But honestly though, who cares? People make up all kinds of lies on the phone. It was probably some rando bumpkin screwing with you.
Meg frowned, dropping her phone into the cup holder without answering as the light turned green up above. On one hand, she knew Emily had a point—after all, hadn’t her mom said all kinds of weird stuff to people looking for her dad once he moved out last winter? One time she’d convinced some unsuspecting cable guy he’d gone to jail for mail fraud just to see if she could.
Still, it certainly hadn’t sounded like Colby was messing with her. At the beginning, maybe—all that stuff about the EC and super PACs. But the part about his dad? Meg didn’t really think the kind of rawness she’d heard in his voice was something a person could fake.
The lights in the house were all blazing when she finally pulled into the driveway, like her mom had thrown a party and forgotten to tell her about it, though when she got inside it felt even bigger and emptier than usual. Her mom was asleep on the couch in the den, the same smudgy wineglass from earlier still sitting on the coffee table and the TV blaring The Bachelor. Meg hit the power button on the remote and plugged her mom’s phone in to charge beside her, then laid a pilling cashmere throw blanket over her and walked through the downstairs, flipping all the switches off one by one.
Up in her room, she changed into her pajamas and pulled her laptop into bed, typing every conceivable variation of Colby Moran + Ohio into Google and getting a fat lot of nowhere. He didn’t have any social media that she could find. Maybe Emily was right, then, about the whole thing being a con job. Shoot, maybe Colby wasn’t even his real name.
Meg stared at the keyboard, wondering exactly how deep she wanted to get in here. David Moran + Ohio, she typed. She gasped quietly, though there was no one to hear her—there it was on the first page of search results, a tersely written obituary in the Ross County Dispatch from the beginning of last June:
David (Dave) Moran of Alma died suddenly at home on May 25. He is survived by his wife, Jennifer; his two sons, Matthew and Colby; and his dog, Tris, who loved him best of all. Services will be kept private.
So, Meg thought, squeezing her eyes shut, her skin just a little bit too tight, Emily had been wrong.
She tried Colby Moran + Alma next, and this time she found an old picture from the paper—a bunch of boys in scout uniforms at a Veteran’s Day parade, Colby holding one of those dinky little flags. He wasn’t facing the camera, but even from the side Meg could see that he was a nice-looking kid: tall and lean and almost feminine, with long eyelashes and pale cheekbones that caught the light. The caption listed him as twelve, which made him eighteen now—the same age as her, not that it mattered.
He had a serious expression. He had a very nice mouth.
She was still staring at the photo like a creep when her phone vibrated on the nightstand, insistent. Hellooo, Emily said. Did you die?
Meg slammed her laptop shut, as if Em could somehow see her. No no, she typed, sorry. Home safe. You’re totally right though, he was probably a total scammer. I’m over it now.
Good, Emily said. The cause of democracy needs you. Meet at Sbux before school? And text me IMMEDIATELY if you hear from admissions!
Meg hesitated, debating—God, what was wrong with her? What was she waiting for, exactly?—before keying in a thumbs-up emoji and setting her phone facedown on the nightstand. She sneaked one more look at Colby’s picture before she turned off the light.
Six
Colby
Colby listened to Meg from WeCount’s message standing in the living room while he ate his second attempt at scrambled eggs, plus two pieces of toast with jelly and then a third piece of bread he just ate plain. He stood there for another minute once the machine beeped, then went back and played the voice mail again—he was waiting for that flood of satisfaction to hit him, like when he came up with the perfect comeback to whatever idiotic thing Matt was saying, but to his surprise he just felt like kind of a dick.
He’d been hard on her, he guessed, holding out his crumby plate for Tris to