Trust Me

years. Marriage was a fragile thing. Few people had the stamina for it. Most people opted out when the going got tough.
    Stark knew a lot about the subject. His parents had been divorced when he was ten.
    Stark had stayed with his mother, who had remarried and started a second family. For a while Stark’s father had come around to see his son on weekends, but the visits had grown increasingly far apart. Eventually they had ceased altogether.
    Looking back on that time, Stark was the first to admit that he had become difficult. He had turned sullen, rebellious, hostile, and uncooperative. His mother and stepfather, busy with their new baby, had lost patience.
    He had been put into counseling, where he had retaliated by refusing to say a word. When the counselor threw in the towel, Stark’s stepfather, a successful businessman who had been raised on the East Coast, had come up with an East Coast solution to the problem. Stark had been packed off to a boarding school some three thousand miles away.
    West Coast born and raised, Stark had not fitted in well socially at the expensive school. He had kept to himself for the most part. But der the guidance of teachers who had seen past his anger to the keen intelligence that lay beyond, he had discovered mathematics, physics, and, eventually, computers.
    He had soon learned that he fit perfectly into those calm, orderly alms where logic and reason held sway and where emotion did not intrude.
    Stark’s father had remarried twice in the years that followed his first divorce. Stark was vaguely aware that, in addition to his half sister and half brother on his mother’s side, he had a pair of half brothers in Portland. He had never met them or their mother, Hudson Stark’s third wife, and saw no compelling reason to make their acquaintance.
    Boarding school had led to college, which had, in turn, led to the Rosetta Institute. The Institute had led to Stark Security Systems.
    Life went on. What with one thing and another, Stark and his relatives had simply drifted out of each others’ lives. No one had seemed to take much notice.
    He had not lost touch entirely. He still called his parents on their birthdays. They, in turn, sent cards at Christmas.
    He had sent wedding invitations to his mother and father, but neither had been free to attend. Stark was grateful. It had been humiliating enough to be abandoned at the altar without having to deal with his parents.
    A thought struck him, slicing through his memories and bringing him back to the present. He reached inside his jacket and removed his personal digital assistant. He switched on the tiny computer and made a note to drop a line to his folks to inform them that he hadn’t gotten married after all.
    He hoped they hadn’t bothered with gifts this time. Returning the crystal punch bowl his mother had sent two years ago had been a nuisance. He never had gotten around to sending back the silver candy dish he had received from his father’s third wife.

3

    A somber hush greeted Stark when he walked into the lobby of his headquarters in downtown Seattle on Monday morning, reminding him of the atmosphere found in the viewing room of a funeral parlor.
    Rose Burns, the receptionist, smiled tremulously. It was a smile that held pity, horror, and a certain degree of sheer awe. It was the same smile she had reserved for him two years ago on the day after his last fiasco of a wedding.
    “Good morning, Mr. Stark,” she murmured. Her eyes were eloquent.
    “Good morning, Miss Burns.”
    There was a grim pause during which Rose lowered her gaze the way mourners do when they stand at the edge of the grave. “Wonderful weather we’re having today.”
    Stark looked at her. “Do you think so?”
    Rose’s face turned a brilliant shade of crimson. She hastily busied herself with an incoming call.
    The hall that led to Stark’s office was a gauntlet. Stark went down it with a sense of stoic resignation. The morbidly curious hovered in the open doorways on either side. He detected covert glances from the vanity of the copy machine room. A few brave souls mumbled an awkward greeting before rushing off to the rest rooms, where they could compare notes with other eyewitnesses.
    But the worst was yet to come. Stark set his teeth as he strode through the door of his office suite.
    His secretary, Maud Pitchcott, peered at him over the rim of her reading glasses. Her pale blue eyes assessed him. Stark braced himself. Maud was