He loved Ryan so damned much.

And if he found out that Ryan wasn’t his, would he just lose all that? Does all that go away? Does it even matter?

He shook his head and turned away. Enough philosophizing on fatherhood for one evening. So far, nothing had changed. Some weirdo had handed him some nonsense about a fake pregnancy. That was all. Adam had been involved in the legal system long enough to know that you take nothing for granted. You do the work. You do the research. People lie. You investigate because too often your preconceived notions will get blown out of the water.

Sure, Adam’s gut was telling him that the stranger’s words had a ring of truth to them, but that was the problem. When you listen to your gut, you are often just fooled with greater certainty.

Do the work. Do the research.

So how?

Simple. Start with Novelty Funsy.

The family shared a desktop computer that used to be kept in the family room. This had been Corinne’s idea. There would be no secret web browsing (read: porn watching) in their home. Adam and Corinne would know all, the theory went, and be mature, responsible parents. But Adam quickly realized that this sort of policing was either superfluous or nonsense. The boys could look things up, including porn, on their phones. They could go to a friend’s house. They could grab one of the laptops or tablets lying around the house.

It was also lazy parenting, he thought. Teach them to do the right thing because it’s the right thing—not because Mom and Dad are looking over your shoulder. Of course, all parents start off believing stuff like that, but quickly, you realize that parenting shortcuts are there for a reason.

The other problem was more obvious: If you wanted to use the computer for its intended use—to study or do homework—the noise from the kitchen and the television would be certain to distract. So Adam had moved the desktop into the small nook that they’d generously dubbed a “home office”—a room that was too many things to too many people. Corinne’s students’ papers, ready to be graded, were stacked on the right. The boys’ homework was always in disarray, a rough draft of some essay left behind in the printer like a wounded soldier on a battlefield. The bills were piled on the chair, waiting for Adam to pay them online.

The Internet browser was up and on a museum site. One of the boys must be studying ancient Greece. Adam checked the browser’s history, seeing what sites had been visited, though the boys had grown too savvy to leave anything incriminating behind. But you never knew. Thomas once accidentally left his Facebook up and logged in. Adam had sat at the computer and stared at the front page, trying like hell to fight off the desire to take a peek in his son’s message file.

He’d lost that fight.

A few messages in and Adam stopped. His son was safe—that was the important thing—but it had been a disturbing invasion of his son’s privacy. He had learned things that he wasn’t supposed to know. Nothing heavy. Nothing earth-shattering. But things that a father should perhaps talk to his son about. But what was he now supposed to do with this information? If he confronted Thomas, Adam would have had to admit going through his private things. Was that worth it? He’d debated telling Corinne about it, but once he relaxed and gave it some time, he realized that, really, the communications he’d read were not abnormal, that he himself had done some stuff when he was a teenager he wouldn’t have wanted his parents to know about, that he had simply outgrown it and moved on, and if his parents had spied on him and confronted him about it, he probably would have been worse off.

So Adam let it go.

Parenting. It ain’t for sissies.

You’re stalling, Adam.

Yeah, he knew that. So back to it.

Tonight there was nothing spectacular in the recent history. One of the boys—probably Ryan—was indeed studying ancient Greece or just getting really into his Riordan book. There were links to Zeus, Hades, Hera, and Icarus. So more specifically, Greek mythology. He moved down the history and clicked for yesterday. He saw a search for driving directions to the Borgata Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. Made sense. That was where Corinne was staying. She had also searched for the convention’s schedule and clicked on that.

That was about it.

Enough stalling.

He brought up his bank’s web page. He and Corinne had two Visa accounts. They unofficially called one personal, the other business. It was for their own bookkeeping records. They used the “business” card for what they might deem a business expense—like, for example, the teachers’ con in Atlantic City. For everything else, they used the personal card.

He brought up the personal card account first. They had a universal search feature. He put in the word novelty. Nothing showed up. Okay, fine. He logged out and made the same search through the business Visa.

And there it was.

A little more than two years ago, there was a charge to a company called Novelty Funsy for $387.83. Adam could hear the low hum of the computer.

How? How had the stranger known about this charge?

No idea.

Adam had seen the charge way back when, hadn’t he? Yes, he was sure of it. He racked his brain and scraped together the flimsy remnants of a memory. He had been sitting right here, checking the Visa charges. He had asked Corinne about it. She had made light of the charges. She’d said something about decorations for the classroom. He’d wondered about the price, he thought. Seemed high. Corinne had said the school was going to reimburse her.

Novelty Funsy. That didn’t sound like anything nefarious, did it?

Adam opened up another window and Googled Novelty Funsy. Google spit back:

Showing results for Novelty Fancy

No results found for Novelty Funsy

Whoa. That was odd. Everything was on Google. Adam sat back and considered his options. Why wouldn’t there be even one hit for Novelty Funsy? The company was real. He could see it on his Visa charge. He assumed that they sold some kind of decorations or, uh, fun novelty items.

Adam chewed on his lower lip. He didn’t get it. A stranger comes up to him and tells him that his wife lied to him—elaborately, it seemed—about being pregnant. Who was he? Why would he do it?

Okay, forget those two questions for now and let’s get to the one that matters most: Is it true?

Adam wanted to simply say no and move on. Whatever their problems, whatever scars were left from eighteen years of marriage, he trusted her. Many things slipped away with time, broke down and dissolved or, more optimistically, altered and changed, but the one thing that seems to remain and grow more cohesive is the protective family bond—you are a team, you and your spouse. You are on the same side, in this together, you have each other’s backs. Your victories are hers. So are your failures.

Adam trusted Corinne with his life. And yet . . .

He had seen it a million times in his line of work. Put simply, people fool you. He and Corinne might be a cohesive unit, but they were also individuals. It would be nice to trust unconditionally and forget the stranger ever appeared—Adam was tempted to do just that—but that felt a tad too much like the proverbial sticking your head in the sand. The voice of doubt in the back of his head might one day quiet, but it would never go away.

Not until he knew for sure.

The stranger had claimed that the proof was in this seemingly harmless Visa charge. He owed it to himself and, yep, Corinne (she wouldn’t want the voice around either, would she?) to follow up, so Adam called the Visa’s toll-free number. The recorded voice made him dial in the card number, the expiration date, and the CVV code number on the back. It tried to give him the information via a machine, but eventually the recorded voice asked whether he’d like to speak to a representative. Representative. Like he was calling Congress. He said, “Yes,” and heard the phone ring through.