He stayed there for a night, keeping his eyes on the floor whenever he moved about the house so that they would not accidentally light on a photograph of Zula. John didn’t talk much; he had a database of possible leads on his computer, which he worked at obsessively. But his computer, as Richard could see at a glance, was desperately sick with malware, running at about a hundredth of its normal speed and freezing up a few times an hour. He considered offering to help. But the fact that John was putting up with it was evidence that he knew it was hopeless, was just running in place. Alice was silent, inactive except for occasional bursts of manic energy, in some stage or another of grieving. The only person Richard felt comfortable hanging around with was Dad, so he spent most of the evening sitting next to him in the man cave, listening to the hissing and beeping of his bionic support system, watching whatever TV Dad felt like summoning up with the remote. People kept calling the house, but they didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like an actual death. You couldn’t send flowers. Hallmark didn’t make disappearance cards. It was sort of like the Patricia lightning strike all over again: too bizarre to pass smoothly along the greased channels of grieving and condolence.