“Yes.”
Good grief! “Okay. Know what? I don’t see any signs that this is leaking and I need to get to work. Leave me the number of your supervisor and I can call to get this sorted out.”
Upstairs, Alice was barking like a fiend. Over across the basement near our bedroom, where an outdoor crawl space abutted the cinder blocks, floorboards squeaked. What was she doing over there?
14
Twenty minutes later, I was showered, changed, and ready for work. But I was also thirty minutes late. As I locked the front door, Jim hailed me from across the street. Sunlight glinted off his glasses. His old, paint-splattered barn jacket was buttoned up against the morning’s chill.
I waved back. “Hey—thanks for putting out my trash this morning!”
“What?” He put a hand to his ear.
“The trash. Thanks for putting it out.”
He shrugged. “Didn’t do it. Not this week.”
If he hadn’t done it and I hadn’t done it, then who had?
I puzzled over it on the drive to work. None of my other near neighbors would have even noticed my trash wasn’t out. I finally decided I must have pulled them out without remembering, crediting the lapse to the interminable twists and turns of the grieving process.
Setting my uneasiness aside, I told my phone to call the gas company’s customer service line. Five minutes later, as I was turning into the parking garage at work, I was connected to an actual person.
I hit my blinkers and pulled to the side so I wouldn’t lose my connection.
Of course, every car behind me felt the need to honk on their way down into the garage.
I pressed a finger to my free ear as I explained about the repairman.
“We don’t replace old meters, although we can recommend a contractor.”
“I know you don’t. He wasn’t there to replace it; he said it needed to be repaired.”
“We don’t repair old meters.”
“He said my meter was on his list.”
“His list of what?”
“Repairs.”
“We don’t repair old meters.”
Being trapped in an endless loop of conversation with a person was worse than being trapped in an endless loop with an automated answering system. “Can you check to see if my house was scheduled for work today?”
“Can I have the work order number?”
“I don’t have a—” I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t yell at him. “There is no work order number. Could I give you my address?”
“How about the account number?”
“I don’t have my account number at the moment.”
“Can you give me the address?”
I gave him the address. And after five minutes of incredibly frustrating conversation, it only took him about five seconds to confirm that my house had been issued no work order and that it was not on anyone’s list of anything to be concerned about.
“So you’re saying you didn’t send them.”
“No, ma’am.”
* * *
Once I got to work, I shut the door to my office and placed a call to the medical examiner’s attorney.
“And you need to talk with Dr. Correy why?”
“My husband was one of his . . . um . . .” Patients? Clients? “He performed my husband’s autopsy.”
“And you want to what? Thank him?”
“No. There was something missing in my husband’s inventory, and I wanted to—”
“Let me guess. Your husband had drugs on him? In that case—”
“What? No!”
“—the feds might be very interested in talking to you about your husband’s drug—”
There was a knock on the door. Ted poked his head in.
I held up a finger.
He gave me an okay sign and closed it.
“No, he wasn’t— That’s not what I called about. Dr. Correy’s inventory listed a Leatherman pocketknife. My father signed for it when he picked up my husband’s effects.”
“And?”
“And it wasn’t there when I got the box.”
“Listen, I can’t help you.”
“Is there no way you could contact him and ask him to—”
“I did my job when we made the deal with the feds. I’m not his office assistant, okay?”
“Wait. He had a deal with the—”
“Can’t you people just leave the guy alone?”
You people? “I was just wondering what might have happened to the Leatherman, that’s all.”
“Who did you say signed for it again?”
“My father.”
“Then why don’t you ask him?”
15
My boss, Ted, leaned into my office as I hung up. “We missed you this morning, for the beginning of the meeting. The customer was here.”
“I’m sorry. I just—”
He came into my office and plopped into the chair in front of my desk. “Thing is, we were counting on you. Classic entanglement theory as it relates to cybersecurity. Remember?” He shifted, placing his elbow on an armrest, propping his chin up with a loosely held fist. “You’re the only one who can answer all those questions in detail.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
“Can’t tell the customer”—he cleared his throat—“prospective customer, that we could do the job better when you’re not doing the talking.”
“I know. I—” What was there to say? I’d screwed up. “I’ll follow up with them and see if they need anything else. I’ve been working the clearances for the test in January. Everything’s submitted. Admin says we’re good to go. I’ve been told the chairman of the House Intel Committee wants to come.” That’s how big a deal it was. And it added a whole other layer of anxiety. “Our subcontractor says there shouldn’t be any problems. They’ve checked and rechecked.” Ad nauseum. A lot was riding on the test. If everything worked the way it should, then the system would go into production almost immediately. Which meant lots of money, lots of jobs, lots of growth for the company. It would put us in a prime position, riding the leading edge of the technology.
He eased himself from the chair. “Listen, I know it’s hard with Sean gone.” He sent me a keen-eyed glance. “Do you need to cut back on hours?”
“No! No. I can manage.”
“I understand. I really do. They say it takes time.” He gave a half shrug and headed toward the door. “You could go to part-time. We’d find a way to make it work. Think about it.”
Part-time did sound nice. And I did think about it. For two seconds. That’s all it took to remind myself that somebody had to pay our bills. There had been insurance money when Sean died, but I’d used most of it to pay off the car and refinance our mortgage so I could afford the payments on my salary. With the little bit that was left, I’d done some things like fencing in the backyard for Alice and replacing several of our ancient windows. The rest I’d dumped into my 401(k) and a college savings plan for Sam.
My boss disappeared out the door only to reappear a second later. “Before I forget, where do we stand on your contract for next year?”
From long experience, by we, I knew he meant you. Whether the test was successful or not, the funding for my part in the current phase had almost been used up. I’d had to find a new contract to work on in the coming year, so I submitted a proposal for a quantum encryption project and I won it. But winning a government contract was a double-edged sword. “It’s been awarded, but since Congress hasn’t approved the budget, they’re operating on a continuing resolution.” Like they ever approved a budget. “The money hasn’t been released. Word is, they’re going to pass the appropriations bill next week. Then it’s a go.”
“So we’re good?”
I gave him a thumbs-up. Then I called my contract officer and asked if he’d heard anything new about the vote on the appropriations bill.
He scoffed. “It’s been twenty years since they’ve passed an appropriations bill on time, the way the
y’re supposed to. I’d like to see them operate on 75 percent of their last year’s budget.”
“How long do you think it’s going to be?”
“Till we get the real budget? Who knows.”
“Because I can’t charge against my new contract until the funding comes through.”
“Believe me, you aren’t the only one.”
I hung up feeling much less hopeful than I had been. I might be forced to take vacation until I was funded. Which normally would be fine, only I didn’t have any left. I’d used it up during those first few weeks after Sean’s death, and I’d been working through lunch ever since to accumulate extra hours for when Sam got sick or an appliance broke or any myriad other things happened that weren’t big enough to qualify as an emergency or a rainy day but seemed to crop up every week since he’d died.
Without the funding, I’d be out of a job, and not many employers were looking for quantum physicists. People tended to look at you strangely when you spoke of things like time travel, parallel dimensions, and wormholes as matters of fact. As my father said, with a wink, when I announced my college major, “Why? Are there too many people out there with useful skills? You have to major in unuseful ones instead?”
Why?
Because I wanted to get to the bottom of things. I wanted to know the reasons.
Most people would conclude that my research didn’t really matter. Regardless of what I discovered, the world would keep turning the same way it always had. But those of us who were traditional quantum physicists poked at the foundations of our science for the sake of principle, invalidating assumptions one by one just to see what would happen.
When we removed one assumption too many, when our theories suddenly started to fall apart, then we’d know where we stood. We’d know what was foundational and what wasn’t.
* * *
Before I left work, I wrote Dr. Correy a letter, printed it, and put it in outgoing mail.
As I drove home, I thought to send out an email to the neighborhood loop and ask if anyone else had run into the gas people. I didn’t have any other way of figuring out who they were.
Next problem? My meeting with Sam’s teacher that evening.
Despite Sam not wanting to fall asleep, his occasional lapse into present tense when he spoke about Sean, and his reversion to wetting the bed, I’d thought he was doing a pretty good job processing his father’s death. That’s what his counselor had told me.
And that’s what I’d told Ms. Hernandez when she asked for the meeting.
But she asked me to come in anyway.
She was working at her desk when I walked into the classroom. Standing, she teased a folder from a pile in front of her, then gestured toward one of the miniature round tables that dotted the classroom.
She was a vivacious woman with vivid features and an ever-present smile. The children took to her like sunflowers to the sun. The fact that she wasn’t smiling as she took a seat next to me was not a good sign.
“I just wanted to talk to you about Sam.” Her dangly earrings trembled as she tilted her head toward me. She pressed her hands to the folder. “In the afternoons I call the children aside one by one and ask them for their happy thoughts.” She opened the folder. “I write them down and have them color a picture about them.” She passed me some papers. “What I’m trying to do is help them order their thoughts and strengthen their motor skills in advance of writing.”
I began to read.
Daddy says I’m Super Sam. I have a red cape.
I picked another.
When Daddy plays trains with me.
She gave me a few moments before she spoke again. “I would have kept these until the next parent conference, but I thought it might be better to show them to you now.”
The happy thoughts were each different, though they all had to do with Sean, but the picture was always the same. Sam had drawn the same thing over and over again.
“It’s been six months since his father died?”
“Eight.”
“That a child would speak of a dead parent in the present tense sometimes is normal. Especially for a child so young. But combined with his illustrations, I’m a little bit concerned.”
I was too.
“Usually children at this age draw pictures of their families or pets. Their house or apartment building.”
Sam’s pictures had none of those things.
“I was hoping you might be able to help me figure out what he’s drawing. He keeps telling me it’s ‘the firm.’” She frowned. “It might look like he’s scribbling, but I’ve watched him. He’s clearly not. It’s, uh . . . it could be slightly alarming, the color he keeps choosing.”
Black. He drew them all with a black crayon.
“Not necessarily, of course, but considering that his father recently died—” She looked at me, brows drawn together. “It’s concerning.”
My heart ached for my son.
“I’ve watched him do these. He’s not angry. He’s not clenching the crayon.” She ran a finger over one of the images. “You can see that he’s not pressing down very hard. I just would like to understand. And to help if I can. Do you know what he’s trying to draw? Do you know what he means by ‘the firm’? Which firm he might be talking about?”
He’d drawn a long black spiral, or series of circles, that stretched from one end of the page to the opposite corner.
“I’ve just never seen a student draw something like this before. On purpose. Then associate it with a happy thought.”
I could only shake my head. “I don’t know what it is. I wish I did, but I don’t.” I told her I’d ask Sam’s counselor to talk to him about it. Then I left.
I made it down the hall to the bathroom before I started to cry. After grabbing a hunk of paper hand towels, I locked myself into a stall and tried hard not to make any noise. I couldn’t quite keep from sniffling, but I did manage to squelch most of the sobs as I dabbed at my tears with the towels.
One thing I knew. We were going to get through it.
We had to.
16
By the time I put Sam to bed that night, I was ready to kick something. I’d found all sorts of odd things associated with Sean’s death, but none of them seemed to be connected to the questions I was trying to answer. I had to talk it through with someone, but there wasn’t anyone I could trust.
I didn’t want to give my parents one more reason to worry about me. They had enough to do with my father’s upcoming confirmation hearing in November. It was only three weeks away. My neighbors, Jim and June, had been lifesavers, but they already did too much for us. I didn’t want them to think I was having a breakdown. Jenn? She had too much going on with her job as chief of staff to a senator, let alone her divorce. And at that moment she was completely anti-male.
One thing, one more thing, still bothered me.
You people.
The medical examiner’s lawyer had lumped me in with you people. People who, for whatever reason, were calling the lawyer about his client. And either there were so many of them or whoever they were had called the lawyer so many times that he was beginning to feel harassed.
Why?
There were too many whys and not enough becauses.
I had the feeling that the whys might matter, but I didn’t know—wait for it—why. The ratio of things I knew about Sean to the things I didn’t seemed to be rapidly decreasing. It was unnerving. I’d had the same feeling when I started to study dark matter.
That’s when I’d found out that physics can account for only 4 percent of the universe. Nobody knows what makes up the other 96 percent. Ordinary matter, the kind we can define and measure and experiment with, actually isn’t the most common kind. Of course there are theories—physicists have lots of theories—but that mysterious, undecipherable, unexplainable 96 percent, that dark energy and dark matter, is something upon which we’re entirely dependent.
I didn’t like knowing that I hadn’t even known what I didn�
��t know about Sean. I’d depended, to an extraordinary extent, on someone who was becoming increasingly opaque.
* * *
I needed more information. I called Sean’s old office at Ft. McNair and left a voice mail message for Brad asking for a callback. He was the person Sean had worked with most closely at the army’s Center of Military History. Then I called my father.
“Peach. Hey. We’re looking forward to coming out your way in a few days. Just have to finalize some appointments up on the Hill before we get there.”
“Sam can’t wait to show you his new train.” We talked for a few minutes about his confirmation hearings, then I got down to business. “I have a question about when you went to the morgue. Do you remember there being a Leatherman in the box of things you brought back?”
“Don’t think so. Don’t know that I’d really have noticed, though. But hey, Clyde and Harry and the others are having some Halloween thing for their grandkids on post at Fort Myer. Do you think Sam might like to go?”
“Clyde and Harry?”
“Westerman and Ladowski. You know. The joint chiefs.”
Right. Yes. The joint chiefs of staff. That collective governing body formed by the heads of the branches of the military, otherwise known as Clyde and Harry and the Others. “I don’t think so, Dad. But thanks for asking.”
“Sure. No problem. Gotta go. I’m live on cable in five.”
Before I could say anything else, he was gone. At least he hadn’t put my mother on the phone. I wasn’t up to hearing about all the things I could be doing better.
It’s not like I had expected Sean’s autopsy to be the key to some secret code. But still, I’d been hoping for something more. For some hint as to what Sean had been doing.
* * *
Alice woke me up in the middle of the night, barking her short, sharp bark. It was the one that told me she knew she’d get in trouble for it, but for whatever reason, she’d decided it was worth it.
“Alice!” I hissed her name.
She lumbered to her feet, left her cushion-bed, and scratched at the hardwood floor.
“Stop!”
State of Lies Page 6