Peter’s charcoal eyes lingered on the bag at Evan’s feet. “But it’s never a minute. It’s always, like, a hour, and I’ve been waiting forever to get my gift back.”
Mia said, “Five minutes.”
“Which is it? A minute or five minutes?”
“Peter.”
“Fine.”
He scampered off to his room.
Evan looked down at the union of his hands floating between his knees. He kept them clasped to hide the damage to his palms.
Mia said, “How about your hands?”
He should have known that nothing would escape her district-attorney eye.
He said, “Fell down the stairs.”
“If we don’t have trust, Evan, we don’t have anything.”
“I’m trustworthy,” he said. “I just have limits on disclosure.”
She made a noise in her throat that showed what she thought of that.
He tried not to recall the two nights he’d spent with her. Her mouth pressed to his shoulder, their bodies entwined. After she’d rested her head on his chest, her ear had left an imprint on his skin, the sine wave of the yin-yang. Everything an inside joke, as if they were building a language of their own.
And now this arctic freeze, the two of them riding ice floes drifting slowly apart. Was this the flip side of intimacy? You get closer and closer until you can no longer discern each other?
“My case was neatly tied up,” she said. “Literally. Oscar Esposito hog-tied on the front steps of the domestic shelter.” Her gaze was unremitting. “Happy day.”
He nodded.
“How did you — Wait, don’t answer that. I can’t … I shouldn’t know.” She scrunched her eyes as if warding off a headache. “Look, there’s no way that we can … I mean … You and I, with what we do — or don’t do — we keep trying, but we can’t be together when this interplay of law and … and not…” She shook her head. “I can’t talk to you intimately and have it domino into something out there.”
“Allegedly,” he said.
“Allegedly.”
“If I had done it,” Evan said, “would that be bad?”
“Yes.”
“If someone hadn’t stopped him in that moment, then his wife and daughter would have been harmed. If not killed.”
“That’s right. That’s the awful, awful cost of living with laws.”
He considered. “Can you say that you regret the outcome? Would you rather he—”
“No. Of course not. But that’s the part no one talks about, right? The old TV scenario. Would you torture a terrorist to get the location of a nuclear device that would kill millions of people?”
Evan said, “Yes.”
“Me, too. But that’s where most people stop. They don’t think beyond it. But you have to think beyond it. Because that’s not the whole answer, is it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“Afterward, in order to protect society, in order to protect the Constitution, in order to preserve order and uphold the law—”
“I’d have to answer for what I did. I’d have to be accountable.”
Her eyes welled. “Right,” she said.
“That’s the cost that has to be paid,” Evan said. “The sacrifice that has to be made.”
Mia pulled her legs beneath her and leaned back, dimpling the cushion. Her lush, messy curls were taken up in a loose ponytail, showing off the slope of her neck. A stray crayon mark stained the fabric, a periwinkle flare. A candle on the kitchen counter threw off autumnal scents. On the cooktop a pot simmered, dinner in the making.
Evan thought about how much he would miss this place. He had nowhere else like it in his life. He never had. He figured he never would.
Mia said, “I have to go into a courthouse next week representing the largest district attorney’s office in the United States, with the full power of the state of California behind me. I have to prosecute Oscar Esposito on new charges despite the fact that I know—”
Evan cut her off sharply. “You don’t know anything,” he said. “Do you?”
She didn’t answer.
“You don’t know anything about what happened to Oscar Esposito,” he said. “And you don’t know anything about me.”
It was the only way to protect her.
She bit her lower lip, her face warring between sadness and anger. “No. I guess I don’t.”
Peter came out of his bedroom. “It’s been like nine hours.”
Evan said, “Sorry, bud,” and lifted the bag.
Peter scampered over and claimed it. He tore at the wrapping, revealing the half-moon plaque. “Wow. So cool. Is she a goddess?”
“Sort of.”
Tommy had done an impeccable job with the soldering, nothing more than a hairline crack visible through the casting of Lady Justice.
“The sword she holds represents justice and reason,” Evan said. “And it shows she’s prepared to carry out her verdict. The scales symbolize fairness. As she weighs the merits of each case, she has to be objective. She can’t show the slightest prejudice.”
“I thought she was blindfolded,” Peter said.
“Not originally.” Evan looked across at Mia. “She sees what she has to do. And she does it anyway.”
Mia blinked a few times.
Peter held up the plaque, regarding it with awe. “I can’t wait to show this to Ms. Bracegirdle.”
Evan rose and ruffled his hair. “Good-bye, Peter.”
“Good-bye, Evan Smoak.”
Evan sat at his usual table, eyeing the glowing glass shelves above the bar as if hoping that a bottle of superior vodka might materialize on them.
To his side was the booth with the older woman who was, as always, dining alone. She wore a navy-blue pantsuit, dressed up with a string of freshwater pearls, and her silver hair was styled with care and pride. She sipped her solitary glass of white wine. Her cell phone rested beside her bread plate, her reflection captured in the obsidian glass of her phone, the screen that never lit up.
He pictured Mia and Peter in the soft glow of 12B. They’d be eating dinner now, Peter misbehaving just the right amount, Mia laughing that openmouthed laugh. She’d have lit more candles, and the plates on the table would be mismatched.
Evan sipped his Pellegrino.
A new waiter circled, too handsome to have come to L.A. to serve branzino. “Are we ready?” he asked.
Evan pointed over at the parking meters. “That vet still around? The one who used to camp out there on the sidewalk?”
“Nah. Management had him removed. People don’t like to look at that, you know, when they’re eating.” He readied pen and pad. “Have you had a chance to read the menu?”
“No,” Evan said. “But that’s okay. I think I’m done here.”
The waiter wrinkled his nose and slid the padded check presenter onto the table.
As Evan set down a twenty and rose to leave, he noticed a family filing in. A bald gentleman in an expensive sweater, two grown daughters, three grandchildren. They clustered around the older woman, her face lighting up as they slid into the booth around her.
Evan caught a snatch of conversation from the man. “Sorry to cut in on your quiet time, my love, but these monsters stopped by to surprise us, and…”
The rest lost beneath the din of children’s laughter.
Evan looked down at his glass of sparkling water, the two-top table set for one, and wondered who, all these months, he’d really been sad for.
66
A Long Time Coming
The Map Room earned its name during the Second World War when FDR agonized over the war’s progress within these four walls, charting his army’s headway across the Continent and a scattering of blood-drenched Pacific islands. A half century later, Bill Clinton provided closed-circuit testimony to Ken Starr from this same space, the only time a sitting president gave evidence under oath while being investigated.