Copyright © 2010 John Skeen. All rights reserved.

The DNA test had come back. The strange little man with the East European accent really was my father. He looked nothing like me, was a foot shorter than I was, and as far as I could tell we didn't share any interests of any kind. If we had the same DNA shouldn't we have at least something in common? Apparently not.

When I got the news I decided to take him to the Fallaise, allegedly the best French restaurant in town. I was surprised how much the whole thing seemed to mean to me. The orphan had a father! The story was that my mother had died in childbirth and my father had immediately put me up for adoption. It was a perfectly rational and compassionate choice on his part as far as I was concerned, so there was no cause for feelings of anger or tension between us. Why not celebrate? He seemed like a nice enough guy.

"Now that it's confirmed, how do you feel?" I asked him.

"How do I feel? I think it's great! It's a good thing to know, like one little piece of darkness in this life is lifted. That's why I decided to try and track you down, even though I was afraid you might be a bum, or dead. Now that I know you I'm glad you're my son. How do you feel?"

"You put it very well. I feel more whole, I'm glad I finally know who my father is, I'm glad you're a good guy."

"And you're a self-made man! You've got your own business!"

"Well, actually I had a company, but I sold it."

"To a computer company I'm guessing. All the big companies nowadays are computer companies."

"Something to do with computers. It's one of the biggest companies in the world, anyway."

"So, you sold your business. What are you doing now?"

I couldn't help grinning. There was an innocence about the man. I'd avoided talking to him up until now, worried that he might be a con man. But he wasn't a con man, he was an old man trying to make sense of the world in general and of his newfound son in particular. He was worried and a little disappointed that I'd sold my business. I might not have anything to do.

"I've been taking some time off."

"Ah, I see. Between jobs. Listen if you need to borrow some money, I haven't got a lot but …."

This guy was too much. I was completely charmed.

"No, no, no. I got a lot of money for my company. I don't have to work for the rest of my life if I don't want to. "

"Well, if you don't have to you don't have to. I'm not going to push. But really, I can always throw a few bucks your way ..."

"I'm pretty rich."

It felt good to have a father to say that to. Someone to impress.

"Well that's great. But stay out of the stock market. Bonds are safer. And remember the first rule: only spend the interest, don't touch the principal! Here, let me get the check."

"No. If you'll let me get the check I'll promise not to touch the principal."

"Done."

***

The DNA tests, his goofy generosity, and the new feeling of wanting to make my father proud of me, inspired me to take him up to my home on Shogun Lake. I actually own the whole lake and all the land around it. It's not part of the suburbs yet, but it will be in ten years, and by then it will be worth ten times what it was when I bought it. Maybe more. In the meantime it's where I live in splendid isolation, with only a few scattered vacation cottagers for neighbors.

He was a talker. As well as giving me investment advice he told me about his thirty years as a state worker in Olympia. He told me about growing up in Hungary. He gave me his thoughts on politics, on cars, on real estate, on women. Then, on the ride up to the lake, he stopped talking. Highway 1 goes through some of the Pacific Northwest rain forest, and when he saw the tall cedars in the mist he seemed to settle into a kind of deep tranquility. He seemed at home.

We pulled up to my house. "Big place," he said. When we got inside he stood in the living room and looked through the big glass doors at the sun setting over the lake. He didn't move for ten minutes. When the sun was down and the spell was broken he walked around and took stock of the house. He inspected it quite closely, looking at all kinds of details I would never have noticed. I got the feeling he knew a lot about houses. For the first time I saw a look of calculation in his eyes. He was trying to value the house. When he was done he came over to the refrigerator and got himself a diet soda.

"That must have been some company," he said.

"It was."

***

My father stayed at my place for a few weeks and he thrived. He swam every day even when it was chilly, he went for all-day walks in the woods; he found my scattered neighbors and chatted with them. It was clearly his idea of paradise. He started splitting wood, which he seemed to be expert at. On chilly nights we lit a fire. We barbecued a few times. But his amusing gregariousness had not come back. I asked him more about his life, his other family, the old country, the civil service job that had earned him his pension. He would hesitate and then answer slowly and thoughtfully, but with no great interest. This trip had turned him into a different man.

I had planned to take him home after a month but I couldn't bear to do it. I would be going to China for a few weeks and I wanted him to stay at the house he had fallen in love with. I trusted him to take care of the place, and himself. He would probably do a better job than I did. When I told him my plans he looked at me with what seemed a kind of sadness. I guessed it meant that he would miss me, but all he said was that he was thinking of getting some fishing gear.

My trip to China was going to be the beginning of the end of my long vacation, my first entrepreneurial move since I'd cashed out. I felt like an out of shape boxer. I was thinking too much about things I used to do instinctively. I was starting things then having to go back to the beginning and start over again. Even my laptop was behaving erratically, enough to spook me a little, but I didn't want to spend time worrying about it. I needed to concentrate on preparing for my high stakes meetings in China, not on worrying about inconsequential details.

I'd gotten lazy. There is no such thing are no inconsequential details. There is no excuse for what happened.

During my third week in Shanghai my credit cards stopped working. While I was trying to sort this out with the banks I discovered that my bank accounts were empty, too. I checked my trading account. Cleaned out.

I'm cool under pressure, I don't get excited when things go wrong. I didn't waste even a second avoiding the painful but obvious conclusion. It was possible that I was a victim of random identity theft, but that would be too much of a coincidence considering that I had left someone alone in my house for a month, someone who had had access to my computer for the month before that, someone whom I had met only a week before that.

There had been no DNA tests. The DNA labs had been fronts, probably nothing more than post office boxes. Once I'd let my "father" into my house he had managed to spend some time alone with my laptop and installed keylogger software, software that records every keystroke typed on a computer. He'd gathered up every account name, every password, and everything else of value I had typed into that computer. And then I had gone to China, giving him time and privacy to work out his endgame, and plenty of time to escape.

It was not a disaster, just expensive, embarrassing, and inconvenient. I undid as much damage as I could from China. I got a big overdraft from my bank to tide me over; I worked things out with the hotel and the airline. I called the RCMP in Vancouver and told them what had happened. I finished up my meetings in China, and I went home.

When I got back to the house I looked around. The car was gone of course, but aside from that nothing much looked different. Nothing seemed to be missing. That wasn't his style. He was a con artist, not a burglar.

My fake father, whoever he was, got away with about $250,000. A quarter of a million dollars. That's a lot of money. The cost of a moderately priced house. But my net worth is about a quarter of a billion dollars. That's what they paid me for my company.

He was a fool. All he had to do was keep up the act and he could have stayed with me, his rich generous son, forever, doing pretty much whatever he wanted. Instead he'd gone for the quick, easy money, and now he was just a crook on the run, old and getting older. He was a genius in his way, but I don't think he had a nose for the big score.

If I'd never found out the truth about him I would have lived in blissful ignorance, an orphan who had found his father, a lonely man who had found some undemanding company. I would have gotten real satisfaction out of looking after him, making him comfortable and happy, discovering his likes and dislikes. I would have had a family.

I try to be clear-eyed and rational about life, I try to guard myself against dishonesty and self-deception. It doesn't always work. It's embarrassing, but if I have to admit that I miss him, or I miss who he pretended to be. I miss having a father to impress. I would have been happier if had chosen to stay, if he'd kept the con going.

I wonder what his life is like now. Is he still trying for one more big score? Will the cops finally get him? Does he wish he had lived some other kind of life, a life where he didn't have to constantly look over his shoulder, a life where he could occasionally have an honest conversation? Does he wish he'd had a real family? Does he wish he'd had a real son?

One thing I'm sure of. He misses living in my house. Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, he misses my beautiful house on my beautiful lake.