Looking for Laura by Judith Arnold

enterprise. She couldn’t have gotten into his office. She’d never gotten along with anyone at the firm. This hadn’t bothered her; lawyers had never been her favorite people. Years after she’d married Paul, she was still astonished to think of herself as the wife of an attorney.
    But her failure to become friends with Paul’s colleagues had never been an issue. He’d kept his professional life separate from his home life. She’d never gone to the firm’s Christmas parties, and she’d never regretted missing them. If one of his associates had telephoned him at home, she hadn’t had to knock herself out making small talk, asking how the kids were doing and whether that stubborn crabgrass situation had been licked. She’d simply said, “Hang on a minute—I’ll get Paul.”
    So it would never have occurred to her to snoop around in Paul’s office. If she’d showed up there, that surly receptionist, Patty Pleckart, would have become suspicious, whereas most of the people who worked atthe firm had known Todd since his diaper-rash days and wouldn’t question his reasons for stopping by.
    If she’d stolen Paul’s work diskettes, though, she wouldn’t have waited until she’d finished dinner before loading them onto her computer to see what nuggets of information they contained. She would have tossed Rosie a fistful of animal crackers and then started plowing through the data.
    To men, food was undoubtedly more important than the truth.
    â€œLet’s go look at them now,” she suggested, searching for a computer.
    He raked his hand through the thick, damp waves of his hair and contemplated her. “I don’t think so,” he said.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI don’t think you should be here while I go through them.”
    Indignation flared inside her. She pulled herself straighter, stretching enough that she would have been standing eye to eye with Paul. Todd was a good six inches taller than Paul had been, and he towered above her, staring down at her. “What if you find out who Laura is and fall apart?”
    â€œIf I was going to fall apart over all of this, I would have fallen apart when I found the letters.”
    â€œI don’t want you snapping in my house,” he explained. “I don’t want you blubbering and wailing and acting like a ninny.”
    â€œOh, is that all?” So kind of him to care about her emotional well-being. “I promise I won’t act like a ninny.”
    He opened his mouth and then shut it. He was tactful enough not to say what he was thinking.
    At least he hadn’t ordered her to leave. She crossed to the kitchen. “Rosie, honey, Daddy’s friend and I are going to go look at something on his computer. We’ll be—” She glanced questioningly at Todd.
    Resigned, he turned toward the kitchen. “Upstairs, first door on the right,” he called in to Rosie, then headed for the stairs without waiting for Sally.
    She easily caught up to him on the narrow stairway. At the top was a hall with several doors opening off it. One must lead to his bedroom, she guessed, and another to a bathroom. The first door on the right opened into a study that could double as an extra bedroom. It contained a boring beige futon, another wall unit of shelves filled with disheveled rows of books and an L-shaped desk with computer equipment set up on its bland white surface. A small stack of black squares rested next to the computer. The monitor featured a screen saver that depicted a cartoon dog gnawing on the corner of the screen, swinging its head and growling ferociously while the screen image seemed to peel away from itself and into his teeth.
    Rosie would have loved it.
    Not bothering to offer Sally a seat, Todd dropped onto the wheeled swivel chair in front of the desk. He loaded the first diskette from the pile into the machine and booted up its contents.
    A