Goodbye for Now: A Novel by Laurie Frankel

Author:Laurie Frankel
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance, Science Fiction, General, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9780385536196
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2012-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

ALBERT

That they had any warning at all, that they didn’t just offer to send her in blindly as they did everyone else, was something of a fluke. A few weeks after they’d more or less adopted Penny, Meredith thought she was ready to RePose.

“She’s too old,” Dash argued. He’d spent the afternoon at Penny’s helping her organize her kitchen and had just gotten back from taking her out for pizza and ice cream.

“She’s not too old. She’s Grandma’s age,” said Meredith.

“Grandma was too old to RePose too.”

“She uses it all the time.”

“No, Merde,” said Sam. “You use it all the time. Livvie doesn’t.”

“Well. She would.”

“She was pretty tech-savvy for an old lady,” said Dash. “But I don’t mean that Penny couldn’t do the tech. I mean I’m not sure she could get her head around the concept. Young people are used to having virtual relationships, to watching great big pieces of their lives unfold on-screen, online. I think it’d be too much for her.”

“Was she acting weird?” said Meredith. “Did she seem out of it again?”

“No, she was fine. But I think we’d all like to keep it that way.”

“She misses Albert,” said Meredith. “It breaks my heart. Maybe it won’t even work. She said he didn’t use the computer much. But I think we should run it and see.”

“I think it’s a mistake,” said Dash.

“Vote?” She’d taken to proposing this when she and Dash disagreed because Sam always sided with her.

They voted. Dash lost. So Sam ran it and saw. When it didn’t work, he investigated further. Ordinarily, of course, he didn’t read dead loved ones’ communications—his algorithm did. He respected everyone’s privacy. And, truthfully, he didn’t really care about people’s secrets and lies and hopes and dreams. Ordinarily, he never actually saw any of that stuff. But Albert needed troubleshooting. Not surprisingly, Albert didn’t have a Facebook page. He didn’t have a blog. He didn’t video chat or post YouTube videos. He didn’t have a photo account because he didn’t have a digital camera. He didn’t send text messages because he didn’t have a cell phone. He didn’t even have anything he read regularly online. What Albert did have was a torrid, consuming, enduring, and fairly well-documented affair.

Albert had a few start-up messages from when he opened his secret e-mail account. He got confirmation of a few things he bought online. He got his fair share of spam. But other than that, Albert e-mailed exclusively and obsessively and sometimes alarmingly graphically with one Agnes Grayson. Sam couldn’t believe it. He tried to tell himself that what was gross and wrong here was the betrayal of a woman he was gradually coming to think of as family. But really it was the horror that you could know someone that well and love someone that much and still be totally wrong. That and they were old people, and old people should not, so far as Sam was concerned, be doing the things Albert was describing, especially upside down.

Meredith and Dash came home from their hard day at the office.

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