The next morning, I watch from upstairs as a delivery truck from an office supply store drops off several bags at the front door. Nate signs for them. Rachel is out at the gym. I don’t want to see Nate this morning, so I’m pretending to sleep late.
He glances up at my window, and I jump back.
One lie isn’t much to go on, I tell myself. And I don’t know for sure it’s a lie.
But doubt has a way of spreading, until all you’re doing is watching someone and wondering…What else about you isn’t true?
If Nate lied about dropping off the check, he was just buying time. But for what? Had he spent the money already? The questions pound in my brain, until I can’t think.
So I decide to start with what I know is true.
He grew up in Bristol, Rhode Island.
He was able to buy the house on Beewick because of an inheritance from his aunt.
He got through law school, but hated practicing law. He quit when he left D.C.
He worked as a realtor in New Mexico.
He lived in San Diego for a while and ran a surf shop.
He wrote a newspaper column somewhere in Pennsylvania.
He met Rachel in Seattle, where he worked in commercial real estate.
He loved my mother.
He loved me.
How much is true?
I decide to leave out feelings. I’ll start with the simple stuff.
Nate is just leaving when I come downstairs. He kisses me on the top of my head. “Got to get up earlier if you want to catch the worms. Or something like that.”
“Who wants to eat worms?” I say.
Rachel comes in the door, still dressed in her gym clothes. She stops when she sees the bags of office supplies. “You went to the store for me! Thank you!”
He leans over and kisses her. “Don’t mention it. You do enough.”
It’s a small lie. Taking credit for something he didn’t do. Not such a big deal, I tell myself as I grab a bagel and some juice.
Or is it? Do you tell one lie, and that makes it easier to tell the next one, and the next?
Nate leaves, and Rachel plops down in a kitchen chair and begins to leaf through a catalog of chairs. Every so often, she sticks a little Post-it flag on a page.
“We’ve got to order the chairs soon,” she tells me. “They’ve got to be comfortable, but not too comfortable. You don’t want people to stay forever. You need turnover. What do you think of these?”
She flips the catalog over so I can see. “Nice.”
She puts a little Post-it strip on the page, but she suddenly looks up at me. “I hope you’re not bored. Let me narrow down some choices here, and we can go shopping or something. Your dad won’t be back until dinner.”
“Sounds good,” I say. “He’s been out a lot since I’ve been here.”
“Oh, honey, are you disappointed? It’s just that things are coming together for the business, and there’s a million details.”
“No, it’s fine, it’s just that…I think of these questions I want to ask, because I don’t really know that much about him, and then by the time I see him, I forget what they are.”
Rachel closes the catalog. “Well, try me. When we first met, all we did was talk and talk. I know everything about him.” She grins. “Well, almost everything. I asked him not to tell me about old girlfriends. I’m the jealous type. As a matter of fact, I’m planning a surprise for him for Christmas—a scrapbook. I’ve got plenty of photos and mementos from our time together, of course, but whew, I never met anyone who could stick all his photographs into one envelope. It’s like the man doesn’t have a past.” Rachel’s hand flies to her mouth. “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean…I mean, of course he does, of course he has a past. Most of the photographs he saved were of you. I just mean, he moved around a lot, and…”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I know you didn’t mean it.” I want to keep her talking about Nate. “I know he grew up in Rhode Island, but I don’t know much about my grandparents. I never met them, and neither did my mother. They died before she met my father.”
“William and Eleanor,” Rachel says, nodding. “William died of cancer quite young.”
Ding. He died of cancer? Nate told me that he killed himself.
“Nate’s mom died of a heart attack when he was in high school. So tragic.” She leans forward and puts her hands on my hands. “So you see, you have so much in common. He doesn’t like to talk about it, and I know you don’t, either. But there are so many things you can share.”
But I’m not interested in sharing grief. “What about his aunt, the one that left him money?”
“Jane,” Rachel says. “She left him a bundle, I guess. He was able to buy that house on Beewick—which I’m so glad will be yours one day—and pay for law school, too.”
Ding. I’d always heard from my mom that she put my dad through law school.
Two lies in about three seconds.
But they aren’t just lies. They’re someplace to start. Someplace to begin to figure out who Nathaniel Millard really is.
I tell Rachel and Nate that I made a date to see a friend in Seattle on Wednesday, so they drop me at the bus. I’ve already called Ryan, who told me he was “awesomely available” to help.
I meet him at his “office,” a cyber café somewhere on the outskirts of Belltown, this very cool neighborhood in Seattle. I recognize his red hair and geek glasses as soon as I walk in. He’s sitting at a back table with a supersize soda and a table littered with People and US Weekly magazines. He pushes them aside to make room for me.
“Celebrity worship is my life,” he says. “Have a seat. Can I get you a soda or coffee or something? My treat, as long as it’s under three dollars.”
I stand back up. “I’ll get it. And I’ll bring back some food, too. Cookies or muffins?”
“Cookies, for sure.”
I order a cup of tea and pick up two fudge cookies as big as salad plates.
“Awesome!” he says approvingly as he accepts the cookie. “I work better with a massive sugar rush.” He flips open his laptop and cracks his knuckles. “Now, let us begin to reveal the real Nate Millard. Tell me what you need, and I’ll open the portals of cybertown.”
I take a bite of cookie and push over a piece of paper. I’ve written the names of Nate’s parents, his aunt, and his full name. “Everything there is to know about them.”
Ryan’s fingers fly over the keyboard. He’s an astute Googler, but he also belongs to this subscription newsnet site that allows him to search more efficiently and faster than I can.
He finds Eleanor Millard’s death notice in the Providence paper, and the funeral notice about my grandfather. So far Nate’s stories check out, at least about when they died. But Ryan frowns as he searches for Jane Millard.
“Millard bequest,” he murmurs. “Wait, let me go back a few years…”
“What?”
“Here we go. Jane Grace Millard. She was on the board of the local animal shelter.”
“Grace?” Had I been named after my father’s aunt? I never knew that.
“Yeah, wait…it’s a family name. There are Graces and Millards all over the place in that part of Rhode Island. Looks like you might have a couple hundred second and third cousins once removed. Here we go—Jane Grace Millard died June second, 1988.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense.” I quickly do the math. That means she died after Shay had bought the house.
“Newspapers don’t lie. Well, scratch that—they lie all the time, I guess, but not about death notices. Yeah, and look, her whole estate went to the animal hospital.”
So there was no inheritance.
So where did Nate get the money?
He put himself through school. He said. His father left him nothing. He said. The only money he ever had came from his Aunt Jane, who was the only one, he said, who really loved him.
“All right, let’s get cracking on Nathaniel,” Ryan says. “Not much coming up here. Nothing, in fact.”
I watch Ryan chew his cookie and type and mouse-click. “Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
“What?”
I can see by his face that he doesn’t want to show me. But he pushes the laptop over so I can see.
It’s a Web site called DEADBEAT DADS. Women who have been abandoned post their husbands’ names and photos on the site. And there he is, Nate, smiling, by a backyard grill.
“Tampa, Florida?” I ask. “Nathaniel Grace Millard, missing since 1998. Two kids?”
“Bunny and Ben,” Ryan says. “Aw.”
Ryan takes the laptop back as I sit, stunned.
Bunny. The pale blond girl with the stuffed rabbit. His daughter.
“Searching under the name Nate Grace now. Sometimes dudes on the run use variants on their names to…uh-oh.”
I look over. It’s a Web site created by Cheryl Anne Hinker from Factoryville, Pennsylvania.
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
It’s Nate.
He owes her money. He left town with it—and their wedding album.
“Whoa, serial sleazebag,” Ryan says. He peers at me anxiously. “Some cold water or something? You look sort of green.”
“Who is he?” I ask. “Who’s my dad?”
“I’m going to have to break it to you gently, goddess Gracie,” Ryan says. “He’s a crook.”