I tried to make sense of his words. The suggestion was ridiculous. Jack was in his thirties; he didn’t need bogus identification to buy booze. If they were right, which they weren’t, what would Jack be doing with a fake ID? I tried to imagine other possibilities. Had he got into trouble, been caught speeding, or running a red light? Had his license been revoked and he’d continued driving with a forged one? Had he never taken his driver’s test in the first place? I’d read about a similar case once. A man had driven for almost ten years before being found out at a random traffic stop.

“Why?” I said. It was the only word my brain allowed my mouth to articulate.

“We don’t know yet,” Heron said, still leaning forward, close enough for me to see the yellow flecks in her deep brown eyes. “This Jack Smith doesn’t exist, and by that, I mean the details on his license don’t match any records. Lily, it may not even be his real name.”

I wanted to rewind what I’d heard and listen again at quarter speed. If I did, maybe something, anything, would make sense. Their words sounded like gibberish, an alien language I couldn’t understand. “You’ve made a mistake, I—”

“What kind of problems was Jack having?” Stevens said.

“Problems?” I whipped my head up and looked at him, searching my brain for any concerns Jack might have shared with me of late. I wondered if I should mention he’d seemed a little agitated a few times. He worried about money a lot, I knew that, and he was always careful about not overspending. On more than one occasion he’d said he wished he could spoil me with lavish gifts, and I’d laughed and said it wasn’t the 1950s, thank you very much, I was perfectly capable of treating myself. Jack had countered that wasn’t the point, but I’d waved him off and told him to stop being silly.

Then there had been another occasion just last week in the shopping mall parking lot. It had been uncharacteristically busy because of a big sale, and a teenager in a shiny black Audi had taken the spot Jack had patiently been waiting for. Jack had yelled at him, called him a “pretentious git for nicking my place.” Once we’d parked elsewhere, and I’d suppressed a laugh after Jack translated git (jerk) and nicking (stealing), I said, “You never get bent out of shape for stuff like that. For a moment there I thought you’d go all Kathy Bates on him, like in Fried Green Tomatoes. What’s up?”