Need to Know Read Online Free PDF Page B

marry.
    —
    “VIV.”
    I blink and the memory is gone, like that. I hear strains of the monster truck theme song from the family room. Babbling. One toy banging another, plastic on plastic.
    “Viv, look at me.”
    Now I see the fear. His face isn’t blank anymore. His forehead’s creased, those wavy lines he gets when he’s worried, deeper now than I’ve ever seen.
    He leans forward across the table, places a hand over mine. I pull away, clench my hands in my lap. He looks genuinely scared. “I love you.”
    I can’t look at him right now, can’t bear seeing the intensity in his eyes. I look down at the table. There’s a smear of red marker, a small one. I stare at it. It’s seeped into the grain of the wood, a scar from some art project, long ago. Why have I never noticed it?
    “This doesn’t change how I feel about you. I swear to God, Viv. You and the kids are everything to me.”
    The kids. Oh God, the kids. What will I tell them? I look up, over to the family room, even though I can’t see them from here. I hear the twins playing. The older two are quiet, no doubt engrossed in the show.
    “Who are you?” I whisper. I don’t mean to whisper, but it’s what comes out. Like I can’t get my voice to work.
    “It’s me, Viv. I swear to God. You know me.”
    “Who are you?” I say again, my voice cracking this time.
    He looks at me, eyes like saucers, forehead creased. I stare at him, try to read the expression in his eyes, but I’m not sure that I can. Could I ever?
    “I was born in Volgograd.” He speaks quietly, evenly. “My name was Alexander Lenkov.”
    Alexander Lenkov.
This isn’t real. This must be some sort of dream. This is a movie, a novel. Not my life. I focus on the table again. There’s a constellation of little indentations where one of the kids banged a fork.
    “My parents were Mikhail and Natalia.”
    Mikhail and Natalia
. Not Gary and Barb. My in-laws, the people my kids call Granny and Gramps. I stare at the grooves in the table, these tiny craters.
    “They died in a car crash when I was thirteen. I didn’t have any other family. I was placed into state care, moved a few months later to Moscow. I didn’t realize what was happening at the time, but I was placed into an SVR program.”
    I feel a pang of sympathy, thinking of Matt as a scared orphaned boy, and then it’s quickly blunted by an overwhelming sense of betrayal. I clasp my hands even tighter.
    “It was English-language immersion for two years. When I was fifteen I was officially recruited. Given a new identity.”
    “As Matthew Miller.” Again, a whisper.
    He nods, then leans forward, his eyes intense. “I didn’t have a choice, Viv.”
    I look down at the rings on my left hand. I think back to those first conversations. Finding out we had so much in common. It seemed so real. But it was all made up. He’d created a childhood that never existed.
    Suddenly everything is a lie. My life is a lie.
    “My identity wasn’t real, but everything else was,” he says, almost as if he can read my thoughts. “My feelings are real. I swear they are.”
    The diamond on my left hand catches the light; I look at the facets, one by one. I’m vaguely aware of sounds from the family room. New sounds, louder sounds. Luke and Ella are arguing. I look up, away from my ring, and Matt’s watching me, but his head is craned just enough that I know he’s listening to the kids.
    “Work it out, you two,” he calls without taking his eyes off me.
    We stare at each other, both listening to the kids. The argument intensifies, and Matt pushes back from the table, goes in to referee. I hear snippets, the kids each trying to argue their side to Matt, his admonishments to compromise. There’s a fuzzy feeling in my head. The wine, maybe.
    Matt comes back holding Caleb and sits down. Caleb grins at me, sticks a drooly fist in his mouth. I can’t force my face into a smile, so I just look back at Matt.
    “Who’s the real Matt Miller?”