My daughter has been seeing this guy for about four months now. And here’s the weird part? We never met him, didn’t even know what he was called until just a little while ago. They ran into each other at a diner by her office, and supposedly he felt too nervous to come around and see us.
But now, the two of them got engaged, and we finally pushed for him to come over and sit down with the whole family.
I cooked up a huge meal, and my husband picked out some incredible ribs. We couldn’t wait to meet the man who’d be marrying into our family. But when my daughter walked through the door with him, I almost hit the floor. I knew him right away. The moment he told me his name, it all fell into place.
“Derek, come down to the garage with me and help me grab some sodas for dinner,” I said, waving him in front of me. The second he stepped inside, I shut the door behind him.
“Okay, now we call the police,” I told my husband and my daughter. “There’s a lot I need to say.”
Before Any of This
My daughter is Renee. She’s twenty-six, works in billing for a medical group downtown, and has always had pretty decent judgment about people. Better than me, honestly. I’m the one who trusted a contractor who took fourteen thousand dollars and disappeared. Renee is the one who told me something was off about him from the jump.
So when she started talking about this guy in October, I wasn’t worried. She sounded happy. Lighter than she’d been in a while. She’d come over on Sundays and mention him in passing. He took me to this little Italian place on Marsh Street. He fixed the rattling noise in my car and wouldn’t let me pay him back. Small things. The kind of details that add up to a picture.
My husband Gary kept asking to meet him, and Renee kept saying soon, soon, he’s just shy, he doesn’t want to make a big thing of it. Gary would let it go for a week and then circle back. That’s Gary. Patient, but not a man who forgets.
Four months went by like that.
Then she called on a Tuesday night, and I could tell from the first syllable she was smiling so hard her face probably hurt. She was engaged. His name was Derek. Derek Paulson. Could we do dinner on Saturday?
We said yes before she finished the sentence.
Saturday
I made a pot roast because that’s what I make when I want someone to feel welcome. Gary drove out to Rudy’s and got a full rack of ribs plus two pounds of burnt ends because Gary does not half-ass a first impression. My son Marcus came over with his wife Teri and their two kids. My mother-in-law drove in from Clarksburg. We had the dining room table extended all the way out for the first time since Thanksgiving.
It was a good afternoon. The kids were running around, Gary had a game on in the background, and everything smelled the way a house should smell when something good is about to happen.
Then headlights came up the driveway.
Renee came in first, already talking, already laughing at something, holding the door open behind her. And he walked in.
I was standing maybe eight feet away, drying my hands on a dish towel. I looked at his face and my brain just stopped.
Not a slow recognition. Not a he looks familiar feeling. Immediate and total, like a key going into a lock.
I knew exactly who he was.
The Name Confirmed It
He had on a gray button-down, dark jeans, boots that weren’t new but were clean. He was maybe thirty, thirty-one. Brown hair, a little long. Good-looking in an ordinary way. He came in with his shoulders slightly forward, the way some men do when they’re genuinely nervous, not performing it.
“Mom, this is Derek,” Renee said. “Derek, this is my mom, Carol.”
He put his hand out and gave me a firm shake and said, “It’s really nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Hatch. Renee talks about you all the time.”
And I thought: Paulson.
Renee had said the last name on the phone Tuesday. I’d heard it and it didn’t catch. But standing there looking at his face, hearing him talk, it caught now.
Derek Paulson.
His father was Ray Paulson.
What I Knew About Ray Paulson
Ray Paulson had been my neighbor for three years, back when Gary and I lived on Fenwick Court, before we moved to this house. This was maybe eight, nine years ago now. Ray was a quiet man, kept to himself, seemed fine. We waved across driveways. He watched our cat once when we went to visit Gary’s sister in Phoenix.
Then one spring, a woman named Donna Marsh filed a police report. Then another woman filed one. Then a third.
It came out over about six weeks. Ray Paulson had been running a con on women he met online, older women mostly, widows and divorcees. He’d build up a relationship over months, borrow money for various emergencies, and disappear. The amounts weren’t always huge but they added up. One woman lost forty-two thousand dollars. Another lost her car. One of them, a sixty-four-year-old retired teacher named Beverly something, had a breakdown over it. She’d believed he was going to marry her.
The police came and took Ray away on a Wednesday morning. I watched from my kitchen window.
Gary and I moved the following year, for unrelated reasons. But I never forgot Ray Paulson’s face.
And Derek Paulson had that same face. Same jaw. Same set to the eyes. Standing in my dining room with his hand out, smiling at my daughter.
The Garage
I kept it together for about four minutes. Long enough to say something normal, introduce him to Gary, watch Renee take his coat. Then I caught Gary’s eye and did the thing we’ve been doing for thirty-one years, the small look that means follow my lead and don’t ask questions yet.
“Derek, come down to the garage with me and help me grab some sodas for dinner,” I said, waving him in front of me. The second he stepped inside, I shut the door behind him.
He stood there looking at the shelves of paint cans and old extension cords, perfectly relaxed, not suspicious. Either he was genuinely innocent or he was very, very good at this.
I went back inside. Gary and Renee were already reading my face.
“Okay, now we call the police,” I told my husband and my daughter. “There’s a lot I need to say.”
Renee went white. “Mom. What.”
I kept my voice low and flat. I told them about Ray Paulson. About Fenwick Court. About the women, the money, Beverly whatever-her-last-name-was. I told them Derek had Ray’s face and Ray’s last name and had been dating my daughter for four months without once agreeing to meet her family until an engagement forced his hand.
Gary didn’t say anything. He just picked up his phone.
Renee said, “You could be wrong.”
I said, “I know.”
She said it again, louder. “You could be wrong, Mom.”
I said, “I know I could be wrong. That’s why we’re calling before I go back out there and say something to his face.”
What the Dispatcher Said
Gary called the non-emergency line first. Told them we had a concern about a guest in our home, gave them the name Derek Paulson, gave them Ray Paulson’s name as a possible relative. The dispatcher said she’d have someone look into it and call us back, could take twenty minutes, maybe more.
Twenty minutes.
Derek was in the garage with the Pepsi.
I went back out and said the ribs needed another few minutes, why didn’t we all sit in the living room. Marcus had picked up on something by then, I could tell, because he started talking too much the way he does when he’s nervous. He was asking Derek about cars, about football, filling every silence. Teri was watching me.
Derek was charming. That’s the thing that kept making my stomach turn. He was genuinely funny, asked Gary good questions about his work, got down on one knee to show Marcus’s youngest kid a little card trick. A card trick. He had a deck of cards in his jacket pocket.
Renee sat next to him with her hand in his, looking at me like she was begging me to be wrong.
I wanted to be wrong so badly.
The Call Back
Forty-three minutes. That’s how long it took.
Gary stepped into the kitchen and came back with a look I couldn’t fully read. He leaned down and said something in my ear and I had to hold very still.
Derek Paulson, thirty-two years old, did have a father named Raymond Paulson, currently serving time in a federal facility in Ohio. Derek himself had a record. Two counts of fraud, one in Georgia, one in Tennessee. Both involving women he’d met and dated. Both resulting in financial losses. He’d done eight months the first time, had charges dropped on a plea the second time.
He was on probation.
Meeting the family, getting engaged, that would all look very good for him. Very stable. Very reformed.
Two officers were on their way.
What Happened Next
I went into the living room and I looked at my daughter.
She was already watching me. She’d been watching me the whole time, and I think some part of her had been doing math in the back of her head for forty-three minutes. She was smart. She’d always been smart.
I didn’t say anything. I just looked at her.
She looked at Derek.
And Derek, to his credit or maybe just because he was good at reading rooms, felt it. His smile stayed on for about two more seconds, then it changed. Not dramatically. Just a small, almost imperceptible shift, like a light going slightly dimmer.
“Is everything okay?” he said.
The doorbell rang before anyone answered him.
Renee didn’t cry until after the officers had taken Derek outside to the porch. She sat at the dining room table with the big extended leaf still in it, the pot roast going cold on the counter, and she just held her left hand in her right hand and looked at the ring.
She didn’t take it off that night. I didn’t ask her to.
Gary put the burnt ends in the microwave. My mother-in-law, who is seventy-nine years old and had understood absolutely nothing of what had happened, said they were the best burnt ends she’d ever had.
We ate dinner.
—
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