Mrs. McCourtney's Hobby

"Babe, can I use your laptop ? I got message from our photographer. He said that our wedding's pictures are ready on their website now. I want to download some to your laptop," Jennifer says to me from the living room while I'm in our kitchen.

"Sure, Babe. The password is the same, the ASCII of your name," I reply her while my hands are busy putting ketchup on my pan and stirring what's in it.

"Where should i download them to ?" she asks again.

"Just make a new folder in Download," I answer her, transferrin my freshly cook fried rice onto a plate.

After grabbing a glass of pregnancy milk for Jennifer, I walk to living room and sit beside Jennifer.

"Your milk, Babe," I tell her, handing her the glass on my hand.

"Thanks, Babe," She says, drinking her milk with her eyes not even move from the screen.

"You look so handsome with the suit," Jennifer says again.

"Hey.. you're saying I'm not handsome now ?" I ask, obviously teasing her. Jennifer knows me well, so she just giggles and shifts her head to me.

"What's that ?" she asks with glimmer in her eyes when she saw a plate of fried rice on my hand.

"Haven't you had dinner already ?" I ask, deliberately keeping away my plate from her to tease her again.

"But.. I want to taste it..," she says in pout then dangling onto my arm. "Please.. just a spoon.." She pleads.

I can not help to laugh. Entering her third trimester of pregnancy, Jennifer's appetite increases drastically. She can eat like six to seven times a day. Just like now, she has had almost the whole portion of Pad Thai for herself, that was actually for two, for dinner, which that is why I made my self fried rice. Still, she wants to have my fried rice. Of course, eventually I feed a spoonful to her.

"That's so good.." she moans, closing her eyes while chewing the rice in her mouth.

"I'll make it for you tomorrow for breakfast," I promise her.

Jennifer smiles widely. "You are my ideal husband," she says then pecks my oily lips. I laugh again before spooning fried rice into my mouth.

"Are they good ?" I ask her about our wedding pictures.

Jennifer nods. "Yes. I love the candid ones," she answers then chuckles pointing at the screen, "Look how tense you were," she says.

I peek at the picture. It is a close up of my face when I'm about to utter my vow. Jennifer pushes the next button. Jennifer chuckles. "I'm such a cry baby," she comments to see a close up of Jennifer when she wiped her tears.

"My favorite cry baby," I say then kiss her lips. "Especially when you're crying on our love making session," I whisper seductively on her ear.

Jennifer blushes and pinches my thigh. "Don't tease yourself. You know we can't do it now," she says a little bit sad. Few days ago she had blood spot on her underwear. We were freak out and visited Dr. Denver. He suggested us to reduce our love making time into minimal. That suggestion makes Jennifer sad.

I laugh and kiss her forehead. "I don't mind celibating for the sake of our baby," I say to her gently. Jennifer nods. to agree with me. "Yes. As long as she is healthy," she says.

I round my arm over her shoulder and squeeze her a little. While finishing my fried rice, we see our wedding pictures together. Once in a while, Jennifer saves picture she likes into my laptop.

After we've done, I go to kitchen to put my plate in the dishwasher.

"Babe.. how can you have these ?" Jennifer asks me when I just walking back to our living room.

"What are those ?" I ask in curiosity about things she said.

"These," She says, lifting my laptop to show me things she meant.

"Ah.. those are pictures I saved from your father's CDs," I say when I finally recognize the pictures.

"Daddy's CDs ?" Jennifer asks me.

"Don't you remember ? we found 48 CDS in your father's safety box. I bought a CD reader to read them. Turned out there were thousands of random pictures in them," I remind her before sitting next to her. "I was suspicious that these pictures are secret message from your father. I made a program to decrypt it. But it needs original pictures to compare them with these altered ones. Unfortunately, I don't know where to find the original pictures," I continue.

Jennifer looks at me with widen eyes and open mouth as she is surprised to hear my explanation. "You won't believe me.. But I know where the original pictures are," she says.

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10 AM the next day, we are already at the terrace of her parent's house in city M. Jennifer said that those pictures are collection of her mother. Mrs. McCourtney loved photography. She took hundreds of thousands pictures of random things and persons with her analog camera. She even had her own dark room in the basement of their house.

Once we enter the house, Jennifer brings me to basement. There is not only Mrs. McCourtney's dark room, but also her gallery. I see some of pictures similar to ones in the CDs.

"These are only few of her collection that are displayed. There are more kept in photo albums in that bookshelf," Jennifer says, pointing at an old bookshelf. She then opens one of its drawer, take a photo album, and gives it to me.

Once I opened it, I immediately recognize all pictures inside it. "How many albums in there ?" I ask her excitedly.

"Hundreds.. maybe almost a thousand," Jennifer says. She chuckles to see my eyes sparkling like a child having his Christmas presents.

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It is of course takes a lot of patience and time to scan and sort those pictures before I can compare them with pictures I already had in my laptop with the program I made. At first I was so disappointed to have the output. It was only a sequence of numbers that I don't understand the meaning. It was so frustrating up until I call Thief to help me decrypt the code.

Less than half hour after I sent two similar pictures to Thief, she calls me back.

"You figured it out already ?" I ask Thief in full of hope. She laughs to hear my desperate tone.

"I barely do anything. I merely translate the numbers into alphabets," Thief says after subsiding her laughter.

"What ? That easy ?" I ask in disbelief.

"Yes. Each number is jus an ASCII of a character, just add them with 50," she explains. I thank her then hang up the call.

Excitedly, I edit my program a little, then run my program with the first pair of pictures. I call Jennifer to read the output together,

"Dear Sophia and Jennifer, the loves of my life.

First of all, I need to congratulate you to be able to read this. I hope one who figure this is Jenny's man. But if not, that's okay, Baby. I believe you will found the best man for you.

Secondly, I want to apologize to both of you, especially to you. Sophia, my Love. I'm sorry I have lied to you all this time ... "