I’d been hoping she’d turned a corner on the obedience thing, but she just looked at me, whined a bark, and scratched again.
Sighing, I got up and went to the bedroom door. “You need to go out? Is that what this is?” I was halfway down the hall before I realized she wasn’t following me. Turning back, I found her right where I’d left her.
I flicked on the light.
She was staring at the floor, head cocked, ears at attention.
“Alice!”
She flinched as if I’d startled her, gave me a long look, and gave off another sharp bark.
“Shh!”
Still staring at me, she lowered the front of her body toward the floor and dug into it with both paws. Her long, quavery whine ended with a yip.
I took her by the collar and tried to lead her back to her bed.
She wouldn’t budge.
So I walked around her, bent toward her behind, and gave it a mighty push.
She scrambled away from me, came back in a U-turn, and curled up right on top of the place she’d been scratching. After a few more whines and barks, she settled into sleep.
She was acting the way I felt. Out of sorts. Disoriented.
Our world had seemed so safe and ordered. But like a dying star, going through the motions, sending out its last rays of light, I felt like my reality was collapsing. I was being drawn into the darkness of something I couldn’t fathom.
17
The only way I knew to solve a problem was by asking questions. Sean had been afraid of something. Someone. Bad guys. In my search for the truth, I didn’t want to ask the wrong people my questions. I did, however, need some answers.
So the next day, during lunch, I called someone I knew was safe. I went outside and walked across the street to the Crystal City Water Park, where I sat down in a chair by one of the fountains and called Sean’s sister, Kelly.
“Georgie! I’ve been thinking so much about you lately. How is Sam?”
I gave her the executive summary version.
“And how are you?”
That was where things were getting tricky. “I was wondering, do you have a minute?”
“I have about twenty minutes. That’s how much longer the baby’s going to sleep.” Sean had missed the birth of his nephew by three months.
“Could you tell me a little more about Sean? About your childhood?”
She went back over the part I knew—about their parents’ deaths, about being passed around to relatives.
“But what happened after that? You told me once that he fell in with the wrong crowd.” Were those the people Sean was afraid of?
“Well . . . the wrong crowd. Yes. I’d say so.”
I waited for her to expand on that idea, but she didn’t. “Could you tell me a little more?”
“I don’t think it’s anything he’d want Sam to know. It would be a shame to remember him that way.”
“I won’t tell Sam. I promise.”
“It was something he really tried to put behind him. It seemed like he was trying to close that door when he joined the army. I don’t think he’d like me talking about it.”
Which was probably why he’d never talked to me about it. “It’s just— I was hoping maybe understanding Sean better would help me process everything.” A cool wind stirred the trees and tugged some of my hair from my ponytail. I pulled the zip on my jacket all the way up to the top of the collar.
“What can I say?” There was a long pause while I hoped she’d say something. “He was in a gang, Georgie.”
“A gang? You mean a gang gang?”
“It’s not like he wanted to be. He tried not to be. He really did. But where we grew up wasn’t very nice.”
“But he didn’t do things, did he?” Surely he hadn’t done things. Gang things. Girls, guns, drugs. Not my Sean.
“Honestly, I don’t know what he did. He never told me and I never asked.”
My mother’s words came back to me. In any marriage, there are some things you might not want to know. “But he got out.”
“Yes. By that time I knew what gangs were. And I was really scared for him. I kept begging him to get out, but you couldn’t leave the gang. And if he’d tried, I don’t know what they would have done to him. I was only in sixth grade. And I was with a foster family; I was stuck there. Looking back on it, I think he was worried that if he tried to go, they’d come after me. They probably would have. And there was this one boy. He was not a good person. He was in Sean’s gang . . .” Her words tapered off, and I was worried that might be all she was going to say. “He wanted me to be his girlfriend. But Sean found out about it. He told me he was going to take care of it. That I wasn’t going to have to worry about that guy, about any of it, anymore. I was so excited. I assumed Sean was going to take me away somewhere with him.”
The regional train must have pulled into the station behind the park because a horde of people suddenly appeared. They walked en masse to the sidewalk and dispersed in all directions.
If Kelly had been in sixth grade, then Sean would have been a senior. “That was just before he enlisted, right?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t understand that at the time. To me, it felt like he’d just disappeared.”
“So he did leave the gang.” He’d found a way to do it. “But what about that boy? He didn’t bother you after Sean had gone?”
“No. He never bothered me again.”
“That must have been a relief.”
“Well, yeah. Sure. I mean, they died, so . . .”
“What do you mean they died? Who died?”
“That boy. And his best friend.”
“When did they die?”
“It was just before . . . just after?” A pause hung in the air. “I think it was just before. I don’t know. So much happened right then. Like I said, Sean enlisted. I didn’t see him again for years. But one of my aunts took me in right after, so I ended up moving. But I think, at least I’m pretty sure, it happened just before he left.”
“Both of them died?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“They were shot. It was some sort of gang thing.”
My heart stopped beating for one long moment as the implication of that statement made impact. Then it started again in double time.
In the background, a baby cried.
“They never sleep as long as they’re supposed to, do they? Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
She made me promise to call again soon and hung up.
What were the chances that Sean had absolutely nothing to do with those gang members’ deaths? The ones who’d been interested in his sister?
I considered what I knew about Sean. The medal he’d received during his service had been awarded for gallantry in action. The vehicle he’d been traveling in had been hit in an ambush. It overturned. He’d dragged his fellow soldiers to safety, killed the dozen enemy combatants who’d ambushed them, and used their own vehicle to transport him and the wounded soldiers out of danger.
All by himself.
That was heroic.
And I would know. I’d grown up around heroic people, people who risked their lives for the safety and liberties of others. Could I really say, if Sean had been responsible for those long-ago gang deaths, that it was any less heroic? If he’d done it, he’d done it to save his sister; he’d done it to get out of a gang. And after having been in foster care for so long, to have an aunt suddenly agree to take Kelly? I didn’t think it was too generous to attribute that to Sean as well.
I was not going to think less of him for doing what he’d done back in high school, nor think more of those two gang members who’d been trying to coerce a sixth grader into a relationship.
When his sister had been in danger, he’d done what he had to do.
The resourcefulness and determination that had led to Sean’s medal had also led to a bachelor’s and a master’s and a PhD. But back there, in that gang? That’s where his resourcefulness and determinati
on had developed.
I had to work with the facts I could find. Those facts told me Sean had been afraid of someone. Those facts told me he’d lied to me. But they also told me something about his character. In conjunction with Kelly’s story, they told me he would do literally anything to protect someone he loved. I was beginning to see the outlines of a pattern.
18
Later that afternoon Brad returned my call.
“Georgie. Hey. How you doing?”
I appreciated it when people asked, but by that point, I figured they didn’t really want to know. “We’re doing all right. But hey—I was sorting through some things the other day and I found a key I think might belong to the office. And I realized I never returned Sean’s badge.” Not that I could have, had I wanted to, because I didn’t have it. But how would Brad know that? “Do you want me to bring them in?”
“I’m pretty sure he would have turned those in when he left.”
“When he left? You mean at the end of the day?”
“At the end of his job.”
End of his job? “Because I know he brought his badge home every night.”
“He probably had one from his other job too. But I’m sure we’re fine.”
“What other job is that?” There was a long enough pause that I wondered if we’d been disconnected. “Brad?”
“Yeah. I’m here. It’s just— How do I say this? I thought you knew. Sean stopped working here last year. About six months before he died.”
“When you say he stopped working there, I don’t understand.”
“He left.”
“But he was still working. He was working somewhere. He went to work every day.”
“He did say he had something else lined up.”
I hated to put him on the spot, but it was the first I’d heard of it. “Do you remember when that would have been? Exactly?”
“Sure. Yeah. It was toward the end of August. I remember taking him out for lunch during Restaurant Week. You know, in DC? Cut-price menus at all the fancy restaurants?”
“He wasn’t fired, was he?”
“Fired? No. Don’t think so. It didn’t seem like it. He was just moving on. Sort of vague about the job he was going to, but that’s not unusual around here. Whatever it was, I got the impression that he was just switching agencies.”
After the call I sat there behind my desk, holding on to my head with both hands. It seemed best. I was trying to grab hold of my thoughts. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the core of Sean’s character wasn’t the desire to protect. Maybe it was a pathological drive to obfuscate. To lie.
I’d always kind of seen myself as A Seeker of Ultimate Truth. I’d taken pride in it. But the new information about Sean? I almost wished I’d never uncovered it. Any of it. I sat there trying to look at everything objectively, and the problem was, I couldn’t figure out one way for it all to make sense.
Someone knocked on my door. Opened it. “Georgie?”
“Ted. Hi!” I took my hands from my head. Tried to make it look like I’d been smoothing back my hair.
“Meeting at eleven? You coming?”
“Yes. Sure. Yeah. Just give me a minute.”
The door shut and I heaved a sigh, closing my eyes and rolling my chair way back so I could rest my head on my desk.
What was I supposed to tell Sam about his father?
I could hardly play the role of adoring, trusting wife when my perfect life had been blown to pieces.
Actually, probably I could.
Most definitely.
I sat up, opened a drawer, and rummaged around for a pen.
Pretending would be easier than telling him the truth. Because what truth would I tell him? “Hey, Sam, turns out your father was a big liar”?
Saying that could be problematic. Because it might create a ticking bomb of self-loathing that would explode upon impact in adolescence. So maybe not.
I sent a file to the printer.
But what if I didn’t tell him the truth? What if someday way, way down the road I met an actual nice guy, someone like Chris, and fell in love again? Maybe not again again, because obviously I hadn’t really fallen in love with Sean if the Sean I knew wasn’t a true representation of the real Sean. I’d fallen in love with an illusion. So if I happened to fall in love with a real, honest, truthful person? What would Sam think?
That I’d thrown over the memory of his sainted father.
What defense would I have? Other than that I was a fickle woman, faithless to the memory of her beloved first husband?
I closed my eyes once more and forced myself to breathe. I didn’t know the truth. Yet. I opened my eyes as I thought about the implications. So the best thing to do was nothing.
Nothing. I wasn’t going to do anything. “There’s nothing to do.”
I’d said it out loud. My head didn’t burst. The world didn’t explode. For the moment, everything was all right.
I grabbed a notebook and my water bottle and headed out down the hall. As I walked, I tried to ignore the voice in my head, but I couldn’t quite silence it.
Who were you really, Sean Brennan?
19
Jenn came over that night with my half of our farm share. Her au pair picked up the box on Wednesdays.
I hustled us all inside, out of the cold. “Tell me there’s some Halloween candy in there. I could have sworn I bought some last time I went to the store. And the time before that too. But I can’t figure out where I put it.”
“No candy. But there’s broccoli and carrots and turnips.” She dropped the large, waxed cardboard box onto my kitchen countertop.
I peered inside. “Turnips? Great.” I wasn’t a fan.
“Hey—I’m taking Preston down to that toy store in Crystal City on Saturday for story time. Want to come?”
“To Mr. Hoffman’s? Maybe.”
“Margarita?” Jenn opened my fridge, not bothering to wait for my reply. She brought out the mix, poured it into a pair of glasses, then mixed it with a generous pour of tequila. Jenn and margaritas and I went way back. “So spill it.” She pointed at herself. “Best friend. Maid of honor. Person you can tell anything to, otherwise known as me. That would be moi in French. Come on. What’s going on?”
I should have known I couldn’t hide anything from her. It had always been that way. We’d met in high school and had been part of a group that included the daughter of the Pakistani deputy chief of mission at the Pakistani embassy; the daughter of the president of the American subsidiary of a big multinational conglomerate; the daughter of . . . I’d forgotten what her mom had done, but she’d been mentioned in the Post a lot; and me. Typically Arlington. I’d lost contact with the others soon after high school, but Jenn and I kept rotating in the same orbit. “Bad day. Bad week. That’s all.”
“Seriously, G. What’s the deal?”
Did I really want to tell her? If I told Jenn, then it would all seem real. It would be like opening a door to a haunted house. I didn’t know what might come out. Besides, she had enough to deal with on the Hill. She had a hand in everything Senator Rydel did and was trying constantly, as any chief of staff would, to weight the scales of political power in his favor. She was a master in the Byzantine art of keeping track of who owed favors to whom. And my father’s upcoming confirmation hearing was probably making everything worse. Since Rydel was the head of the Armed Forces Committee and would be chairing the hearing, that was now on her plate too. She didn’t have time to deal with my extracurricular stress.
I shook my head.
“We’re still good, right?”
“It’s just that I’ve been wondering . . .”
She straightened as if bracing for something. “Spill it. Just say it and get it over with. It’s more efficient.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s what my father says, anyway.”
Jenn had issues with her father. He was a big, serious, intimidating Supreme Court justice who’d only gotten more serious and more intimidating after her mother had died du
ring our sophomore year. It wasn’t easy pleasing someone who demanded perfection. It was even harder to find ways to get his attention. Back in high school Jenn had seesawed between trying hard to coax him into her life and shutting him out because she didn’t think she deserved his time or attention. Since she’d left home after college they’d reached a sort of truce, although sniping had a tendency to break out now and then.
But if I couldn’t talk to Jenn, then I couldn’t talk to anyone. And I had to talk to someone. I decided to take a chance. “Do you think Sean ever cheated on me?” The thought had been lurking in the back of my mind.
Her brow furrowed and it took a moment before she responded. “Why would you ask that? You and Sean, you were like, I don’t know, all those perfect 1950s TV couples. You weren’t just Georgie. And. Sean. You were GeorgieandSean.”
“I don’t know. Just some things I’ve discovered lately.”
“About Saint Sean? I can say this as the honest truth: I don’t think he ever looked at anyone but you.”
“But he was hiding something from me, Jenn.”
“How do you know?”
I shook my head.
“Did he say something? Before the accident? Is that what this is about?”
“No.” I shook my head. Tried to shrug it off. “It’s probably just me being paranoid.”
“Did somebody else say something? You want me to beat them up for you?”
I laughed and determined to put the topic away.
Jenn and I finished our margaritas, then she rounded up Preston.
As I walked with them out the door and onto the porch, Sam lured Preston down onto the lawn where they ran around like loons. As we were standing there, I caught sight of all those fall crocuses waving their spring-colored petals at me, showing me a detail I hadn’t noticed before.
I must have pulled a face because Jenn raised a brow. “Something wrong?”
“I just—” I sighed. “Those flowers.” I gestured out toward the fence. “I hate fall crocuses. I thought they were going to be spider lilies.”
“So dig them up.”
“We naturalized them. They were supposed to be naturalized.” But they weren’t. They mocked me from their ruler-straight rows.
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