Chapter 1

Bill looked at the monitor again. The image he was staring at was one of a young girl, 15 to 18 years old, lounging across a pool table. She was dressed in a loose-fitting traffic-light-yellow blouse and dark, colorless slacks. The blouse hid any hint as to the size or shape of her breasts. You could see she was thin and was suggestively posed lying on her side with her head supported by one hand with her elbow on the table. The darkened room and the shadows created by the photographer made it seem as if the pool table, with her as the main course, was the center of the universe. The theme was not unique, and yet, the photograph was unsettling and overpowering.

Many early native cultures were afraid of the camera, believing that the photographer could trap their souls within the box. Certainly this photographer had captured the soul of this girl within this one picture. The picture projected an illusion of her hypnotic beauty that seemed to radiate outward from her eyes. She was inarguably beautiful. Describing her was limited by even Bill's larger than average vocabulary. It was easy to list her features. She had an expressive face with a pert slightly upturned nose and moist luscious lips, lips without any trace or need of lip-gloss. Her complexion was both sun-toned and clear of any blemishes, the perfect 'after' image to advertise any of a hundred teen skin products. All of this was topped with long honey-blonde hair that again could have graced any hair care product commercial.

Yet, all of that description did not say anything of her special quality. Bill stared at that image for what seemed to be only moments, and yet was over two hours. All that time trying to quantify and qualify that special something. The best he could do was grasp the feeling of peaceful serenity emanating from her eyes. It was as if creation itself shown forth from her brown 'doe-eyes' with enough intensity to pierce the very marrow within his soul. To say Bill was hypnotized would have been a simplification of something he couldn't quite understand. Although everyone says 'a picture is worth a thousand words', this picture begged one question and one question only, "Why aren't you here with me?"

Bill had been searching for something or someone and wasn't exactly sure what. Now that he had found something he wasn't at all sure what it was he had found. He had more or less been playing with the 'Contacts' section of ICQ, the place where you can specify age, sex, country and get a list of people on line at the moment. He had toyed with that all morning, using all possible combinations of age, female, and different locations and yet had spoken to no one. Suddenly he found the name "LostGirl" and it stood out and caught his attention. Thinking about it later, he supposed it was the connection he felt to that name, the understanding of what it meant and the relevance of that meaning to his present life that caught his attention. When he found the name he tried to dig deeper, to find a more solid connection. There had been other, more ordinary pictures of her on her detail page but none were as evocative as that picture. In fact most pictures were ordinary and seemed to show a young girl with family and friends. Bill could not even be sure they were friends because there were no titles to the pictures. Most of the people in those pictures, at least those that appeared to be her age, were nondescript, a mixture of both the Goth and geek that was so present in counterculture Old Europe.

'The Picture' had so piqued Bill's interest that he had immediately messaged her. It was obvious from the start that her first language was not English. Bill translated some comments from her info page that he thought were Estonian, because that was her first language listed. The remarks had ended up being Russian, instead. He had asked her about her preferred language and she had replied in English, "I usually talk Russian." Bill's short conversation with her had been puzzling and lasted only about 15 minutes and then she was gone for the day which was actually early evening for her.

By choice Bill led a lonely existence. In fact, the people he occasionally met online were his main contacts with the world outside of his home. His life was compartmentalized into a workday of about four hours where he sorted through various financial information related to his investments, and the remainder of the day, which he pretty much spent on the computer, reading or chatting. His business time, as he thought of it, could be anytime during the day but he actually preferred a more structured workday. He had found that without that structure the work sometimes got pushed aside. His workday invariably started at 9 AM after his breakfast and ended when he finished, hardly ever after 1 PM. He always knew when to quit, doing exactly what was required to maximize the return on his time.

Life tends to balance itself out. Bill thought back to Wendy, his late wife. He remembered that it was almost a year ago that he had heard her frantic scream from the living room. Thinking the worst, he ran out of the bedroom to find her literally dancing a jig around the room clutching a lotto ticket tightly in her hand. After calming her down, Bill finally got her to tell him that the ticket was a winner. At first he thought she had hit four or five of the six numbers. Wendy could always be counted on to maximize any excitement, as she was not a half-empty kind of person. However, this time the glass was indeed completely full and the six numbers on the ticket were the same as those showing on the TV. The prize was an absurd $35 million, not the largest lotto jackpot he had seen, but considerably larger than the $3 million first-week prize. On top of that, the ticket was the only ticket with those six numbers, meaning the $35 million would not have to be shared.

Wendy had quit her job and turned the lump-sum lotto payout over to Bill for investment. Bill had put his MBA to good use and had devoted a small part of each day to managing their investments. One of those investments had been ownership of a local spa and fitness center. With that ownership, Wendy and Bill had both begun to use the facilities. After a few weeks Bill thought that Wendy might have overdone the workouts. She seemed to be constantly tired and her smile and zest for living waned. When Wendy told Bill that she didn't feel like exercising for a whole week, Bill had insisted that she visit their family doctor. Dr. Summers had been encouraging at first, agreeing with Bill's first thought that Wendy had gone overboard on the physical training. Later the news that Wendy had a rare and virulent form of ovarian cancer hit Bill as if he had been run over by an 18-wheeler.

Bill felt that the world had played a cruel joke at his expense. Wendy was his lifemate; his first and only love. She had been the rock-steady center of his universe. Her optimism and love of life itself had been the motivation for each accomplishment in his life. After college he had gotten his first job with her love and support. He had prospered and been promoted steadily because of his overriding need to provide for her. Later in life when the promotions slowed, he had gone back to school because of her faith in him. She had provided him with children and together they had both raised them into adulthood. All of his children were well adjusted, loving adults due to her influence.

Life had moved on. It had not been joyful. Each day became a struggle just to get out of bed. He blamed himself and his infatuation for the money for not being close enough to her to have spotted the cancer earlier. His doctor seeing that Bill was beyond any normal grieving process had intervened and with the aid of Bill's three children, had insisted Bill get professional grief counseling.