If his dad proved to be not as much of a monster as Michael was made to believe, then surely that would make him feel better. And if it turned out that his dad was an evil bastard, then it was something that he and I both had in common and we could help each other bury our past demons together, once and for all.
That night, the four of us laid in bed together, arms and legs intertwined. Michael and I were always the last ones to fall asleep, it was like we were internally synched with each other. But tonight, all four of us had open sets of eyes that stared up at the ceiling.
“What are you guys thinking about?” I asked.
Rob answered first. “I’m thinking about how weird it is that we are all still sleeping together but no one is having sex,” he said.
“That’s not true,” Michael said. “Lisette and I—”
I interrupted him before he finished because I didn’t think that his answer was going to help anything. “Adam, what are you thinking about?” I asked.
“I’m thinking about Paula,” he said.
“You’re thinking about my mom?” I asked. “What about her?”
“I was just thinking about how she was such a big part of so many lives, and how we are all more interconnected than we ever realized.”
That was true. It was strange to think about the different ways that we were all a part of each other’s lives, even before we chose to be.
“How about you, Michael?” I asked.
He waited for a moment before he answered. Then he sighed and shifted his body closer to me.
“I was thinking about what we might find out about my father.”
“Does it worry you?” I asked.
I really felt like we all needed a break from worry for a while.
“No,” he answered. “In fact, I was lying here thinking about it just now and I realized that I don’t even care what we find out about him one way or another. It doesn’t matter what it is, because nothing can change what we have.”
I turned my head around to kiss him and then snuggled up with all of them. Michael was right and that night, I was the first one to fall asleep.
23
The internet was definitely not a miracle cure for finding a goldmine of information about Michael’s father.
Even his name was nearly impossible to nail down. Apparently, he had several alias names, which were accredited to his need to “retain a low profile” due to shady business dealings while at Lineage.
Essentially all that Michael really knew for sure was that his first name started with a J and that there were several variations of what name he actually went by; Jason, Jerry, Jack. One of the names was even a foreign name that I couldn’t pronounce. Michael’s father was as slippery and elusive as they come, and even after his death it felt like his identity was still being covered up.
Rob and Adam tried to help too. Rob had access to lots of old police records and confidential information about people that we couldn’t get at. Adam was just good at being cunning and thinking about ways to find information in places that the rest of us wouldn’t even think to look. I figured that we’d give it a day or two, see what we could come up with, and then drop the notion altogether if our efforts didn’t turn up anything of substance. Michael didn’t seem to need this as much anymore. He seemed to be able to come to terms with his own closure after giving it some rational thought and sleep.
I sat in his lap on the desk chair as we scrolled through things on the computer. There was a lot more information about my father on there than his, which was saying a lot in terms of how covert Michael’s dad must have been, because mine had done a pretty good job of hiding under the radar and pretending to be dead for years. I guess being “actually” dead makes it a bit easier to disappear from sight. It was a bit strange though, how no one seemed to ever talk about Michael’s dad and how no one seemed to really know him or anything about him. If Marta was still alive, she would be the only one that would be able to give any solid information on her husband.
Aside from her, it seemed like Michael’s dad was more like a ghost of a Lineage legend, than an actual person.
I swiveled around in his lap and distracted Michael from the computer, and he didn’t seem to mind at all. He reached around my waist and turned me into him until our open mouths met and the desire to do any further researching was replaced with the desire to make out in the chair.
“Get a room you two,” Adam said with a giant and exaggerated roll of his eyes.
“They have a room,” Rob teased. “But unfortunately, it’s our room too.”
Michael stood up from his seat and picked me up with him to carry me to the bedroom.
“Hang on there, lovers,” Rob said as he got up as well. Let me get my keys and jacket out of the room before I end up needing to come in there. I need to run out to the store and get some more cycle parts.”
Michael set me down on the ground while we waited for Rob to get his stuff, and then went to the kitchen to get some water.
“Find anything interesting?” I asked Adam as I leaned over his shoulder to look at the computer.
“Actually, yes. And I think you should take a look at it.”
I peered at what Adam was pointing to on the screen and tried to figure out what the significance of it was.
“What am I looking at exactly?” I asked him.
“When I couldn’t find much on Michael’s dad, I decided to do some backdoor searching and come at it from a different angle by looking up Michael instead, and hoping that it would lead me to his dad.”
“Wow, you’re really taking this seriously,” I teased. “I had no idea you would be so interested in Michael’s family history.”
“Oh, you know, anything I can do to stir up a little trouble between the two of you,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not.
“This is Michael’s birth certificate,” he said. “Notice anything weird about it?”
