He shook his head and moved back to the desk to check the mail tray. There was a stack of letters he still needed to open, more invoices to sort through, but no internship document. John let out a frustrated breath. “I could have sworn...” He trailed off before returning to the loose papers in his drawer. His search was now less focused and slightly more frantic. “I worked on it yesterday when Becca and I got home. I printed it out in my office.”

“Did you?” Victoria asked, skepticism colored her voice.

“Yes,” he said with a scowl.

“And do you remember where you put it after you printed it off?”

John retraced his memory. “I made a snack for Becca before her grandmother came by to pick her up. You called while I was on my way to the gym. I swung by to pick up Becca and we went home where I returned to the document. It had a couple of spelling errors that I wanted to correct...”

“So, did you?”

“I did and then I printed it out again, but Becca needed help with her math homework, so I left the office for that.” By the time he’d finished with that, John assumed that his day was more or less over. It was around midnight when he settled down to read a book. And then Victoria called him. John’s eyes darted upward to see her chewing on her lip. Realization dawned on her face as she read his thoughts.

“So it’s still at your home.”

“Most likely.”

“Your home computer isn’t connected to this computer?” she asked, gesturing to his desk. “By the cloud or something?”

He shook his head.

“You didn’t email it to yourself?”

“We wouldn’t be having this discussion if I had,” he said in a curt tone.

Victoria rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “I tell my students to always email papers to themselves. There are word processors that you can save in the cloud and access anywhere.”

John rubbed his knuckles against the side of his face. He was starting to get a little hot. Her tone was patronizing as hell. “I know how the internet works, Victoria.”

“So you were just unorganized? You didn’t have a plan?”

John didn’t answer her right away because he crossed the room to close his office door. When he turned around, Victoria was staring at him. “Let’s try a different approach,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I made a mistake because I was busy with other things. Some of those things involved normal errands and responsibilities, while other things were more fun.”

Her face turned a faint shade of pink.

“I don’t regret being busy with the more fun things. But you have to cut me some slack, Victoria. A good deal of my evening was spent with you and I simply forgot.”