Dear Adam (31 page)

Eden shook her head, lost and getting more so
by the second. She had been punched in the gut and left on the side
of the road in the middle of nowhere.

"You know Eden, she doesn't watch T.V."
Vivian said. "Catfish is a reality show where these two guys go all
over the country helping people meet other people they fell in love
with online. Only it turns out that the people they thought they
fell in love with are actually fakes, imposters and frauds. It's
totally depressing. There are people on there who've been
communicating online for years."

Sue turned back to Regine. "At least you
found out in time, honey."

"Eight months!" Regine cried, grief-stricken.
"Eight months of my life were a total lie."

Eden's dinner began its sickening rise. She
grabbed her purse and got up. "Sorry, I think I'm going to throw
up. I shouldn't have drunk anything tonight."

She heard Vivian get up after her but Eden
waved her away. "I'm going home and lie down. I'll talk to you
later."

Eden staggered to her car, reeling and
nauseated. She didn't know how she arrived at her house. The 1/2
hour ride from the restaurant was a frightening blank. She was
thankful for one thing, that Dante wasn't home and so she wouldn't
have to lie about how or why she felt so ill.

She climbed the stairs to her room in a daze,
leaving the house dark. She turned on her laptop and when it booted
up, she Googled one word: "catfish."

The Top 10 Ways to Tell if You’re Being
Catfished

1. They don’t have Facebook or Twitter.

2. If they have a Facebook profile, they
have very few friends.

3. All of their pictures look like
professionally taken model shots.

4. They claim to have an exciting job that
seems too unbelievable for their age.

5. They have no pictures with friends.

6. They are unable to do video calls, i.e.,
their computer doesn’t have webcam, they can’t download Skype,
their computer is broken, etc.

7. They say that they’ve never had an online
relationship and have rarely communicated with anybody online.

8. They’re in a foreign country.

9. They have extreme excuses not to meet up,
i.e. got in a car accident on the way to meet you, a family member
died, developed a sudden serious medical condition, etc.

10. They seem too good to be true.

There were a prolific amount of lists all
over the Internet about being catfished. Some were straightforward,
others were scathing and mocking. In every single list, Eden could
check off at least 75% of the telltale signs. Some obviously didn’t
apply. Adam never provided a photo of his face so she could safely
say he never claimed to be a handsome supermodel. But it was of no
comfort to her since everything else was a devastating, undeniable
match.

She numbly scrolled through at least 50 pages
of Google hits on catfishing, opening each link, reading each
damning example and vainly trying to figure out how she and Adam
would be exempt. Couldn’t it be possible that they were the
exception to the rule? Couldn’t it be possible that all of the
strange and troubling details of their relationship were symptoms
of something other than deliberate deception? She couldn’t possibly
fall in love with someone who wasn’t real? Could she?

How had she never heard of the term before?
She hardly ever watched television so it was understandable that
she never knew about the reality show. However, there was a famous
hoax some months back that was all over mainstream news media,
which she somehow missed, about a very handsome football player who
was involved in an online relationship for four years with a woman
he had never met. It turned out that the woman was actually a male
acquaintance who had planned and executed an elaborate ruse to
deceive him. Over and over, the same questions were asked - how
could he fall in love with a woman he had never met? Why didn't he
ever question that she was telling the truth? Was he merely naive
or supremely stupid?

When she was too sickened to read anymore,
Eden turned off the computer and sat in the dark. For how long, she
didn't know. Everything ran through her mind, from the very first
time Adam contacted her to the present. She forced herself to view
the past three months without a distorted, sentimental filter.

Adam had approached her by appealing to her
vanity while in a setting where she did not expect to be hit on. It
wasn't like being friended on Facebook, where she was a fanatic
about privacy and did not accept friend requests from anyone other
than real-life acquaintances and family. His approach had been as
different as sidling up to her at a bar or a club versus striking
up a conversation with her while she browsed in a bookstore.

She had been guarded when he first contacted
her, she knew. She had lobbied questions and deflected. He had
called her "Miss Elision" because she had been so evasive. By
answering all her questions then lamenting her suspicious,
inquisitive nature, he had erected a false representation of their
dynamic. He was being honest while she was being distrustful,
narrow-minded.

The first tweet, the first e-mail, the first
phone call - each step led to lowering her walls bit by bit until
he could breach them.

Adam's intellect and mystery were a seductive
combination. There had been no real resistance, she was forced to
admit. She had wanted to get to know him, wanted to learn his
secrets. He had cleverly sidestepped the issue of false identity by
putting forth a persona of an intensely private man. He hinted of a
dark past and spoke of danger if he sent pictures, if they had a
video call. She had been gratified in thinking that he was letting
her in, trusting her as he trusted no one else.

He had dealt with her requests to meet him
just as efficiently, she realized. The minute he thought she was
pulling back, the tone of his e-mails became panicked, and the very
next day he had an accident. What if it wasn't a freak and
unfortunate occurrence? As with everything he had told her, she had
no proof that it really happened. The accident conveniently pushed
back a meeting date for at least a couple of months while
simultaneously bringing them closer together. How could she view
him as a threat when he was injured, broken, and so vulnerable?

He was smart, probably the smartest man she
had ever known, but the past three months would not have happened
has she not allowed it to. He had created an illusion and she
willingly believed in it. Just as she did when she had been married
to Dante's father, she had been blind to every red flag and rushed
headlong into a doomed relationship. Back then, even when the
brutal truth had punched her in the face and landed her in the
hospital, she told herself lies. That he didn't mean it, that he
loved her. Yet eight years after leaving that marriage, she had
reverted right back to that stupid, self-deluded woman. She was
telling herself lies again.

She had worked so hard to make sure her and
Dante’s lives were peaceful and safe after the divorce, yet here
she was, having foolishly let a complete stranger into their
home.

It didn't matter that she didn't know about
catfishing. It didn't matter that it baffled her that anyone would
pretend to be someone else online. The warning signs were all
there. She willfully, stubbornly refused to see them.

Once while he was calling her on Skype, Adam
had accidentally pressed the video call button. He had immediately
hung up then called her back, this time using the voice call
option. He had questioned her repeatedly, asking if she saw
anything. Only when she reassured him multiple times that she had
seen nothing because the call had ended too quickly did Adam calm
down.

But she had lied to him. She did see
something. Not his face, but the clear and unmistakable image of
blue skies through a windowpane, lit by broad daylight. She didn't
realize until later why it troubled her. If Adam had been calling
from Sicily, then it would have been 10:00. At night.

When wanted to send him some books and other
presents while he recuperated, Adam had told her he used a postal
box in town because his house had lain empty for so long before he
bought it that the postal office didn't make deliveries there any
more. It sounded strange yet she had accepted it, attributing the
inconvenience to the intricacies of foreign mail.

There were a hundred little details that by
themselves would be eccentric or unusual, but put together they
formed a damning picture. It was all smoke and mirrors, a fanciful
masquerade. All Adam had to do was hint, provide a few details and
she filled in the rest. She didn't want to ask more questions. She
didn't want to probe deeper. Because deep down, she knew all the
stories he told wouldn't bear the scrutiny. She wanted to believe
the lies as badly as he did.

How did he even find her?

What made him think she would fall for
it?

Why her?

The blog.

It was all her doing, she realized. She
didn't need to post an online ad for the whole world to see stating
that she was a romantic woman of suggestible imagination, yearning
to fall in love with a fictional hero. The type of books she read,
the little tidbits about her life she let drop, all her reviews
indicated as much. For someone as perceptive as Adam, all he had to
do was peruse her blog to figure out her vulnerabilities.

He had picked her from a dusty bookshelf and
read her as easily as an open book.

Darling, I've tried calling you three times
now. I'm worried. Are you alright?

Eden stared at Adam's text. She’d had one
hour's turbulent sleep, having spent the rest of the night watching
all the episodes from the first season of Catfish. She forced
herself to endure every painful moment. There were no fairy tale
endings in any of the filmed real-life situations. Each uncovered
an elaborate deception. Each ended in emotional devastation.

She had done more Googling, trying to get
tips on how to do her own investigation. Most of the suggestions,
like dropping profile pictures on Google Image Search to see if
they had been used in other online profiles, were not applicable.
Finally, she found one easy to execute tip. She randomly picked 10
e-mails from Adam, found the IP addresses for the originating
e-mail headers, then entered them one by one in an IP address
website. None of the IP addresses returned to Sicily. All of Adam's
e-mails she checked originated from the United States.

There was no need to keep going. She just had
to face it, no matter how hard. Whatever she did from here on out,
she may not ever know what Adam looked like or who he really was.
But he had been unmasked, just the same. She now could not pretend
otherwise.

I don’t feel well.

Oh, darling, I thought so. It's a testament
to our closeness that I could tell something was wrong. If I were
there, I would take care of you, bring you some hot tea, carry you
to bed, and cradle you while you slept. In the future, when we’re
together and you’re ill, I will do precisely that.

That is a lovely dream. You have no idea how
much I’ve dreamt of us being together.

May I call you now?

I found a deal online for a round trip
ticket to Palermo in early December. The doctor said you’ll be
healed by then, right? It will be over three months since your
accident. Shall I buy it now before the deal expires?

Darling that's wonderful but I'm afraid I
have some bad news. I didn't want to burden you with it but I
realised I shouldn't keep things from you. My Uncle, the man I told
you about, is ill. As soon as the doctor clears me, I'll be flying
to Spain to be with him. And while I want to see you more than
anything, I don't want our first meeting to be tainted with this
horrible situation.