“You look stressed out.”
I scribbled my signature in the places he was pointing. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t need to be worried about things. All the paperwork’s going through without a hitch.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“How about things at the house? How’s Thomas?”
I put the pen down and leaned back in my chair. “How’s Thomas,” I repeated, looking down. “There’s a question.”
“Ray, what’s on your mind?”
“Harry,” I said, “you’re sort of my lawyer, too, aren’t you?”
“Ray, of course.”
“I mean, I know you were Dad’s lawyer, and you’re handling all this estate stuff, but are you my lawyer, too, about other things?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m your lawyer. You can talk to me.”
I started to speak, and then didn’t know where to begin. Not with Dad and what I’d found on his laptop. But that discovery was not the only thing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours to leave me shaken.
“The FBI paid us a visit,” I said.
“They what? Jesus Christ, Ray, you should have called me. Did they have a warrant?”
“They just showed me their IDs.”
“Good Lord.”
I told him all of it. How they came in, asked questions of Thomas and me. Finding out Thomas had sent all those e-mails to the CIA, addressed to Bill Clinton. How I’d heard him having an imaginary conversation with the former president.
Harry placed his palms on the table. “Unbelievable. You’ve got a lot on your plate, Ray.”
“There’s something else I wanted to bounce off you,” I said.
“What?”
“About Dad.”
“Go on.”
“Did Dad ever…did you ever get a sense of what Dad’s private life was like?”
“What do you mean, private life? Are you talking about his sex life?”
“I guess,” I said.
Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. You mean, since your mother passed away?”
Not really, but I said, “Sure.”
“I don’t honestly know. I can’t see him bringing anyone to the house, and Adam never left the home for extended periods of time because of your brother. He sure wouldn’t have gone anywhere overnight. But then again, if he had met someone, he could have gotten together with her during the day, when he didn’t have any qualms about leaving your brother for a few hours.”
“You ever see him with anyone? Did he ever talk about seeing anyone?”
Harry shook his head. “No. But you know, a man his age, there’s every reason to think he’d be, you know, sexually active. Do you mind my asking why this is an issue, Ray? Are you thinking there’s going to be some woman coming out of the woodwork, saying she’s got some sort of claim on the estate?”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I said. “You know what? Forget I even asked. It’s nothing.”
MAYBE that was what I should have done. Forgotten about it. Pretended I never saw those two words on my father’s computer.
But before I let this go, I was going to see what Web pages that search led him to. I didn’t want to know, but I had to know.
When I got home, Thomas was where I expected him to be. Dad’s laptop was sitting on the kitchen table, closed. Thomas must have brought it in from the porch and turned it off.
I opened the lid, hit the button, waited the half minute or so it took for the computer to power up. Then I opened the Web browser.
I went to the search field and typed in a single letter to bring up the previous searches.
There was nothing there.
Nothing about smartphones, depression, or child prostitution.
“What the hell?” I said under my breath.
I moved the cursor up to History and clicked. It was empty. The list of all the Web sites that had been visited with this machine had been erased.
TWENTY-FOUR