Anything for Her(71)

“So, did you ever ask Allie about the Oklahoma thing?” Sean surprised him by asking.

“Yeah. She says her mother is the one who wants to pretend they never lived there.” He should stop there, he knew he should. “But I could tell Allie was uneasy about the whole thing. Wish I knew why.”

“You can look, you know.”

Nolan stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, lots of high schools have their yearbooks online now.” He shrugged. “I mean, you guys were in high school a long time ago. Maybe those old yearbooks aren’t up, but you could check.”

“Allie is only twenty-eight,” Nolan said mildly.

Sean looked at him as if he was an idiot. “That’s ten years ago.”

“You’re making me feel like an old man. I don’t like it.”

The kid laughed at him. “You’re getting, like, middle-aged, you know. That’s almost old.”

“Thank you.” He shook his head. “They just called our number. My arthritis is acting up. You go get the pizza.”

Sean thought that was pretty funny. He was chortling when he slid out of the booth and headed toward the front.

“Yearbooks are really online?” Nolan asked him, when he returned with two plates and an extra-large pizza with everything on it. “Where anyone can look at them? I didn’t photograph well.” Or should he have said, I don’t photograph well?

Sean surveyed him with a critical eye while still managing to take a bite and chew enthusiastically at the same time. “Yeah,” he finally decided, “that’s probably because your face isn’t really together. You know? It’s kind of bony, and your hair is always sticking out, and...”

Nolan held up a hand to silence him. “If you keep going, my ego may never recover.”

Sean shrugged. “Allie likes you, so what difference does it make what you look like?”

“That’s true.” Of course, that was assuming Allie wasn’t conning him big-time.

But...why would she be? What did she have to gain from pretending to like him? From making up a background that would satisfy him?

None of it made any sense. His original questions had been casual; he didn’t care where she’d grown up or gone to high school. He’d never have given her answers a second thought if she hadn’t been so obviously evasive, and if then she hadn’t lied.

Or her mother lied, he reminded himself.

“I can help you find her yearbook online if you want,” Sean offered. “If you don’t think you can.”

“It’s probably not beyond my abilities,” Nolan said drily. “If I fail, you can be my backup.”

“Maybe she looked dorky in high school. She might have had zits all over her face, or dyed her hair blond or had a whole bunch of piercings.”

Nolan finally did laugh. “In which case, I won’t recognize her.”

Sean pondered for another minute. “I bet Allie never had zits.”

“I bet not, too.”

When they got home, Nolan did not rush straight to his computer. He would be happiest if Sean didn’t know how serious he was about this search. The kid kept popping out of his room to ask questions for his research paper and then to tell Nolan this cool thing that had happened today and that sucky one. At long last, he disappeared and stayed disappeared.

Nolan went online.

It took some doing, but damned if Sean wasn’t right. It appeared that many if not most high schools now put the yearbooks up on the internet. What’s more, they were apparently going back and putting the old ones up, too. If Nolan wanted, he could probably hunt for his parents’.

As it happened, he’d seen their yearbooks. Those photos had cemented his awareness that he did not in any way resemble the man he had always called Dad. Once he’d known the truth, he’d felt dumb for not suspecting sooner.

Shaking off thoughts about his lying parents, he zeroed in on Fairfield High School, Oklahoma—the computer seemed determined to divert him to a high school with the same name in another state.

Allie had moved at the beginning of her senior year, she’d said. Probably before photos were taken. He found the year before she’d moved, although he could conceivably be a year off, depending on whether she was almost twenty-nine or barely twenty-eight. The search by name brought up one student with the last name of Wright—a boy named James. He took a careful look, but the kid was skinny, blond and had a big nose. Not Allie’s brother—and hadn’t she said he was older than her, anyway? He’d presumably already graduated the year she was a junior.