“It makes the eggs rubbery.”

“You always bake it at three-fifty,” Julian said.

The speaker hissed with static as he leaned closer to his microphone in the office upstairs.

I deleted the number 350.

I typed 302.

Three-zero-two was the county police code for a mental health emergency.

More importantly, it was the first three digits of Marcus’s old apartment number downtown.

Marcus was my lead blog moderator, a retired legal assistant who checked my site every single evening.

I changed the prep time to 4 minutes.

I set the serving size to 1.

The sequence on the screen now read: *302-4-1.*

“You are changing the cooking time too,” Julian observed.

“It needs to cook slower,” I said.

My fingers hovered over the ingredient list.

I had to be careful.

Julian was watching the screen through the remote desktop app, but he did not know my recipes by heart.

He only knew numbers and control.

I changed the salt measurement to five teaspoons.

Nobody used five teaspoons of salt in a single quiche.

It would make the dish completely inedible.

I added six cloves of garlic.