Whenever I asked my mother who she worked for, she would always say Global Geologist Unlimited. I did some routine background on them. The company was started in 1987.

My mother walked out on us in 1984.

After calling and emailing Global Geologist, I firmly established Sally Bins was never associated with them.

Next, I contacted George Mason University, where my mother attended under her maiden name, Sally Petrikova, and received her degree in Earth Science.

They had no record of her.

My mother’s father was deceased, but her mother still lived in Czechoslovakia. There were two Deniza Petrikova’s. Neither had a daughter.

That’s when I first contacted AST and began shelling out the five thousand a month for them to find Sally Bins.

The first report, looking into both my father and mother’s financials, marriage, birth certificates, and credit reports, was jaw dropping.

Sally Bins never existed.

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My dad met my mother at a coffee shop. Apparently, this is cliché, though I wouldn’t know. The only women I’ve met were either on Match.com—NIGHTOWL3AM—or in Ingrid’s case, a homicide detective questioning me for murder.

The coffee shop was called the Mighty Bean. The place was three miles from my dad’s apartment in Arlington, just on the west side of the Potomac. He would frequent the establishment, sitting in the corner, working on his latest project while sipping on cup after cup of the house brew. Being so close to DC, much of his work had to do with the alphabet soup of government agencies.

I imagine my father hasn’t changed much in the past forty years. I suppose he might have had a bit more hair, a little less forehead, and maybe even a collared shirt on, but I can’t imagine he would have made even a blip on the radar of the brunette sitting at the table nearby. And equally so, I imagine my father was so immersed in government jargon that he was unaware the woman next to him was staring at him quizzically.

“What are you working so hard on?”

According to my mother, my father didn’t react the first time, and she had to repeat the question.

When he did look up, his large glasses fell down his nose and he squinted at her through dark eyes under heavy brows. Pushing his glasses back up, his eyes opened wide and he said, “Holy moly.”

My mother was well aware of the power she held over the opposite sex and hadn’t worn an ounce of makeup since she was in her early teens. With her hair in a tight bun, a business suit designed to square off her naturally curvy frame, and glasses — equal in thickness to my father’s — magnifying those green eyes into two small planets, my mother was caught off-guard by my father’s candid reaction.

Never having blushed a day in her life, my mother’s cheeks grew warm.