I’d received thousands of times before popped up on the screen. I tried again in English. Also incorrect. I was about to give up when it occurred to me Jonah would’ve used an online translator. I knew from experience those translations were often different than the way they teach you to speak the language in school.

There was no wi-fi signal in the windowless room, but I still had cell service on my phone. I typed Would you like to go to Paris with me? into an English-to-French translator and, as I suspected, the translation it spit out was slightly different than what I’d tried. I typed the new translation, minus the spaces and accent marks, into the password box and tapped the enter key.

To my complete and utter amazement, the drive unlocked.

Chapter 22

The flash drive contained only one file—a spreadsheet. I clicked on the file and stared at the columns of numbers and letters with no names and no discernible pattern.

Account numbers? Maybe. But if so, wouldn’t there be names attached to them? And what bank issued alpha-numeric account numbers fifty characters long? Plus, the letters and numbers were so random they seemed more like really long computer-generated passwords. But passwords to what?

I had no idea what any of this information was and, more importantly, what I was supposed to do with it. But I was meeting with a new client on the other side of town in half an hour and I didn’t have time to figure it out now. I saved the file to my laptop, dropped the flash drive into the safe deposit box, and left the bank.

My meeting ran long, and I barely arrived at the courthouse in time for my court appearance, then I had to rush back to the office to finish drafting a status report that needed to be filed with the court by the end of the day. By the time I returned Daniel’s call, the sun was low on the horizon.

“Hey, babe,” he answered. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Oh? What were you thinking?” I was thinking I could really use one of his amazing scalp massages.

“That I didn’t know what wine to bring because I didn’t know what you were cooking.”

Damnit. I’d forgotten I’d offered to cook dinner tonight. “About that—”