Chapter 10: The Card

"Three years," I said. "You've had this for three years."

"I couldn't read it." Hal took his glasses off his forehead and put them on, then took them off again.

"I tried six times in your old laptop and it never opened. Then you were in the hospital.

"Then you were crying at every family dinner, and I thought, what good is a broken card?"

"You should have given it to me."

"I know."

"You could have told me it existed."

"I know that too, kid." His voice cracked, and he looked at the lathe instead of me.

"I thought if it showed what they said it showed, it'd kill you."

Doran stood beside me in yesterday's scrubs and didn't speak.

I picked up the card.

Two of its gold contacts were bent, and one corner had cracked off in the wreck.

I had built a hundred tiny sensors on that bench, and I knew exactly how to coax a dead connector.

I straightened the pins and rebuilt the corner with epoxy and a steel shim.

Nobody spoke the whole time.

I slid it into a reader, and the file list came up on the screen.

Every file was corrupted except the last.

It was dated October 25, three years ago.

My hand was shaking on the mouse, and Doran laid his palm flat over the back of it.

I didn't pull away.

I clicked play.

The picture showed a two-lane road at night through the windshield.

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