40

A few hours later, Mary lay in bed. Edward was in the house but hadn't yet come into the bedroom.

She blinked. Sleepy. She thought she heard voices from the kitchen, and after deciding she would just ignore them, changed her mind and decided to find out what it was.

She crept down the hall, past the closed room doors of her two children who lived with her, and her one child who didn't.

"...report!" said a woman's voice.

Mary suspected the worst. Edward, in flagrante delecto, in her house? It seemed very unlikely. Edward had his own house if he was going to sleep with someone else. She doubted he would.

She eased forward. She blinked. The mediocre actress Stacy Sun stood in some kind of military garb, chiding Edward. They were both fully clothed, so Mary assumed there was nothing sexual going on between them. She stayed behind the door and listened.

"Madame Sparko, I can explain!"

Sparko?

"I... I can explain!"

When Mary caught a glimpse of her boyfriend, she saw he was trembling with fear. She looked more closely at Stacy to see if it was actually a different person altogether.

I don't know, she thought, that certainly looks like her.

"Can you explain $75,000 in broken circuitry?" Stacy asked.

No, Mary thought, I would know that annoying voice anywhere. While not a big devotee of many TV shows, Mary had been sitting in the same room while her kids watched TV enough times that she knew Stacy from She's The Sheriff.