Trying to identify one specific person on the internet is like trying to find a toothpick in a tornado.
—SPAM RAMOS
Spam erases the skateboarder side of the whiteboard.
Lyman stops her. “Wait. You said I was cute?”
She smirks. “Get over yourself.” But then she blows him a kiss. She points to Lysa. “You’re on legal. Start with his parents. Dig up everything. They died taking drugs and we know it wasn’t their first time.” She glances at Lyman. “Sorry. Not judgy.”
Lyman shrugs. “It’s okay.”
“On it,” Lysa says.
Spam writes on the whiteboard: Lysa = legal. “Oh, this isn’t a priority, but we should know what aiding and abetting could mean to us.”
Next Spam points her marker at me. “You’re on proof. You know this stuff better than any of us. We can’t think we found Lyman’s grandmother and have him go to some strange woman’s house and give her a heart attack. We have to know it’s her. Go wherever you feel like you have to go.”
I nod, crack my knuckles, and hit the laptop.
Spam writes on the board: Erin = proof.
My phone suddenly rings, startling everyone. I look at the caller. “It’s Journey.” I answer it tentatively. “Hi, babe.”
“Hey. Did I wake you? It’s only ten o’clock,” he asks.
“No, no. You didn’t wake me. What’s up?”
“Victor and I are back here at the lab—” He pauses as Victor talks to him. I can’t hear exactly what they’re saying, but I’m struck with terror. Did we not put something back in the right place?
I mute the phone. “They’re at the lab.” I flash my wild, fear-filled expression around the table.
Everyone pauses and no one dares to breathe.
“Victor was just wondering—” He pauses again and my heart is nearly pounding out of my chest. “Oh. Never mind. He found it.”
“He found it,” I repeat. “Good.” Everyone around the table relaxes again.
“How about if I come over?” he says.
“Uh. Oh, well…” I fake a yawn. “I’m really tired. I was just getting ready to go to bed.”
“But aren’t you at Spam’s?” he asks.
I’m completely freaking out. “Yes. Yes, I am”—another fake yawn—“but we’re all really tired and getting ready to go to bed.” I gyrate my hand for them to make noise.
Spam fake yawns, loudly.
“Hi, Journey,” Lysa says.
I nod. “He says hi back to all of you. How’d you know I was here?”
“Oh. Rachel told Victor so he wouldn’t worry about you.”
“Ahh. That makes sense.”
“You sound weird,” he says. “What are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“But you don’t want me to come over?” He sounds a little hurt.
“No. It’s late. Another time. Talk to you later. Bye.” I hang up the phone and breathe a sigh of relief for getting through the call without blurting out something incriminating.
“Journey would be a problem?” Lyman asks.
“No,” I say hesitantly. “Not really.”
“It’s for his own protection,” Lysa says. “Journey’s Victor’s intern. The less he knows about this, the better it is for him.”
Spam stands at the whiteboard and points a marker at Lyman. “Start at the beginning. Tell us everything you know about yourself and your mom. Example, what’s your birthday?”
“August 30th,” Lyman says.
Spam points at Lysa. “Check the missing persons flyer on your phone. Is the birthdate the same or different?”
Lysa scrolls back through her phone. “Same,” she says.
Spam grins at Lyman. “Congratulations, dude. You have a real birthday.” She scrawls his real name in a top corner of the whiteboard and underneath it she writes: DOB 8/30. “What else?”
“My mom goes by Laine Becker, but that’s not her real name,” Lyman says.
Spam hovers the marker over the whiteboard.
“Her real name is Lydia Booker … and she’s a doctor.”
“Whoa. How did you find that out?” I ask.
“It’s on the wanted poster.” Lyman shrugs. “I ran her print before mine.”
“Wait, she works as a doctor but she’s wanted by the FBI?” Lysa is incredulous. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“No,” Lyman says. “Lydia Booker is a doctor. Laine Becker is a nurse’s aide.”
“How did she explain moving all the time?” Lysa asks. “Does she make it fun, like it’s an adventure, or does she just say you have to go?”
“She apologized for it,” Lyman says. “She knew it was hard on me. It was hard on her, too. We’d leave everything behind and only take what we could get in the car. Every new place we’d start all over. She said we had to move because she had a lot of student loans that she couldn’t hope to pay off and we were moving to escape bill collectors.”
Lysa and I make eye contact.
“Kernel of truth,” I say.
“Exactly,” agrees Lysa.
Lyman looks confused. “Obviously we were moving because of me.”
“Yes,” Lysa says. “But most of the time when people lie there’s a kernel of truth to their story. Knowing that your mom is a doctor, I think the student loan story is also true and might help us find your grandmother.”
“How do you know you have a grandmother?” I ask.
“There’s a contact in my mom’s phone to call in case of an emergency. Her name is Millie and I asked my mom about her once,” Lyman says. “She paused for a really long time and then she said Millie was my grandmother.”
“Do you know Millie’s last name?” I ask.
Lyman shakes his head. “Just Millie.”
“But did you try calling the number?” Spam asks.
Lyman sighs. “Disconnected.”
The three of us groan.
“What if she’s—” Lysa slaps her hand over her mouth to keep from stating the obvious.
Spam waves her hand. “A disconnect doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people have changed their numbers in the last ten years because they gave up their landlines.”
Spam points to me. “Type in a search for Millie Jenkins and select images.”
Within seconds I’m able to turn my laptop around for all to see. There are a bunch of images, but they are mostly of young women. Too young to be Lyman’s grandmother. There’s also one that’s way too old.
Spam pats her chair for Lyman to come sit next to her. He smiles softly as he joins her. I admire the deep and soulful way they look at each other. It’s clear they have a special connection. “Jenkins was your father’s last name,” she says. “Millie is probably on your mother’s side. Let’s try Millie Booker.”
I type in “Millie Booker” and press enter. My phone lights up. It’s a Snapchat from Journey with a blurry picture of his hair on a white pillowcase. The caption says MY HAIR MISSES YOU.
“Aww.” I make a cute, pouty face. “Journey.” I wave my phone.
“We don’t have time for him right now,” Spam says.
“I know, I know.” As I scroll through the images of Millie Booker, I wonder how Journey’s going to take the news when he finds out we helped Lyman. Will there be a problem between us because I kept something this big from him? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be happy if the situation were reversed. And depending on how this works out, I’m going to have to tell him. “Nothing that looks promising on Millie Booker.”
Lysa slides a piece of paper across the table to Spam. “Here’s everything from the article.”
Spam reads it off and transfers the names to the whiteboard. “Okay. Your parents’ names are Katherine and Andrew Jenkins. Anything about siblings or grandparents?”
Lysa shakes her head.
“What about ages?” Spam asks.
“Katherine, twenty-six, Andrew, twenty-eight, and the baby was nineteen months.”
Spam looks at Lyman. “What do you think, is your mom the older or younger sister?”
“My mom is older,” Lyman says. “I think by maybe three years. She said she and her sister stopped talking a long time ago.”
“Did she say why?” I ask.
Lyman shakes his head.
“Without the right last name we’ll never find Lyman’s grandma,” I say.
“That’s not necessarily true.” Spam taps the marker on the board. “Lyman, can you get that phone number? The one you said was disconnected?”
“It’s on my mom’s phone. I’d have to go home to get it.” Lyman checks the time. “Actually, I need to go home anyway. She’ll be getting up to go to work soon and she will freak if I’m not there.”
“Okay. Go home and get the number,” Spam says. “Text it to me when you have it.”
“Will do.” Lyman gets up and heads for the stairs. He stops, turns back, and goes to Spam, wrapping her in a warm hug. He kisses the top of her head. “This was a crazy night and I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He looks at Lysa and me. “I don’t know what I’d do without all of you.”
He bows and pretends to tip an imaginary hat and then he leaves.
Spam stands completely still, watching him until he’s gone. She sighs, then turns back to the whiteboard.
Lysa and I are just staring at her.
“Are we doing the right thing?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I can’t even get my head around what the right thing is in this situation.”
“We’re not doing the right thing,” Lysa says. “But we are doing what we always do, which is the thing that feels the most right.”