“Oh. I see. You did call?”
“Twice. In the past hour. To ask if I could take you to dinner tonight. Caroline, I swear to God. Maybe we should switch to a more modern, reliable form of communication. Say, carrier pigeons?”
“All right, all right. I’m sorry.”
“Or maybe smoke signals?”
“It’s because I turn the ringer off when I’m in class, and then I always forget to—”
“What about Morse code? That could be fun.” He was starting to smile. “Or semaphore flags. The yellow and red ones, like they used to wave to signal trains. Doesn’t the navy still use them on ships?”
“I’m about to slam this door on you. Get in here before I whack a semaphore flag over your head.”
I reached for his jacket, grabbed the edge of a pocket, and pulled him in. It was dark in the hall after I shut the door against the streetlight. An October chill rose off his clothes, and I caught his scent, the now-familiar mix of soap and maybe a warm animal waiting at home. I thought he might kiss me and I felt suddenly, unexpectedly shy.
Instead, Will bent down and pressed his forehead to mine. “I’ve been trying to give you your space,” he whispered. “I know you needed to spend the weekend alone. But I’ve been going crazy, wanting to see you.”
We stood there, heads touching, not speaking, until my breath slowed to match his own. His fingers brushed mine in the dark. Then his hand climbed my arm, circled it, teasing, lingering in the velvety crook of my elbow. It took Will a hundred years to reach my shoulder, to stroke my throat, to round my chin. His thumb, the thick pad of it, on my mouth. Pressing. Bruising. My lips swelling under his touch. I began to shake.
“Beautiful girl,” he whispered.
For a man who was not my type, Will Zartman was definitely growing on me.
Twenty-five
* * *
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2013
Word of my possible inheritance came before breakfast.
“Good morning,” trilled Jessica Yeo. “Are you awake? Got a minute?”
“Sure. Just making toast.” She had in fact caught me cracking eggs for an omelet that I was planning to stuff with chorizo. Will and I had never gotten around to dinner last night; we’d found too many other ways to pass the time. When I woke, he was already gone.
“You’re up early. Already at work?”
“God, no. You’ve clearly never worked in a newsroom. Nobody shows up before ten. It’s like some unspoken but unanimous pact among the reporters.” She giggled. “I have got your article open on my laptop, though. It looks good.”
My article? “You mean the follow-up that Leland Brett was writing? It’s already finished?”
“It’s on the front of today’s Metro section. He might be a horny old bugger, but he writes fast.”
“Jessica!”
“Sorry. But I speak the truth. Both about Leland being a horndog, and about the story looking good.” She blew her nose loudly. “Excuse me. It sounds like your parents were really nice folks. Ever since the first article ran last week, people have been calling the paper, to say kind things about them, and to wish you well. Leland quotes a bunch of them in today’s story.”
“He told me he was planning to. I’ll take a look when we hang up.”
“Cool. Anyway, a couple of developments. I’ve been following the money. Your money.”
“Not my money. My birth parents’ money. Whatever there was of it.”
“Kinda fascinating, actually. The cemetery wouldn’t tell me anything. Just the date your parents were interred and the location of their graves.”
“I know. I already went out there to take a look.”
“It was a long shot, but I was hoping your paperwork would still be in a file somewhere. That it might show who paid for their plots, what bank the check was drawn on, that type thing. It sounds like that stuff got dumped ages ago, though, and it wouldn’t be public record anyway. In better news, I’m making progress on Boone and Sadie Rawson’s Social Security numbers.”
“Yeah, about those—”
“Listen to this,” she said, ignoring me. “Officially, it takes weeks to find out a dead person’s number. You have to pay twenty-nine dollars and fill out this form. I’ve got one here, hang on.” I heard her shuffling papers, then the sound of something heavy, a book maybe, crashing onto a hard floor. “Damn it.” She came back on the line. “I need to improve my filing system. Complete chaos. But here we go: form number 711, ‘Request for a Deceased Individual’s Social Security Record.’ You mail it off and then you’re supposed to wait four to six weeks for a response.”
“Jessica—”
“However, since I am a rock-star researcher”—she paused -theatrically—“I think I can get them for you by the end of the week. The stupid public-affairs lady gave me this lecture, about how it’s impossible to expedite a search, and how I had to wait my turn, and blah, blah, blah. But I went over her head and—”
“I already found them.”
“You what?”
“I found the numbers. On Ancestry.com.”
“Really?” Jessica sounded stunned. “Everyone’s Social Security numbers are just sitting there?”
“Well, at least, dead people’s are. My parents popped right up. You could have found them yourself in five minutes. The Social Security Administration keeps something called the Death Master File. Grim name, but useful. It lists everybody whose deaths were reported to the government, all the way back to 1875.”
“Jeez. I feel like an idiot.”
“Not at all. I had time on my hands over the weekend. I pulled up the state records, too. Every death recorded by the Georgia Health Department from 1919 to 1998. I already ordered copies of their original death certificates.”
“Great,” said Jessica, sounding deflated.