Wildest Dreams (Thunder Point #9)(34)

Since he had to leave his laptop home and was always in very close company with his mother and others after school, his espionage was really suffering. Besides that, Lin Su was seriously researching something about asthma on the laptop when he wasn’t using it. Whatever she was learning was bound to restrict his activities—that was always the end result.

He walked down the beach stairs about halfway. Troy and Grace were in their little apartment, windows open to admit the cool fall air, so he went to Blake’s house. He went up the stairs almost to the top and sat down. He didn’t have to be out of sight, but he didn’t want his mother or anyone sneaking up on him. What he was doing took time and concentration. He flipped open the computer and logged on.

Charlie had already established a free email address with a password his mother would never guess. When he researched public records and other sites, like Finding Your Vietnamese Family, he always cleared his cache so if his mother checked his browsing history, it wouldn’t show up. He’d also set up a phony Facebook page with some picture he’d lifted off the internet and a name she wouldn’t recognize. He’d sent an email to Gordon Simmons, his adoptive grandfather, but had not received a response. Gordon would be at least seventy now and he certainly hadn’t turned up on Facebook.

But his younger daughter had. Leigh Simmons, college professor at Rutgers, was apparently beloved by current and former students. She was also on sabbatical for the fall semester. He’d tried to “friend” her, but he couldn’t reel her in—she didn’t know him. Or maybe she wasn’t paying much attention to her Facebook page while she was away. He’d sent her a message, which he understood would probably be lost in a buried file or ignored. He’d sent it to the faculty email address on their website.

Dear Leigh Simmons, my name is Charlie and I think my mother, Lin Su, could be your adopted sister. She was adopted when she was three, is Vietnamese and Caucasian American. She left home at eighteen. Do we have a connection?

An answer came back right away.

I’m sorry I missed your email. I’m traveling on sabbatical until late October and will only have limited access to email. If you need information directly, please contact my assistant...

He hadn’t bothered the assistant and hadn’t heard back from Leigh, of course. He was surfing the internet in search of old family pictures or news from the Simmons family. From newspaper clippings he’d learned that his grandparents divorced shortly after he was born and found pictures of Leigh Simmons in yearbooks and newspapers—her work in anthropology and writing on international human rights was apparently lauded. Even if she turned out not to be an adopted relative, she sounded like someone he’d like to meet.

“Looking at porn?”

Charlie almost jumped out of his skin and slammed the laptop shut. Blake was standing right behind him. He was helmetless now and in his stocking feet, eating an apple with one hand and holding a plastic bag of fruit in the other.

“Jeez, you are looking at porn!” Blake said.

“No, I’m not!”

“Well, then, what’s up? You panicked just then.”

“Never mind,” Charlie said. “What are you doing sneaking up on people like that?”

“Aren’t you on my property? Not that I mind, but Jesus, cut me a break. I’m not exactly spying on you.”

“What are you doing here? I saw you leave!”

He held up the apples. “I rode to the orchard on the other side of 101. The fruit stand.” He sat down next to Charlie. He fished an apple out of the bag and handed it to him. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Nothing,” he said, taking the apple.

Blake laughed. “You sound guiltier by the second.”

“I don’t need my mom to freak,” Charlie said.

Blake chuckled. “Okay, there are some things a guy wants to know that he can’t really ask his mom, that’s understood. Unless you’re researching building a bomb, I’m pretty trustworthy.”

“You’re saying you can keep your mouth shut? If it’s not a bomb?”

“Or a crime,” Blake said. “If you ask me to keep a confidence about something that’s not dangerous to yourself or others, I’m good for it.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yeah, probably,” he said, taking another big bite of apple.

Charlie gave him a kind of naughty smile. Blake must think he was looking up things like testosterone and wet dreams and the average age a guy loses his virginity. He’d already done all that. “My mother is Amerasian. She doesn’t want to talk too much about her family history. Or mine. I don’t think my biological father is really dead and I think it’s possible her Vietnamese mother isn’t, either. Vietnamese refugees were scattered all over the place. A lot of countries accepted them and families didn’t all go to one place. Some spent decades finding each other. My mother’s father couldn’t have been a soldier—she’s too young for that. Saigon fell and all the Americans left by 1975 but her grandfather could have been a GI. I’m trying to find out who I am.”

Blake stopped chewing for a moment. He started again slowly, finally swallowing. “Whoa.”

“Yeah, you can’t tell her. When the Vietnamese part of her goes nuts, it’s really scary. I’m not real sure how much Vietnamese she really knows, but I’m sure she knows all the swear words. Her temper is stored in the Asian parts.”