She rode the elevator to the twelfth floor with three other women, all dressed far better than Jodi could afford. She’d worn her best pair of jeans and the only semi-dressy blouse she owned. She clutched her small purse as if it might fly away and leave her any minute.

The elevator ride was swift and quiet. No one in the elevator looked at anyone else, not even covertly in the mirrored walls. The doors opened directly into a reception area with a black marbled floor and indirect lighting. Jodi had to concentrate to keep her voice from shaking as she gave the receptionist, a girl probably no older than Jodi, the name of the letter writer-Artemus Owens, Junior, Esq., whatever that meant.

The receptionist took Jodi into a conference room with dark walls, thick burgundy pile carpet, and the same indirect lighting. A huge, dark wood table with a top so polished it looked mirrored dominated the room. High-back, black leather chairs surrounded the table. Jodi felt like she was sinking in black tar when she sat down.

The room was probably meant to soothe clients with an impression of old money, like in some of the movies Jodi had seen, but all it did was remind her of the little chapel in the hospital where her mother had died. Only here the room smelled like stale coffee instead of burning candles.

Mr. Owens didn’t keep her waiting long. Jodi had been expecting someone old. Weren’t old guys the only ones who got their names on the letterhead and sat around in offices like this? Artemus Owens, Jr., looked like he was thirty-maybe-and he wasn’t even wearing a tie. He had dark hair and kind eyes and looked like he could have been a manager at one of the stores in the mall, only nicer. He even shook her hand like she was a grownup.

“I understand you’re here about the Cryonomics bankruptcy,” he said as he sat down. “What can I do for you?”

“About this letter.” Jodi pushed the letter toward him across the glassy surface of the conference table. “I don’t get it. Does this mean my father’s alive?”

Mr. Owens glanced at the letter, looked up at her. “Well, not exactly ‘alive’ in the accepted definition of the word. He’s been stored at the Cryonomics facility for the last ten years.”

Stored? That made her father-her father; god, how odd it was to even think that she actually had a father-sound like some unwanted piece of furniture locked away in a storage shed.

“I still don’t get it. What does ‘stored’ mean?”

Mr. Owens tented his fingers on the table in front of him. “You don’t know about any of this, do you?”

Jodi shook her head. At least his voice was kind. He didn’t make her feel like one of her high school teachers when she’d given a wrong answer in class. “I didn’t even know I had a father,” she said. Jodi’s mom had never mentioned him, not that she wanted to share that gem with a relative stranger.

Mr. Owens pushed a button on the phone and asked someone named Shirley to bring in two bottles of water. “And one of those Cryonomics brochures we have in the file.

“OK, it goes like this,” Mr. Owens said to Jodi. “Cryonics is the process of preserving people who are dying so that at some unknown time in the future they can be defrosted when technology exists to cure whatever’s wrong with them. Some call it science, others call it desperation. Cryonomics made a business out of it, although not very successfully, as it turned out. The specifics about the process and the company are in the brochure Shirley’s bringing in.”

Jodi actually knew a little bit about cryonics. She and Harry had Googled Cryonomics, and in turn cryonics, after he’d come home from work.

After she’d whacked him on the arm when he wouldn’t stop laughing.

After he’d realized the letter was serious.

“That’s…” Jodi shook her head. “That’s just science fiction. I mean, it was in one of those old television shows my mom used to watch. Nobody really believes that stuff, do they?”

“At the time Cryonomics filed for bankruptcy, they listed twenty-three individuals who’d submitted to the procedure. Your father was one of them.”

Twenty-three frozen corpsicles. And here Jodi thought religious cultists were gullible. Her father had done this? Why hadn’t her mother ever told her? Had she even known?

“I didn’t know,” Jodi said in a small voice.

The conference room door opened, and one of the women from the elevator brought in the water and a thick booklet. Mr. Owens pushed one of the bottles and the booklet across the table to Jodi along with his letter. She started to thank the secretary, but the woman had left the conference room as silently as she came.

“Do you have an attorney?” Mr. Owens asked her. His voice was still kind.

Jodi shook her head. “Do I need one?”

Not that she could afford to hire an attorney. Not on what she made frying corn dogs.

“You might want to look into it. I represent Cryonomics, so I can’t represent you. The reason I sent you this letter is to advise you that your father’s body, for lack of a better word, the trust fund he set up for its continuing care, and the machinery he’s stored in are considered assets. The bankruptcy court views Cryonomics as a high-tech mortuary, essentially. The bankruptcy trustee is going to require Cryonomics to liquidate its assets. Do you understand what that means?”

Jodi understood maybe one word in three. All of a sudden she felt like the dumbest kid in the class.

“Just tell me what I’m supposed to do,” she said.

Whether she’d do it or not… well, there was something to be said for not having a parent around-a living parent, anyway-to tell her what to do.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” he said. “That’s what you need an attorney for, to help you figure it out. But I will tell you this. Cryonomics is going out of business. Cryonomics has been storing your father’s body, but they’re not going to be able to do that anymore.”

He took a long drink out of his water bottle. Jodi wondered if he did that on purpose, to give her a chance to figure out what he meant. He didn’t have to. She got it. This time she knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“You’re going to have to figure it out on your own. What to do with your father. Before the court decides for you.”

“You mean they’d let him thaw?” Harry said. He shivered, only partly for effect. “That’s just disgusting.”

Jodi and Harry sat on the couch devouring a half-and-half pizza, Jodi’s side black olive and mushrooms, Harry’s side sausage and onions. They usually only had pizza once a month, but tonight made twice in one week. Jodi felt the emotional upset of finding out your father was a popsicle in a pressure-controlled tank was a sufficient reason for splurging.

The Cryonomics brochure lay open on the coffee table next to the pizza box. She’d studied it until she thought her brain might explode.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jodi said. “I mean, it’s my father, right? I can’t just let him die.”

“Technically, you know, he’s already dead.”

“He didn’t think so.”

“How can you know that?”

She pointed at the brochure. “Kind of obvious, Captain Oblivious. He must have bought into this whole idea.”

It still sounded like a scam to her. Paying someone to store your body in deep freeze after you died just on the off chance that you might be cured someday. Not that California wasn’t chock full of odd cults and scam artists ready to prey on the gullible, but this had to top everything Jodi had ever heard about.

Then there was that whole paying thing. As far as Jodi knew, her father had never paid one cent to help support her. Help pay her way through college. Help her get the hell out of Hot Dog on a Stick.

And another nasty thought-did he even know she existed?

How could she decide what to do with a complete stranger, even if they were related by blood? Not every father was a father. Hers certainly wasn’t. Did she really owe him any of this angsting over his future? If he even had a future?