“I’m so sorry about this, honey.”
Jessica continues to pace by the fireplace, fuming, the anger temporarily overcoming the horror.
She couldn’t have done it, Allison says to herself. Not Jessica. She feels the heat burning in her chest, a moment of panic, however hard she tries to fight the logic working through her brain.She wouldn’t be so distraught that she’d kill him.
They spend the remainder of the evening repeating this conversation. Allison interrogates Jessica on what, exactly, she did in the house, where she went, whether anyone saw her. She tries to cast aside the growing realization that Sam Dillon is dead, because she must focus on the young woman who might be charged with his murder.
Jessica decides to have some wine, the first time she has done so in front of her mother, the legal limits of a twenty-year-old drinking alcohol notwithstanding. It’s a rebuke, Allison realizes, but she will certainly not object under the circumstances.
Because either way, whether she killed him or she simply fears that she will be accused of doing so, Jessica needs to be calm now. A little wine won’t hurt. And Allison sees, finally, that her interrogation is beginning to cause a panic in her daughter.
Oh, she is certainly behaving as if she were innocent. If she killed Sam, she is very talented at acting otherwise. So no, she couldn’t have done it.
Right?
There is no remorse, not even a hint, which is what Allison would expect to see. It is horror, revulsion, but not remorse, or even fear.
So no, she couldn’t have done it.
Jessica is wiped out by eleven-thirty, and a bit tipsy, after nearly three hours of conversation. They may go to the police together, tomorrow, they decide. Explain all of this. Allison is not so sure. She envisions a picture painted by local cops: a young, confused woman with a crush on a man; he dumps her; the woman goes to the house the next night and bludgeons him. There could be people, regardless of what Jessica thinks, who could attest to each and every one of these facts.
She is not so sure how this will look. She considers going to Sam’s home now. She admits that in part it is because she wants to see him, to touch him again. To say good-bye.
But that is not the only reason. She wants to see how her daughter left things. She wants to see how things look before she marches her daughter into a police station to admit that she was there tonight.
Jessica goes off to bed. Allison watches her daughter take the stairs slowly. Jessica is utterly exhausted. Allison hopes that she will be able to sleep.
Allison returns to the living room and takes a bit of wine for herself. Yes, she wants so much to see him again. It hasn’t even registered yet. He is gone. Like something she has read about someone else, the anonymous victims in the news every day. Not Sam.
No, Jessica could not have killed him. No. Impossible.
“Oh, shit.” She hears her daughter upstairs.“Shit.”
Allison stands and moves to the hallway. Jessica rushes down the stairs and through the living room, scanning the carpet, overturning cushions, cursing as she goes along.
“What?” Allison asks in a panic. “What?”
Jessica continues her inventory, moving from the living room to the kitchen, running her hands over the counter-tops, even opening the refrigerator, then racing outside, leaving the front door wide open.
Allison follows, calling after her. Jessica runs to the driveway, jerks open her car door, and looks through the car even more thoroughly than the house.
“Jessica, for God’s sake, what?” she asks. She sees the fear now, for the first time, on her daughter’s face. She feels the fear in herself, too, followed immediately by a sense of calm. A mother’s defense mechanism. She knows how much she loves the daughter who has felt betrayed by her. She knows that she would do anything for her.
“Tell me it’s not at Sam’s,” Jessica mumbles urgently to herself, searching the floorboards of the car. “Please tell me I didn’t leave it-”
“Jessica,” Allison says calmly. “Tell me.”
Jessica gets out of the car slowly and looks at Allison with tears in her eyes, searching her mother’s face for some kind of comfort, no differently than she has looked at Allison so many times, for so many reasons, over the years.
“Mother,” Jessica says, her throat full, “I’m missing one of my earrings.”
ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER
Ram Haroon squints into the light of the room, after traveling blindfolded in a dark sedan, then up several flights of stairs. His father is next to him, patting his arm protectively.
“Everything is fine, Zulfi,” he says to him.
“Not Zulfi,” says the man behind the desk, an American speaking the native Pakistani language rather well. “Now it’s Ram, I thought.”
“Yes, Ram,” says his father.
The man across the desk is wearing a light blue shirt and glasses. He is about Ram’s father’s age, but sun has damaged his Caucasian skin.
“Zulfi,” the man says to Ram, “is a bit too, uh ‘democratic,’ let’s say. Fine for Baluchistan, but here in Peshawar, not so good.”
Ram-born Zulfikar Ali Haroon-was named after the first democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was ultimately overthrown by the first of several dictators who have controlled Pakistan since its birth. Ram’s dead sister, Benazir, was named after Zulfikar’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who later was elected to the same post herself.
“Your mother liked freedom,” says the man.
Ram stares at the man.
The man nods. “Your mother worked for Central Intelligence for several years.”
“I know that,” Ram says defiantly. Ram has known this, to be precise, for all of forty-eight hours, after he confronted his father about what he had been doing in secret, all of the late-night business he had been conducting. He had figured that Father was running guns for themujahedin, that he was probably connected to one of the militant groups, but he hadn’t figured that Father was doing so at the request of American intelligence.
That was something that none of the militants knew, either.
“Your father is an undercover operative,” says the man.
“I know that also.”
“Good. So you know that if you ever released that information, he would be immediately killed. And so, probably, would you.”
Ram feels the heat in his chest. Father places a hand on his arm.
“He knows that,” Father says.
Ram sees his mother now with a renewed admiration. He is not, himself, political, and never has been. Such concerns are lost on this thirteen-year-old boy. His classmates who have lived in Peshawar their whole lives have experienced more of it, and have developed an anti-Western understanding of the world, but Ram is a child of Baluchistan, where this holy war means little more than a few hundred Afghan refugees spilling into their region. But Mother always preached about freedom, about America, about the bravery of Zulfikar Bhutto, who fought for freedom and spent the last years of his life tortured and neglected in prison, before he was summarily executed by one of the many dictators who have strangled Pakistan.
Your Pakistan will be a free Pakistan, she often told him.
“I want to join also, Mr. Shiels,” Ram says in English.
“So your dad says.” Shiels leans back in his chair, an easy smile on his face, but his eyes narrow.
Mr. Shiels will need convincing. Father, too, will need convincing. Father did not want this for Ram, but he probably realized that, in part, his son would want to be a part of this for the same reason that Father did, as a way of continuing a connection with Mother.
Father had reluctantly explained to Ram, after much prodding, that Ram would be treated differently in the CIA than Father. He was educated and had his mother’s intelligence. He would probably continue in his education and become an asset, in the eyes of whatever Islamic militant organization he pretended to be a part of, someone who could plausibly travel overseas as a student and be engaged in a much more far-reaching operation than running guns.