Crash - Part Three

by Dawson, Miranda

  “Context,” I replied, noticing that John was getting impatient. “We get a lot of information that is essentially just white noise and we have to filter it out.”

  “You’re creating some right now,” John said.

  I frowned and then realized that I was tapping my artificial leg under the table—I liked the noise it made—and that was sending data into the cloud as we talked and drank coffee. Our software couldn’t distinguish between me tapping my foot quickly and me running.

  “So, what’s your big idea, then?” I asked.

  “Wearables,” John said simply, as if that was supposed to answer my question. “Smartwatches, fitness trackers—things like that.”

  “You’re going to have to help me out,” I said. “This coffee hasn’t kicked in yet, and I’m in no position to figure out you’re cryptic clues.”

  John sighed. “You’re no fun. Look, loads of people are wearing something on their wrists now to track what they do—some people even wear them to bed—and they are all sending data via Bluetooth.”

  “We can collect that information easily enough, I suppose. But how will it help?”

  “You’re still tapping your leg,” John said. He was right—I’d stopped, but then subconsciously started doing it again straight away. “But you aren’t moving your arm.”

  “Ah, I think I’m catching up. We can use the data from another wearable to eliminate a lot of the white noise from our sensors on the limbs.”

  “Exactly. So, what do you think?”

  I had to take a few moments to consider. We’d had potential breakthroughs in the past—usually late at night after a few too many drinks—where we’d been convinced all our problems were over until the next morning when reality hit. There would be some technological or regulatory problem that stood in the way, and it was back to the drawing board.

  But John’s idea was a good one. A really good one. And it was quite simple. There would be some work involved in interpreting the data from the wearable, and obviously the company would need to spend a few grand on the fitness trackers to give to the beta testers, but that was nothing compared to their other outlays.

  “This could work,” I said at last. “In fact, I think it’s a great idea. How long will the coding take?”

  “I’ve already started on it, but I will need a few more days. I’ll need you to choose a fitness device and get them out to the beta testers and show them how to use it.”

  “I can handle that. This could really set us apart from PharmaTech. I’m willing to bet they won’t have anything like this in the works.”

  John shook his head. “No, they won’t be onto this. They aren’t quick on the uptake and fitness trackers are still new.”

  “Let’s do it, then,” I said as John immediately got to work tapping away at his computer.

  The first thing I did was start researching the various equipment. I pinged out a few emails to the companies in the hope of getting a decent bulk discount. The cost of purchasing all those gadgets was going to put a dent in our budget, but we could afford it. The bigger problem was getting them out there and educating people on how to use them. Still, it was a great idea, and could really help distinguish LimbAnalytics from PharmaTech. That had to be worth the expense.

  I was absorbed in spreadsheets when my phone buzzed loudly on the table. I allowed my eyes to glance over at the phone—it was a text message. Only a few people sent me messages these days, and one of them was sat opposite me, hunched over his laptop and oblivious to my phone. The other was Carter.

  I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

  We need to meet. C

  Chapter Four

  Somehow I managed to remain calm. I read the message from Carter, and then I went back to work. John never even noticed me get the message, and as far as he knew, I was working furiously on our next project.

  I was working—sort of. I did what I could, but finally I ran out of emails to send and spreadsheets to update. My brain tried to find busywork, but without a clear goal to focus on, my thoughts turned to Carter and his message. We need to meet. Not we should meet or I want to meet. No hint at an apology or a possible explanation. No, Carter had just said that we needed to meet, as if that would be enough for me to go running after him.

  He made me so damn mad sometimes. The surrounding noise in the coffee shop turned grating. Instead of sitting nicely in the background, each sound felt like someone was deliberately trying to make me snap. The woman next to me was slurping loudly. The man behind me kept fidgeting in his seat and was clearly out of shape judging by the noise of his breathing.

  Then there was John. His fingers looked like they were floating over the keys, but to my ears, he was bashing them like a kid hammering a toy car on the kitchen floor.

  “I have to get out of here,” I said, standing up and slamming my laptop shut.

  “You okay?” John asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m fine. I just sent a load of emails, but need to follow up with some phone calls now. I’ll do that from home.”

  “You should call Marissa while you’re at it. Make sure she’s on board with what we are planning.”

  “Good point. She doesn’t usually object, but I’ll let her know.” I walked past him, but then stopped and turned back to him. “John?” He had already resumed typing, but he stopped and looked at me. “You don’t need to stay at my place tonight. Honestly, I’m fine.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but the clamped it shut and just nodded. He could still keep a close eye on me, but I should have the house to myself tonight, even though that could prove dangerous.

  ---

  The conversation with Marissa went the same way it always did. She was supportive about the new approach and asked if we needed any more money. I replied that we still had enough cash on hand—just barely—but that we would ask if we needed more. It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. Start-up companies usually had to beg and plead for investment, and we were regularly turning it down.

  Marissa did come up with some more work for me to do, though. I needed to file a patent for the software that John was using to interpret the data from the wearables. He hadn’t finished writing that software yet, but we could still get a patent drafted—or more specifically, our lawyer could.

  LimbAnalytics already had a couple of patents, and I was getting pretty good at drafting them now. The applications didn’t need to contain every little detail, just the idea and how it would work. I dug up the template that Scott had given me last time, filled out the basic information, and fired it off to him. He would probably have follow-up questions, but that was another job off my to-do list for the time being. Just before closing my laptop, I sent a copy of the application to Marissa to keep her in the loop.

  I’d accomplished a hell of a lot since getting out of bed, but I still needed another distraction. A few email replies had trickled in from beta testers confirming that they would happily wear something around their wrists. I added their names to a spreadsheet, but there wasn’t much else to do with it right now.

  I picked up my phone for the first time since receiving Carter’s message. A small red icon reminded me—as if I needed the reminder—that I had a message waiting for my attention. My thumb hovered over the application, and I knew that sooner or later I would open it and reply. It was only a matter of time, but before I could give in to the inevitable, a very welcome distraction popped up on my screen.

  ---

  “You could have told me you were going to be in town,” I complained as I sat down opposite Amy at a table in a cramped French restaurant. “Fortunately, I wasn’t busy.”

  “You’re never busy, dear,” Amy replied, casually signaling for a waiter and ordering something in awful French. “I took a chance that you’d be free. Anyway, this was all a little last-minute. I only flew in this morning. Technically, I’m here for work, but the meeting finished early.”

  Amy looked frustratingly fantastic for a woman who had flown acros
s the country earlier this morning. She wasn’t even dressed in particularly glamorous clothing, but somehow she managed to look sexy even when covered up. She must have had men eating out of the palms of her hands.

  “I’ll have you know I actually have a life now, thank you very much.”

  Amy and I had grown up together, but we only saw each other once a year now, and that was usually when we were back at home over Thanksgiving or Christmas. My mom often remarked on the strange way we talked to each other, but I loved it. A stranger would think we hated one another, but there was always a lot of love behind our words.

  “I heard about your little business,” she said, taking a sip of her French roast coffee while I still waited for mine to arrive. “When you hit the big time, let me know.”

  Amy worked for one of the large accounting firms in New York, but she wasn’t a lot of use for a small startup company in Silicon Valley. Should LimbAnalytics ever float on a stock exchange, then I would give Amy a call, but otherwise our work was unlikely to collide.

  “What I want to know is when you are going to get a man,” she continued. “Or a woman, I suppose. Whatever floats your boat.”

  “You don’t have a man,” I replied, ignoring her not-so-subtle questioning of my sexuality. I had no idea of her relationship status—Amy wasn’t one to update the world on every detail of her life, which was one of the reasons I liked her.

  “I don’t have a man, but I have plenty of men,” Amy replied. “Don’t you worry about me. But I’m detecting something in you today, Emily. There’s something different about you. You do have a man, don’t you?”

  My coffee arrived and I took a sip immediately, scalding my mouth in the process.

  “Had,” I said. “I had a man.”

  “Oh, my sex-sense is tingling. Is there an interesting story here? Come on, you’re going to have to give me more information than that.”

  I loved Amy, but there was no way I was telling her the whole story of Carter and me in the middle of a crowded restaurant. For one thing, I couldn’t trust myself not to burst into tears when talking about the more recent events. The version Amy got was that I’d met a rich English guy with whom I had lots of hot, steamy sex, and then I found out he was married.

  “When you say ‘married,’ do you mean happily married with kids?” Amy asked. “Or is he perhaps separated?”

  “No kids,” I said. “That I know of, anyway. I don’t know much more than that—we haven’t spoken since. He sent me a message earlier though and he wants to talk.”

  “Oh, God, Emily. What are you doing sitting here talking to me, then?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It always is. Look, I’ve had my share of married men, and I can tell you that there is no single type. Some of them just want a fling away from their wives, but others are in legitimately unhappy relationships and want out. Of course, I run a mile once they talk about divorcing their wives and settling down with me, but I guess that’s what you actually want here.”

  “That would be nice,” I said, thinking back to when Carter had talked about getting a visa and living in the US permanently. Had that really only been a week or so ago?

  “You at least need to hear the guy out. Text him now and make him buy you an expensive dinner this evening where he can tell you all his excuses over a few glasses of wine. If he was just looking for a bit of fun, then leave him to pay the check and be thankful for the good sex you got out of him. If he wants something more, then go back to his for some more of that steamy sex you told me about. And still make him pay the check.”

  I don’t know whether Amy’s argument was actually convincing or whether she was just telling me what I wanted to hear, but either way, I ended up texting Carter.

  Dinner tonight. Pick me up at 7.

  Chapter Five

  Carter replied instantly with a “Thanks,” but offered no clue as to where we might be going. Deciding what to wear was a nightmare. I didn’t know whether I was trying to impress Carter or not. Did I want to have the leg on display tonight? Dress or skirt? John could have helped me with the decision, but I didn’t want him to know anything about the evening. That way, if it was a disaster, I wouldn’t have to explain all the gory details in the morning.

  I was ready by six o’clock and resisted the temptation to change outfits. I settled on a skirt which sat above the knee and a top with a plunging neckline and back. It was an outfit that would get some second looks, but it wasn’t exactly slutty, either.

  I spent the next hour sitting in front of the TV. I stared at the screen, but all I could see was Carter standing next to his wife in the hospital. He loved her. I could see that in his eyes, and if he told me otherwise tonight, I would know he was lying. Did that mean I was jealous of a sick woman? A woman who looked like she was in a coma? Was I a horrible person?

  Another message from Carter snapped me out of my self-pity. The car is downstairs. Apparently, he couldn’t even be bothered to come up to my apartment now. Whatever the evening had in store, it obviously wouldn’t involve Carter being nice to me. I considered replying with a message telling him to get stuffed, but in the end I picked up my bag and walked downstairs. I would hear him out and then say goodbye. He wasn’t worth it.

  ---

  Not only had Carter not bothered to come up to my apartment, he hadn’t even joined me in the car. I stepped into the back and said hello to the thin air on the seat. Carter’s driver apologized for him and said that he would be waiting for me at the restaurant. What had happened to the man who swept me off my feet not so long ago? The man that I was physically incapable of resisting, who could make my body shake with orgasm after orgasm?

  Most women with any self-respect—someone like Amy—would have got out of the car and not gone anywhere near that man ever again. I considered asking the driver to stop and let me out, but a part of me thought that Carter would take some satisfaction from me getting mad at him. I wasn’t going to give him that pleasure. I strolled into the restaurant and sat down opposite him at the table before he had even noticed me arrive.

  “Emily,” Carter said, looking up from the wine glass he had been staring down. He sounded surprised to see me. “I’m sorry for not meeting you in the car. Work stuff.”

  I nodded, but didn’t ask for any more explanation. The man had lied about being married, so whether or not he was busy working late tonight didn’t seem to matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

  The thing that struck me most about Carter was his appearance. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he looked bad—that was impossible for someone like Carter—but he did look different. Instead of being alert and clean-cut in a sharp suit, he looked tired—exhausted, even—and his suit was wrinkled like he had slept in it. If he had, it couldn’t have been for long, because the heavy bags under his eyes were impossible to ignore. Women around the restaurant were still gawking at him, but I could tell the difference and it made me feel better. I’d been through a living hell these last few days, and I took some pleasure from knowing he had, as well.

  “This had better be good,” I said, picking up the menu. I had been referring to his forthcoming explanation, but it probably looked like I was talking about the food.

  “I took the liberty of ordering for you,” Carter said. “I don’t want you to have the time to reconsider your being here.”

  “I’ve spent enough time considering that,” I said. “You might as well get on with it.”

  “Fair enough,” Carter said before taking a sip of his wine. He’d ordered a dry white which seemed an unlikely pairing for French food, but what did I know? “Where would you like me to start?”

  That was a good question. Whenever I thought about that day at the hospital, the questions all came to me at once. Why didn’t you tell me you’re married? Do you love her? Will you stay with her?

  “You told me she was dead,” I said. It wasn’t really a question, but it struck me as the first lie from which all the others
stemmed.

  Carter just sighed, which infuriated me, although I did my best to keep my emotions hidden. Surely he had planned this out in his head? Or was this all just a second thought, something he was just doing to clear his conscience?

  “Sometimes I wish she was,” Carter said finally. “Life would be so much easier then.”

  Chapter Six

  “You shouldn’t say that,” I said quietly. In my darkest moments, my brain had come to the same conclusion, but it was wrong and irrational. It wasn’t Bella’s fault that Carter had lied about his relationship with her.

  “I know, I know,” Carter said, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I’ll tell you everything, Emily, but it’s not going to be easy. Not for you to hear, or for me to say. Before I start, I want you to know that regardless of all this, I do love you. I mean that, and I think you feel the same.”

  I sat there silently and continued to stare at him. I did still love him, of course, but I wasn’t going to say that to him. He hadn’t earned the right to hear that yet.

  “Bella didn’t die of an overdose,” Carter said. “You’ve figured that much out already. Everything else I told you about the crash is true. She was the one driving, and she had been drinking. I took the blame and went to prison.”

  “But all this time, Bella has been living her life and not been punished at all for killing my brother? That’s… that’s not fair.”

  Not fair. Those words were grossly insufficient, but I couldn’t think of any better ones right now. Life was not always fair—if it was, then William would still be with us—but this was more than that. I had no control over what had happened to William, but Bella could have owned up to what she did. She didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.

  “I wouldn’t say she went unpunished. She punished herself every day. She had a drinking problem before the crash, but that soon spiraled out of control. She moved onto hard drugs—heroin, I think—and she started wasting away before my eyes.”