It was simple enough for Frank; he changed himself as he needed. He liked to talk about it in treatment. “Change is easy,” he would say. “Think about all the changes you’ve already made, the different people you’ve been in your life, think about the person you were before you started using, think about the person you were when you were using – the person you were with your friends, your family, your boss, your sponsor, whoever. You were lots of different people, changing from one to the other depending on who you were with and how you needed to act. Sometimes you changed from one person to another in a matter of seconds. I bet I was ten different people on any given day,” Frank said. “I was one person around my dad, another around my mom, another one with my sister, a different one around my friends who didn’t know I was an addict, and another one around the ones who did, and on and on. I changed so easily and quickly, no one seemed to know. I thought so anyway. You’ve already changed. Just being here. Change is easy. Don’t be trapped by who you think you were, or even who you are now. We’re all going to change.”

It was the only time I remember Frank mentioning his family. And I didn’t ask about it. Maybe it was my invitation and I missed it. I forgot all about it.

Now here I was talking with Casey, telling her that I wasn’t getting anywhere with the hotels and credit cards. I didn’t tell her that her brother had more than one identity. She asked a lot of the same questions I had, and we wound up about the same place. Then she said something I hadn’t thought about.

“Maybe he wasn’t in a hotel.”

“That’s what Froehmer said, I’m sure of it,” I said. “Maybe Froehmer doesn’t know, not for sure. Maybe somebody told him wrong.”

Where does that leave me?

“I think I can help,” Casey said. I was relieved and worried at the same time. I hadn’t been honest with her about a lot of things, about me and about her brother. There’s a lot she could find out about us, a lot I didn’t want her to know.

“I can do this,” I said. “I need to.”

“I know,” she said. “I won’t be in the way. I’ll stay out of it.”

I didn’t want that either, not exactly.

—

“I just called for a reality check,” Casey said.

“You might have the wrong person,” I joked.

“I’m getting inundated with calls and texts and posts and all that about Frank, about what a great guy he was. They’re trying to make him out like some kind of saint. That’s not who he was, you know that.”

“He was no saint,” I said.