Page 49 of The Five Year Lie

“Sure,” I say, rising from my chair. “Of course.”

“One last thing,” Zain says after he passes by. “I just paid two hundred bucks to my friend for your search. So we should have a report this morning.”

“Thank you.” And now I know the price for complicating my own life—two hundred dollars. “Venmo okay?”

He gives his head a little shake. “Cash is better. No paper trail.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll hit the bank machine at lunch.”

“No rush,” he says, biting into the sticky bun I brought him. “I know where you live.”

The meeting lasts forever. Every three minutes I look over at Zain, wondering if his hacker friend’s report has landed on his phone yet.

When it’s my turn, I give a quick rundown on the layout of our new executive floor upstairs. “The movers are coming a week from tomorrow...”

Across the table from me, Zain is surreptitiously scrolling on his phone. I see him stop and stare at something. Then he lifts his gaze and looks right at me.

I rush through the rest of my announcement, finishing just as a text message buzzes my phone.

And the minute everyone’s attention moves on, I unlock my phone in my lap.

Zain has sent me a screenshot.

SSN issued to Andrew Ernest Miller

DOB November 1, 1948, Maine

DOD May 6, 2016, Maine

I take a slow breath and read it again. The real Drew Miller is adead man? In fact, he died a year before I met him.

Legally, I fell in love with a ghost.

Clammy sweat collects on my skin. For a couple of minutes I hear nothing of the meeting. My mind churns through these new facts, rearranging my understanding of the situation yet again.

Drew’s birthday was listed in his employee file as November 1, 1988. That’s precisely one digit off from the real Andrew Miller’s date of birth.

Perhaps that was intentional, the date chosen in the hopes that nobody would notice that errant digit.

Supposedly Drew was twenty-eight when he and I were together—four years older than I was. He even told me that his birthday was in November. “You’re a Scorpio?” I asked. “They’re smart but vindictive.”

He gave me a little secretive smile and said that he didn’t follow astrology.

I wonder if anything he ever told me was true. Who knows if he was even twenty-eight?

At least he never saidI love you. At least he didn’t lie about that.

Across the room, Zain’s eyes are trained on the sales manager, but his fingers are worrying the edges of his phone, like he can’t wait to look at it again.

But nobody expects me to pay attention to the sales update. Concealing my phone beneath the table, I searchAndrew Ernest Miller death 2016 Maine.

This is maybe the millionth time I’ve searched Andrew Millers in Maine. But now that I have a date to work with, it doesn’t even take five minutes to find a news headline from theLowden Sentinelthat I’d probably rejected before: “Shawmut Street Tragedy.”

The very first sentence sends chills down my spine:Army vet,beloved neighbor to all and foster father to many, Andrew “Ernie” Miller dead at 67.

The wordsarmy vetandfoster fatherleap off the screen and lodge in my throat. I skim the first few paragraphs. Mr. Miller died suddenly of a heart attack, just a few weeks after a tragedy in his home. In the third paragraph, I read in glowing terms how Ernie raised foster teens in Lowden, Maine, for decades.

...in the sprawling house on Shawmut Street with the hand-painted plaque above the door.