Page 2 of Doomsdate

But my birthday’s next week.

“What’s so special about this boy that you’ve got to go out with him tonight, though?”

“Well, he’s smart, for one, a UNC professor, and he works out, eats well, and seems super normal.” I can’t tell Gramps my most compelling argument—that Dr. Everett Greer is smoking hot, with wavy chestnut hair, hazel eyes behind bookish tortoiseshell glasses, and a tall frame, complete with broad shoulders and a chest you could beach yourself on. The fact that he’s older and a professor to boot checks every one of my admittedly vague sexual-fantasy boxes. There’s a reason I’m still a virgin at twenty-nine, several if I’m being honest, but the biggest is that I have high standards for what kind of person I want to put inside my person.

And Dr. Everett Greer can get it.

Assuming I’m not being catfished. It’s a distinct possibility that’s plagued me ever since we matched on the dating app and started messaging a week ago. The messaging phase is usually when I lose most interested guys, so I’ve learned to keep the other major reason I’ve never gotten laid to myself. As it turns out, men don’t like women who are into survival. It blows my mind, honestly. How is having enough rations to last two years unattractive? But Everett didn’t balk at all when I mentioned practicing competition-level mixed martial arts, and he’s similarly passionate about eating minimally processed whole foods. Perhaps the biggest bonus of all: He’s as desperate to go on this date as I am, virus outbreak be damned.

I really hope I’m not being catfished.

“ ‘Seems normal’ ain’t enough. Not for you, Maisie-girl.” Gramps clears his throat. “Which is why I called in my guy.”

“Gramps.” I close my eyes and sigh. “Again?”

“He’s meeting you outside at the drop-off. Go on, now.”

Groaning, I grab a mask and exit my apartment, taking the stairs to the ground floor. I walk half a block down the deserted street to the postal collection box. On cue, my cellphone begins to ring. The caller is listed as Unknown.

I exhale and answer. “Hi, Frank.”

A nondescript gray sedan is parked across the street. Next to it is the bus enclosure, where an old Black man in a tan trench coat, brown fedora, and large sunglasses sits on the bench inside. His gloved hand holds a flip phone to his whiskered face.

“Never use my name, doll,” Frank wheezes into the phone. “This line could be monitored.”

Leave it to Gramps to use a PI older than he is.

“You got something for me?” I’m eager to get back inside. March is still cold in Durham, and the empty sidewalks are weirding me out. Frank doesn’t look so good, either. The narrow strip of face between his collar and his sunglasses is ashen.

“You know it. Check and see.”

I bend over as discreetly as I can—if I’m too obvious, Frank will yell at me—and slide my hand beneath the collection box. My fingers travel over a hardened knot of gum first, blech, but then the file folder slips into my hand.

I straighten, then begin thumbing through the background check Gramps commissioned on my date tonight.

It doesn’t take long.

“This is pretty skimpy,” I say into the phone cradled between my ear and shoulder. Frank’s usually much more thorough, but this file doesn’t contain anything more than what I already found online. The sound of loud heaving makes me look up.

Frank’s doubled over, a paper bag pressed to his mouth. It’s…full.

“Jesus, Frank. Are you okay?”

“I’m feeling under the weather, so I couldn’t do my full workup on your guy. I’m sorry, doll. But at least there’s no gun offenses, no arrests. He doesn’t even have any speeding tickets. As far as I can tell, Dr. Everett Greer’s clean as a whistle.”

“Good to hear. This virus is really something, huh.”

“Sure is. Your trip to New York’s off?”

“For now, at least. Guess I’ll have to wait until this blows over to uncover all the secrets of my mother’s past.” I give him a rueful smile, though he’s pretending to look down the street instead.

“Well, you know I’ll help you with that any way I can, doll.”

I hold the folder up in salute. “Thanks, Frank. Get some rest, okay?”

He nods, and the heaving begins again. I hurry back to my building. When I received the thick, padded envelope sent certified mail from the New York–based law firm Danielson & Rabinowitz two weeks ago, Frank was the first person I contacted. After a few days of digging, he confirmed it—the letter claiming that my mother’s parents, the now-deceased Astrid and Elias Nilsson, had left me their entire estate was legit. The keys in the envelope really did unlock their historic brownstone just off Central Park. And if I chose to liquidate their holdings, I’d never need to work again. To go from knowing literally nothing about my mother’s past to discovering she was the estranged daughter of wealthy Swedish immigrants has been disorienting, to say the least. But I contacted the law firm, set an appointment to review my grandparents’ estate, and bought my first-ever plane ticket. I was finally going to learn something about the family I never knew. I was going to learn who I am.

But then GI-27 hit. The firm canceled my appointment yesterday, and the airline my flight a few hours later. I’m disappointed, but relieved, too. So relieved. For someone who didn’t leave her homestead until she was twenty years old, and did so only after losing the one person, the one life, the one world that she knew, the idea of leaving, of going, of arriving, is incredibly loaded.