“Mia?” He pushed the closet door further open and saw her sitting with her back to a rise of drawers, wiping her face, one hand clutching the ever-present iPhone.
“Sorry. I just — Sorry. Sometimes…”
“May I come in?”
“Please.”
He put his shoulders to the wall opposite her, beside the hanging blouses, and slid down to sit facing her. Her feet, shoved into actual bunny slippers. They were fluffy pink and featured a heart and stitched bubble letters that proclaimed, WORLD’S BEST MOM. The sight of them brought something deeper than just amusement. It surprised him to realize that he liked this home, where knives were for spreading butter and superglue for repairing toys.
“Sorry I was harsh earlier,” she said. “Upstairs.”
“You were just being protective.”
“I’ll tell you this: Parenting ain’t for sissies.”
“No,” he said. “Doesn’t seem to be.”
“And with work right now…” She blew out a breath. Her hair floated back down over her forehead. “Facing it all by myself feels so fucking scary sometimes. And I know that’s pathetic with everything I have, but…”
He watched her expression shift.
“I did everything right,” she said. “Studied hard, worked hard, was a good wife. I know—‘Grow up,’ right? I sound naïve and entitled, but Christ. You’d think it’d work out. Better. Than this.” She fluttered a hand around the closet, the heavy sleeves of disembodied coats, the wire hangers, the crowd of sweaters bending a shelf overhead. “I have this fantasy notion of myself. Holding it together. But I can’t seem to get there. Why not?”
He was unaccustomed to these kinds of problems, significant but not extreme, prosaic but not trivial. Everyday difficulties. A boy without a father. A toilet that wouldn’t flush. Frozen peas to bring down the swelling. She was looking at him expectantly, and he realized that an answer was due.
“I suppose everything’s a matter of discipline and focus.”
She made a thoughtful noise. “It might seem that way to you,” she said, not unkindly. “There’s no one else in your life — I mean, in your life all the time. People are messy. Relationships aren’t linear. They knock you on your ass. Make you detour, reverse, change focus. You can’t be perfect unless you’re alone, and then guess what? You’re alone. So you’re still not perfect.”
An image came to Evan: Jack moving through the farmhouse late at night, thumbing up flecks of dust, aligning objects on counters, stacking the place mats and cloth napkins with assembly-line precision. Evan had always viewed those nighttime rituals as displays of mettle, an almost religious observance of setting the room, the house, the universe in order.
“Maybe none of what we think matters really matters at all,” Mia said. “Maybe it’s the little stuff that adds up, inch by inch, until you’ve built something you didn’t even know you were building. Driving car pool. Making school lunches. Sitting bedside at a hospital night after night…” Her eyes glinted in the dark. “But that’s what takes it out of you, too.” She tilted her head back to keep more tears from spilling. “I worry that I can’t handle everything that’s coming by myself. All the mess of life. That I’m too sensitive. Too fragile. That it’ll keep coming and I won’t have what it takes.”
“You’re not fragile,” Evan said. “You’re not afraid to show the cracks.”
“Great.” A hint of a smile. “I’m cracky.” She stuck her arm out at an upward diagonal. “Help me up.”
“You sure you’re ready to exit the closet?”
She cocked her head. “There’s a mess to be picked up and laundry to be done, and I am again equal to the task.”
He rose, grasped her hand, pulled her up. She rose as if weightless. For a moment they were close, stomach to stomach, in the tight space. Her eyes on his chin, her breath faint against his neck. And then she brushed past him, patting his side. They emerged from the bedroom together. In the living room, she turned off the TV, started folding the laundry on the couch.
Starting for the door, he thought again of that life lesson Mia had written out for her son and stuck to the walclass="underline" “Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.” The little phrase stopped him there on the floorboards. He looked across at the Post-it and read it again, wondering if the Commandments were immutable and determinate or whether new rules could be added as one pleased. Again he thought of Jack poking around in the dark house, tidying up, making invisible adjustments that he’d make again the next night and the night after that. The farmhouse, so safe and clean and soothingly spare, had always felt somehow outside of time. This home gave the opposite impression. With its smudged handprints and framed family portraits, it seemed to contain within its walls the entire brutal cycle of life — and yet it also contained a comfort of a different kind. Though the specific thought wriggled away before Evan could pin it down, he sensed somewhere that this brand of comfort couldn’t exist without the brutal realities.
In his peripheral vision, Evan sensed Mia crouch over the fallen tray. He reversed direction and joined her, helping pick up the broken pieces.
18
Look Closer
Around Evan’s seventeenth birthday, a threat arises, acquainting him with the real-life stakes of the profession. News reaches Jack that a file in a classified database somewhere may have been compromised. Drawing on a tenacity forged in his early infantry-sergeant days, he locks up the house and stays awake for seventy-two hours in the dark foyer, facing the front door from a wooden stool, combat shotgun across his knees, moving only to drink from a thermos and relieve himself. A phone call from a blocked number indicates that the threat, if it was a threat at all, has passed.
As Jack returns the wooden stool to its place at the kitchen counter, he calls Evan to his side. He throws some leftover turkey on a plate, then pours himself vodka over ice. Leaning against the sink, drink in hand, he wears a thoughtful expression; his vigil has left ample time for contemplation.
“I need to teach you how all this works, because knowledge is power and I will not have you take the risks you will take unempowered. Our program is a full-deniability, antiseptic operation run off a black budget. The money comes straight out of Treasury. It’s printed and shipped, utterly untraceable. Which means, essentially, that we have an unlimited budget. DoD manages this, threads the needle through an outlet in the Department of the Interior.”
“Department of the Interior?”
“Exactly. Land management, national parks. Who’s gonna look there?”
Jack proceeds to lay out the arcane arrangements. Bank accounts on various continents. The cash moves through a contracting agent in Aberdeen, Maryland, who doesn’t even know what he’s contracting, then filters out. P.O. boxes, traceless wires, currency swaps. Lawyers in closet-size offices rented by the week, concealed in beehive complexes housing jewelers, boiler-room operations, fly-by-night travel agencies. Desks and phones and nothing more.
Evan listens intently, his hand dipping below the counter from time to time so Strider can lap turkey from his palm. Jack pretends not to notice. The only permitted variation in discipline comes where the dog is concerned.
“Are you supposed to be telling me this?” Evan asks.
“No.”
The Sixth Commandment: Question orders.