Chameleon ✔️

15 searches

My sole goal for the weekend is to hunker down and do some research. Ideally, I'd wake up around nine am on Saturday morning, have a cup of coffee, get nested up in my bed and wrapped up in my comforter, and get to Googling on Dad's laptop. Simple. The not-so-simple part is doing it without Dad's knowledge. The second simplest route would be to go to the library, but I could never use a public computer. That'd be too risky. So I think that option C will find me at the Whitneys' using their family computer under the guise of homework.

But Dad makes it all too easy.

I wake up around nine am on Saturday morning, and while I'm making my cup of coffee, he informs me that he's going into town to meet with Brody and that he'll be taking the car, leaving me stranded. I tell him that's fine; I was just planning on studying for finals anyway. He gives me a kiss on the head and tells me he'll be on his cell and to call if I need anything.

As soon as he's gone, I get nested up in my bed, wrapped up in my comforter, and get to Googling on Dad's laptop.

First, I search my own name. Aspen Brooks Quinn; it's always good to check now and again. To my relief, the results don't produce much else than the weather forecast in Aspen, Colorado. Next I search Delia Quinn. This brings up various profiles for same-named women who aren't my mother — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I vainly hope that somehow searching for my mother will lead me to Reese, but I know it won't. Because if it did, that'd mean that the law didn't do their job in erasing us well enough. I search "Dr. Ian" although I know it will bring up a vast amount of results. About 139 million, to be exact. I click on the images tab and scroll for that familiar face. But none of these Dr. Ians are the droids I'm looking for.

After pages and pages of awkward headshots of practicers of medicine, I decide that I don't have enough to go on. I need another hint, another clue. Perhaps if I dream again, I will get more answers, and then I will be able to further narrow down the results.

Lastly and purely out of curiosity, I search my father's name. Funny how I've Googled my own name countless times and my mother's a handful of times, but never my father's.

Still in the images tab, I continue scrolling, not looking for anything in particular. My dad's name is a pretty common one, and the search brings forth many, many photos of both boys and men alike.

About halfway down the page, my finger stills atop the mouse, and the computer screen stills along with the blood in my veins. The air in the room has noticeably chilled. The hair on the back of my arms stands straight.

There are many, many men in the world with the same name as my father, but only one is the man who met me in a dream.

And I'm looking right at him.

It's him; it's Ian; I'm positive. He's got the same dark hair, the same clear skin, the same soft eyes. He's younger in this picture than he was in my dream. But he's definitely a doctor if the caption of the image has any say in the matter... And he definitely has the same name as my father if the caption of the image has any say in the matter.

I fall off the bed. I literally fall off the bed. Thankfully, the laptop remains nestled safely inside the comforter. I take no immediate action to go back to the bed, to go back to the image, back to Ian, back to Dr. Quinn, back to this life someone with the same identity as my father lives. My brain is swimming with all the terrible, awful possibilities, and not a single one of them is that this could just be a coincidence. Nothing in my life has ever been the product of coincidence.

I cannot say for sure how long I am on the floor for, dumbfounded, staring, wondering. I jump with a start when my phone vibrates. Realizing that it could be my dad, I rise from the carpet and reach for the wadded comforter and sheets; the vibrating had come from somewhere within them. I fish my phone out and find a text not from Dad, but from Eli.