I didn’t tell him I’d hunted him down and discovered his identity, but I did tell him I’d dreamed the name “Chad Garrett.” I didn’t know whether the middle name was correct, because the records search had only said “G.” Within half an hour, he’d sent me an email: a list confirming all the personal data I’d found the day before and more. The only thing that didn’t match was his age.
“Age 38.”
I shrugged it off. The public records search must’ve been based on the year, and his birthday just hadn’t come yet this year. Our age difference was unexpected, but by then, I just couldn’t bring myself to care.
And anyway, my eyes kept returning to the first line of the email:
“Chad Garrett Fjelland.”
Chad Garrett. Chad Garrett. Could it possibly be that my dream had been right? It felt like a sign from God. It gave me hope that maybe the rest of my dream would come true someday, too.
He said, “Believing in your heart that you’ll always be anonymous, and then to give that up … I think that maybe that’s really the only way that a human being can share their heart. I never planned on surrendering that anonymity. You have what’s left of mine. Just never hurt me.”
It was late. He made the last play of the game and won.
Ever the tease, he said, “Finishing second in a two-person word game only hurts when you’re better at making words. Here’s three: goodbye, dear Megan.”
Ever the know-it-all, I corrected his grammar: “Here *are* three.”
“You passed the test,” he said. “Unchanged from the day I ‘met’ you. Unchanged.”
For the second night in a row, I cried myself to sleep.
* * *
Months went by. I was depressed and missed him terribly for a while. I came to hate the Internet, because I couldn’t ever get away from him. He’d deleted his Twitter account—my Gatsby was gone for good—but there was a new one whose tweets and favorites I checked obsessively for months after we stopped talking. And then there was his Spotify account. His Instagram. His Facebook, though he didn’t friend me. But even apart from the Internet, he seemed always near at hand. His hipster music began to play on mainstream radio stations, eventually becoming fodder for Westboro parodies. My brothers had taken a liking to his little Field Notes notebooks, too, and I loved and hated the sight of them strewn about the house. Pathetic.
Eventually I lost hope. Life went back to normal, but it was grayer than before. I’d finally seen what I was missing, and my world felt impoverished without it. Without him.
It got easier with time, but I woke up one morning the following June feeling altogether desolate. A dream again, though I couldn’t remember it. The house was silent so early in the morning—most of its eleven inhabitants were still asleep—and I traipsed down the stairs to find my mama sitting in our office in her pajamas, her face lit up by her computer monitor. She looked over at me with a wide smile that morphed into maternal concern when she saw that I’d been crying. She rose immediately and hurried over to put her arms around me, rubbing circles on my back. “What is it, sweet doll?” she asked softly. I couldn’t talk through the tears, and she just held me tight for a long moment. Finally I managed to choke out between sobs, “I just feel so alone sometimes. I didn’t know it was possible to be around so many people and feel so alone.”
She squeezed me and didn’t let go. She understood. “Oh, love bug.” She was so gentle. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened. He will comfort you. He does comfort you. I love you. We have a wonderful life.”
She was right. She had always been right. Outsiders had scoffed at the long years of my mother’s anti-lust entreaties, the hysterical ravings of a Puritanical sex-obsessed hypocrite: “Really?” they’d ask, “God is going to send you to Hell for going on a date? What exactly is the harm?” But they knew better. The truth was memorialized everywhere from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” King David’s gaze lingering on Bathsheba as she bathed on the roof, Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. Chance encounters igniting obsessions that shatter into heartache. The most pitiful part was that mine hadn’t even needed a face or a