I cook. I organize photos in albums. I polish silver. Today, I sat at my home computer researching everything I could think of that might possibly be related to Ana’s relationship with McArthur Evergreen Technologies. I read magazine articles, various interviews Ana conducted with the press, investor reports, annual reports, and archived internal company newsletters. At noon, I stood up and stretched. I knew a lot about the company, but if anything I’d learned was relevant, the link was beyond me. “Time to cook,” I said. I made my mother’s recipe for Dijon chicken, letting the maple-syrup-infused sauce simmer as I made a tuna salad sandwich for my lunch. The sun was veiled with a thin layer of wispy gray clouds. The temperature hovered in the high forties. A dreary day, a lonely day. I wished I had a hobby like whittling or knitting or jewelry making. A girl I’d known in college who’d majored in premed had made metal sculptures to relax. Her dad was a welder, and she’d learned to use a blowtorch in high school.
