On Tenterhooks (15 page)

He pulled the keyboard toward him and typed in the address for the
Say Goodbye to Me
website
.
As soon as it loaded, he began his letter.

Maggie
,

This world got a little dimmer when you left it behind. You put the light and color in my world. I know you are in a better place, but I am in a worse place without you here with us. Your mother says we have to move on
.
I know she’s right
.
But I don’t know how
.
Even though you
were already out of the nest
, th
is
house still seems too quiet.
Not having you
here at the moment isn’t nearly as bad as knowing that you will never be here again. I miss your smile
.
I miss your laugh and the way you could always see the good in things.

I don’t understand how this could’ve happened to you
.
Why didn’t you talk to us?  How could we have been so blind as to miss it? I know you didn’t plan for this to happen, but that doesn’t help much with the pain.

I have to say goodbye now. I know that. But I don’t know how to do that
.
I can write it down here: GOODB
YE. B
ut does that do anything?  I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to see if I feel any better once
I send this
.

Regardless of all that, I want you to know that I will love you always
.
I will carry you and our happiest memories in my hear
t
.
W
henever the day seems too dark or too
long
, I will pull out thos
e happy memories and smile
.
I’ll think of you. I love you
Maggie
.

Love,

Dad

He scanned the message and pressed SUBMIT.
Then he
stood up from the computer desk and went to find his keys and wallet
.
He had a sudden urge for some Virginia peanuts.

Chapter
19

“That was weird,” said
Susan
Nikko
, hanging up the phone.

“What? Who was it?”
her husband
asked,
half-listening
.

“It was Sharon, f
rom Abby’s school
.”

“The busy
body that works in the office?”

“Ye
s
.”

“Why?
What’d she want?”

“She said some
strange
preacher sho
wed up today, asking for Abby.”

“What? Seriously?”
he
asked, muting the TV. “Who was he?  What did he want?”

“
According to her,
he didn’t say,
Jack,
”
Susan
frown
ed
. “
When
Sharon questioned
w
hether he had our permission, he basically
said never mind.”

“He didn’t say what church
he was from or anything?
”

“No.
He said he was ‘here to see her’ or ‘here for her;’ or something
like that
.”

“
That
is
weird
.
I know we got some house
calls and stuff like that right after Zack died, but it seems a little late
for that now
.
And at school? T
hat’s weird,”
Jack
said.

“That’s not all,” said Susan. “Sharon said he was totally creepy.”

“Creepy how?”

“Well,
she
said he smiled real wide
,
like he was in on some secret joke
.
And when she picked up the phone to call us to see if we
had given our
permission, he put his hand over hers
, it
was like a block of ice.”

“Hmmm,”
Jack
said,
stroking his chin and
feigning deep concern. “So a preacher shows up, smiles and has cold hands
,
and she thinks it
’
s suddenly creepy?”

“Jack, I’m serious!
I’ve seen this
five-
foot
tall
woman
dominate
twelfth-
grade boys with just an evil glare
.
She was
freaked
out
,
and I think
she was
genuine
ly
scared. Her voice was still trembling just now as she was telling me about it.
”

“Okay, babe,” s
aid Jack, putting his hands up,
“I
admit
, it does sound a little weird
.
But
I don’t think we need to call the cops
in
yet. Look, we’ll ask
Abby
about it when she gets home
tonight, okay?”

“Okay.
But m
aybe I should call her and ask her
if everything is al
l
right. Y’know,
just to be safe
?”

“Susan, don’t
.
Sweetie look, she’s out with her friends, hopefully relaxing a bit. She needs it
.
If you call and ask about some preacher, she is instantly going to think about Zack
,
regardless of why the guy was there. She needs a break.”

Susan moaned and put the phone back.

“Fine,” she said, “b
ut I am going to ask her about
it
as soon as she gets home.”

“Good
.
I agree
.
We will, okay? Promise.”

“Okay.
I am worried about her
,
Jack
.
She doesn’t sleep, she hardly eats,
and she’s
like a zombie sometimes.”

“I know,
Sweetie
.”

He pulled her closer and kissed her forehead, putting his arms around her.
“I see it too
.
We are going to keep her safe, I swear it
.
But it’s like the counselor said
—
w
e have to know when to push and when to let it go.

“I know, I know,” she said, sniffling. “She is all we’ve got left, and I want her to be okay.”

“She will be
,
Sweetie
,” he said, squeezing her into his chest. “She will be.
I promise.
”

Chapter
2
0

Six hours after he left his office, Steve still had nothing to show for his efforts
.
A well-known internet hosting company owned
www.saygoodbyetome.com
.
Only t
he employees in that
company knew how to contact the actual owner, and Steve knew there was no way they would
provide
that information without a court order
.

All he learned from the search of the domain name itself was that
someone
had registered
it
several months before Julie’s death (which made him
second-guess
his theory that he was being specifically targeted) and that it was set to expire 15 years after it was registered
.
The phone number, address and contact info about the
t
echnical and
b
illing contact for the domain name all pointed to the hosting company
—
a dead end for now.

He put the technical search aside and then spent time using the search engines to find references to the site itself
.
He
searched for
“say goodbye to me website” and “say goodbye to me
.
”
Although the latter produced
nearly 10 million results, none were
useful
.
He scanned the results for the first 22 pages and gave up.
The
phrase wa
s used in songs, love poems and even
news
articles, but nothing seemed to link to the
website
.
It appeared that the only way to get to the site was to enter the address directly into the web browser
.
This was another bizarre twist on
the
typical scamming website, which
usually
was
well-linked
and well-advertised
.

Dead end after dead end was not what he had expected to find
.
His only other thought was to go back to the site itself and see if there
were
any type of clue
he
might
have missed
.
But s
oftware
and coding
were
not his
best skills
.
He ran the site’s
domain name
through several filtering
programs
,
and all of them came back with a clean bill of health
.
So
,
once
again,
he
logged
in
.

T
he same bland, black and white form he’d seen and used the night before
greeted him
.
Say Goodbye to Me in tall, plain lette
rs covered the top of the page, followed by
the
simple
tagline:
“
A chance to tell them how you feel, even though they’re gone.”
Further down the page
was the date, a
To
: field
a
From
: field and a
Subject
line.
Rounding out the page was
an
open text box,
the one
into
which
Steve had poured his heart last night. Below the text box was a tiny, unassuming button with the word
SUBMIT
on it
,
and below that
,
a simple horizontal line
marked
the e
nd of the page
.
That was it
—
n
othing to scroll to, nothing to see.
He decided to peek under the hood and viewed the source code
for
the page
.
As he expected, it was very simple.
No
meta
data
explained
who had created the page or why.
A few lines of code format
ted
the text
,
and a
nother
line pointed the form to a
computer
script that Steve knew
captured
the data someone
submitted
and sent it to a predefined email address, which of course wasn’t visible on the page or even here in the code
.
That info was stored securely back on the server that hosted the
website
, and it was not accessible from here. He followed the rest of the code down the page until he came to the last line
.
It read: