The Stranger

Adam caught his reflection in the mirror. The voice in the back of his head was starting up again. He quietly padded back down the hall. He brought up the web browser and searched for DNA test. The first one was sold at Walgreens. He was about to hit the order button and then thought better of it. Someone might open the box. He’d pick it up tomorrow.

Adam headed back to his room and sat on the bed. Corinne’s scent, still a powerful pheromone after all these years, lingered, or maybe that was just his imagination working overtime.

The stranger’s voice came back to him.

“You didn’t have to stay with her.”

Adam laid his head on the pillow, blinked up at the ceiling, and just let the gentle sounds of his still home overwhelm him.

Chapter 5

Adam woke up at 7:00 A.M. Ryan was waiting by the bedroom door. “Dad . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you check the e-mail and see if Coach Baime sent out the results yet?”

“Already done. You made the A team.”

Ryan didn’t outwardly celebrate. That wasn’t his way. He nodded and tried to hold back his smile. “Can I go to Max’s after school?”

“What are you guys going to do on such a beautiful day?”

“Sit in the dark and play video games,” Ryan said.

Adam frowned, but he knew that Ryan was pulling his leg.

“Jack and Colin are coming over too. We’re going to play lacrosse.”

“Sure.” Adam swung his legs out of the bed. “Did you eat breakfast?”

“Not yet.”

“You want me to make you Daddy eggs?”

“Only if you promise not to call them Daddy eggs.”

Adam smiled. “Deal.”

For a moment, Adam forgot about the night before and the stranger and Novelty Funsy and Fake-A-Pregnancy.com. It had, as such things do, taken on a dreamlike quality, where you nearly question whether you had imagined the whole thing. He knew better, of course. He was blocking. He had, in fact, managed to sleep pretty well last night. If there had been dreams, Adam didn’t remember them now. Adam slept well most nights. Corinne was the one who stayed up and worried. Somewhere along the way, Adam had learned to not worry about what he couldn’t control, to let go. This had been a healthy thing, this ability to compartmentalize. Now he wondered whether it was an ability to let go or simply to block.

He headed downstairs and made breakfast. “Daddy eggs” were scrambled up with milk, mustard, and Parmesan cheese. When Ryan was six, he loved Daddy eggs, but like most things with little kids, he outgrew them, labeling them “lame” one day and vowing never to touch them again. Recently, his new coach had told Ryan that he should always start the day with a high-protein breakfast, and so Daddy eggs had been revived like a nostalgic musical.

As Adam watched his son attack the plate as though it had offended him, he again tried to picture the six-year-old Ryan eating this same dish in this same room. The image wouldn’t come to him.

Thomas had a ride, so Ryan and Adam drove to school in comfortable silence, father and son. They passed a Baby Gap and a Tiger Schulmann’s karate school. A Subway had opened up in that “dead” spot on the corner, that one storefront in every town where nothing seems to work. It’d already housed a bagel shop, a jewelry store, an upscale mattress chain, and a Blimpie, which Adam had always thought was the same thing as Subway anyway.

“’Bye, Dad. Thanks.”

Ryan hopped out of the car without a cheek kiss. When did Ryan stop kissing him? He couldn’t remember.

He circled across Oak Street, headed past the 7-Eleven, and saw the Walgreens. He sighed. He parked in the lot and sat in the car for several minutes. An old man hobbled by, his prescription bag death-gripped between his gnarly hand and the top of his walker. He glared at Adam, or maybe that was just the way he looked at the world now.

Adam headed inside. He grabbed a small shopping basket. They needed toothpaste and antibacterial soap, but that was all for show. He flashed back to his youth when he’d throw a bunch of toiletries into a similar container so it wouldn’t look as though he was just buying condoms, which would remain unused in his wallet until they started cracking from age.

The DNA tests were located near the pharmacist. Adam walked over, doing his best to look casual. He looked left. He looked right. He picked up the box and read the back:

THIRTY PERCENT OF “FATHERS” WHO TAKE THIS TEST WILL DISCOVER THAT THE CHILD THEY ARE RAISING IS NOT THEIRS.

He dropped the box onto the shelf. He hurried away as though the box might beckon him back. No. He would not go there. Not today, anyway.

He brought the other toiletries up to the counter, grabbed a pack of gum, and paid. He hit Route 17, passed a few more mattress chains (what was it with northern New Jersey and all the mattress stores?), and pulled into the gym. He changed and worked out with weights. Throughout his adult life, Adam had cycled through a potpourri of workout programs—yoga (not flexible), Pilates (confused), boot camp (why not just join the military?), Zumba (don’t ask), aquatics (near drown), spin (sore butt)—but in the end, he always returned to simple weights. Some days he loved the strain on his muscles and couldn’t imagine not doing it. Other days he dreaded every moment, and the only thing he wanted to lift was the postworkout peanut butter protein shake to his lips.

He went through the motions, trying to remember to contract the muscle and hold at the end. This was, he’d learned, the key to results. Don’t just curl. Curl up, hold it a second while squeezing the bicep, curl down. He showered, changed into his work clothes, and headed into his office on Midland Avenue in Paramus. The office building was four floors and sleek glass and the architecture stood out only in the sense that it was stereotypically an office building, indistinguishable from every other. You would never mistake it for anything else.

“Yo, Adam, got a second?”

It was Andy Gribbel, Adam’s best paralegal. When he first started here, everyone called him the Dude because of his scruffy looks similar to the Jeff Bridges character. He was older than most paralegals—older, in fact, than Adam—and could easily have gone to law school and passed the bar, but as Gribbel once put it, “That ain’t my bag, man.”

Yes, he had said it just like that.

“What’s up?” Adam asked.

“Old Man Rinsky.”

Adam’s legal expertise was in the field of eminent domain, which involved the government trying to take away your land to build a highway or school or something like that. In this case, the township of Kasselton was trying to take away Rinsky’s house for the purpose of gentrification. In short, that area of town was politely labeled “undesirable” or, in layman’s terms, “a dump,” and the powers that be had found a developer who wanted to level all the houses and build shiny new homes, stores, and restaurants.