Novelty Funsy . . .

Adam heard the screen door shut as Thomas and Jersey started out. He headed upstairs and looked in on Ryan. He had fallen asleep with the light on, a copy of the latest Rick Riordan novel resting on his chest. Adam tiptoed in, picked up the book, found a bookmark, put it away. He was reaching for the lamp’s switch when Ryan stirred.

“Dad?”

“Hey.”

“Did I make A?”

“The e-mail goes out tomorrow, pal.”

A white lie. Adam wasn’t supposed to officially know yet. The coaches were not supposed to tell their kids until the official e-mail in the morning so everyone learned at the same time.

“Okay.”

Ryan closed his eyes and fell asleep before his head actually touched down. Adam watched his son for a moment. Lookswise, Ryan favored his mother. That never meant much to Adam before tonight—it had in fact always been a plus—but now, tonight, it was making him wonder. Stupid, but there you go. The bell you can’t unring. The niggling in the back of the brain wouldn’t leave him alone, but then again, so the hell what? Let’s take a complete theoretical. He stared at Ryan and felt that overwhelming feeling he sometimes got when he looked at his boys—part pure joy, part fear of what could happen to them in this cruel world, part wishes and hopes, all blended together in the only thing in this entire planet that felt completely pure. Corny, yes, but there you go. Purity. That was what hit you when you get lost looking at your own child—a purity that could be derived only from true, unconditional love.

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.