by Laura Dave
“What’s your point?” he says.
“I want to make you a deal.”
He starts to laugh. “We’re back to this? Darling, you don’t know what you’re saying. It’s not your deal to make.”
“I think it is.”
“How do you figure?”
I take a deep breath, knowing this is the moment of truth with Nicholas. It all comes down to how I sell him this. He’ll hear me now or he won’t. And the only thing that hangs in the balance is my family’s future. My identity. Bailey’s identity. Owen’s life.
“I think that my husband would rather be killed than let you near your granddaughter. That’s what I think. He proved that by uprooting everything and moving her away from here. As angry as you are about that, you respect him for being that kind of father. You didn’t think he had that in him.”
Nicholas doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t look away either. He holds my eyes with his. I sense he’s getting angry, a little too angry, but I keep going.
“And I assume you would like to have a relationship with your granddaughter? I think you want a relationship with her more than almost anything. That you’d be willing to make arrangements with your former colleagues to allow that to happen. From what you’re saying, you can insist they leave us alone, let us keep living our lives,” I say. “If you want to know your granddaughter, I think you know it’s your only play. Either that or letting her disappear again. Because that is the other option, that is what I’m being told is the option I should be considering. WITSEC, starting over. Your granddaughter no longer allowed to be your granddaughter. Again.”
And, like that. It happens. Like a flip has been switched, Nicholas’s eyes going dark, going empty. His face pulsing red.
“What did you just say?” he says.
He stands up. I push back my chair, almost before I know I’m doing it. I push back closer to the door, as if it’s possible he’s going to lunge for me. It feels possible. Anything feels possible suddenly unless I get out of this room. Until I get away from him.
“I don’t like to be threatened,” Nicholas says.
“I’m not threatening you,” I say, trying to hold my voice steady. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“So what is your intention?”
“I’m asking you to help me keep your granddaughter safe,” I say. “I’m asking you to put me in a position where she can know her family. Where she can know you.”
He doesn’t sit back down. He stares at me. For a long time. For what feels like a long time.
“These other gentlemen,” he says, “my former employers… I could potentially work something out with them. It would cost me quite a bit of capital. And they certainly would wonder who I am becoming in my old age. But… I think we could make sure they leave you and my granddaughter alone.”
I nod, my throat catching as I start to ask the question, the next question I need to ask.
“And Ethan?” I say.
“No, not Ethan,” he says.
He says it without equivocation. He says it with finality.
“If Ethan were to return, I couldn’t assure you of his safety,” he says. “His debt is too large. As I said, I can’t protect Ethan, even if I were inclined to. Which, to be clear with you, I’m not.”
I was prepared for this, for this intractable position. I was as prepared as I could get—a tiny part of me believing I wasn’t going to have to acquiesce to it. To do what I came here to do. A tiny part of me in disbelief even as I start to do it.
“But your granddaughter,” I say. “You could keep her safe? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Potentially, yes.”
I stay quiet for a moment. I stay quiet until I trust myself to speak. “Okay then,” I say.
“Okay then?” he says. “Okay then, what?”
“I’d like you to speak with your former employers about doing that,” I say.
He doesn’t even try to hide just how confused he is. He is confused because he thought he knew what I was doing here. He thought I was going to beg for Owen’s life, for his safety. He doesn’t understand that this is exactly what I’m doing, even if it doesn’t look like it.
“Do you understand what you’re considering here?” he says.
I’m considering an Owen-less life. That’s what. A life that isn’t anything like what I’d imagined for myself, but a life where Bailey gets to stay Bailey. She gets to stay the young woman she’s become under Owen’s watchful eye, the one he is so proud of. She’ll continue to live her life, heading to college in two years, heading to whatever life she wants, not as someone else—not as someone she has to pretend to be—but as herself.
Bailey and I will go on—but without Owen, without Ethan. Owen, Ethan: the two of them start melding themselves together in my mind—the husband I thought I knew, the husband I didn’t. The husband I don’t get to have. This is what I’m considering.
This is the deal I’m willing to make if Nicholas is. Which is when I tell him why.
“It’s what Ethan wants,” I say.
“To live his life without her?” he says. “I don’t believe that.”
I shrug. “It doesn’t make it any less true,” I say.
Nicholas closes his eyes. He looks tired suddenly. And I know it’s partially because he is thinking of himself—of the daughter (and granddaughter) he’s had to live his life without. But also because he is feeling sympathy for Owen, sympathy he doesn’t want to feel, but he is feeling it all the same.
And there it is, what Nicholas least expects to show me. His humanity.
So I decide to tell him the truth, to say out loud the one thing I’ve been thinking all week, but haven’t said out loud—not to anyone.
“I never really had a mother,” I say. “She left when I was little, not much older than when you last saw your granddaughter. And she hasn’t been involved in my life in any meaningful way. An occasional card or a phone call.”
“And why are you telling me this?” he says. “For my compassion?”
“No, I’m not doing it for that,” I say. “I had my grandfather, who was completely amazing. Inspiring. And loving. I had more than most people.”
“So why?”
“I’m hoping it helps you understand that even in the face of what else I may lose here, my priority is your granddaughter. Doing what’s right for her, whatever the cost, is worth it,” I say. “You know that better than I do.”
“What makes you say that?” he says.
“You were there first.”
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. Because he understands what I’m telling him. My mother never tried to fight for her family—she never tried to fight for me. That defines her. Apparently, I’m willing to give up everything to do the opposite for Bailey. One way or another, that will define me.
And if Nicholas agrees to what I’m asking him, it will define him too. We will have that in common. We’ll have Bailey in common. We’ll be the two people doing whatever is needed for her.
Nicholas crosses his arms over his chest, almost like in a hug, almost as if bracing himself against what he doesn’t know if he should do.
“If a part of you thinks that it will change one day,” he says. “That one day this will go away and Ethan can come back to you, slip back into your lives and they’ll let it slide… it won’t. That’s untenable. These men, they don’t forget. That can never happen.”
I summon up the strength to say what I honestly believe. “I don’t.”
Nicholas is watching me, taking me in. And I think I have him. Or, at least, we are moving closer toward each other. For better or worse.
But there is a knock on the door. And Charlie walks in. Charlie who apparently stayed, despite Nicholas’s instructions. Nicholas doesn’t look happy with him for that. But he’s about to get less happy.
“Grady Bradford is at the front gate,” he says. “And there are a dozen other U.S. marshals standing behind him.”
&nbs
p; “It took him long enough,” Nicholas says.
“What do you want me to do?” Charlie says.
“Let him in,” he says.
Then Nicholas turns and meets my eyes, the moment between us apparently over. “If Ethan comes home, they’ll know,” he says. “They’ll always be watching for him.”
“I understand that.”
“They may find him even if he doesn’t come home,” he says.
“Well,” I say. “They haven’t found him yet.”
He tilts his head, takes me in. “I think you’re wrong,” he says. “I think it’s the last thing Ethan would want, to spend his life away from his daughter…”
“I don’t think it’s the last. No.”
“What is?” he says.
Something happening to Bailey, I want to say. Something happening because of Owen, because of his ties to all of this, that ends with Bailey getting hurt. That ends with her getting killed.
“Something else,” I say.
Protect her.
Charlie touches my shoulder. “Your ride is here,” he said. “You need to go.”
I get up to leave. Nicholas had seemed to hear me but then doesn’t seem to want to hear anything at all. And it’s over.
There is nothing else to do. So I follow Charlie. I walk toward the door.
Then Nicholas calls out after us.
“Kristin…” he says. “Do you think she’ll be open to meeting me?”
I turn around and meet his eyes. “I think so,” I say. “Yes.”
“What will that look like?”
“She’s going to be the one to decide how much and how often she sees you. But I will make sure that the well isn’t poisoned. I’ll make sure she understands that a lot of what happened here has nothing to do with how you feel about her. And that she should know you.”
“And she’ll listen to you?”
A week before the answer would have been no. Earlier today, wasn’t it no too? She walked out of the hotel room, knowing I wanted her to stay put. And yet, I need him to believe the answer is yes. I need him to believe it and I need to believe it too, in order to pull this off. I know everything comes down to this.
I nod. “She will.”
Nicholas pauses for a moment. “Go home,” he says. “You’ll be safe. Both of you. You have my word.”
I take a deep breath in. I start to cry, right in front of him, covering my eyes quickly.
“Thank you,” I say.
He walks up to me, hands me a tissue. “Don’t thank me,” he says. “I’m not doing it for you.”
I believe him. I take his tissue anyway. Then I get out of there as quickly as I can.
The Devil Is in the Details
Grady says one thing in the car that will stay with me forever.
He says one thing to me on the way back to the U.S. Marshals’ office where Bailey is waiting.
The sun comes up over Lady Bird Lake as we drive, Austin stirring in the early morning. When we merge onto the highway, Grady turns from the road to look at me—as if I would miss it otherwise, how unhappy he is with what I’ve decided to do.
Then he says it.
“They’re going to get their revenge against Owen, one way or another,” he says. “You should know that.”
I hold his eyes, because it’s the least I can do. Because I’m not going to let him scare me.
“Nicholas just doesn’t let things go,” he says. “You’re being played.”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“And what if you’re wrong?” he says. “What’s the plan? To get on a plane, go back to your life and just hope you guys are safe? You’re not safe. It doesn’t work that way.”
“How do you know?”
“Fifteen years’ experience for one thing.”
“Nicholas has no problem with me,” I say. “I walked into this without knowing anything.”
“I know that, you know that. But Nicholas doesn’t, not beyond a doubt. And that’s not the kind of wager he makes.”
“I think this is an exceptional circumstance.”
“Why?”
“I think he wants to know his granddaughter,” I say. “More than he wants to punish Owen.”
That stops him. And I can see him considering it. And I see him coming to the conclusion I came to—that, just maybe, that’s true.
“Even if you’re right about that, if you do this, you’ll never see Owen again.”
There it is, the buzzing in my ear, in my heart. Nicholas saying it, now Grady saying it. As though I don’t know it. I do know, the gravity of it running through me, through my blood.
I’m giving up Owen. I’m giving up the chance that on the other side of all this, if there is another side, things will get to go back to Owen and me, together. That it will ever go back to the two of us. I can doubt that Owen is coming home. I can doubt it, but this way I know it.
Grady pulls over, on the side of the highway, trucks racing past, the wind shaking the car.
“It’s not too late. Fuck Nicholas. Fuck whatever deal that Nicholas thinks you just made him,” he says. “It wasn’t your deal to make. You need to think of Bailey.”
“Bailey is all I’m thinking about,” I say. “What is best for her. What Owen would want me to do for her.”
“You honestly think he’d want you to pick a path where he never gets to see her again? Never gets to have a relationship with her?”
“You tell me, then, Grady,” I say. “You’ve known Owen a lot longer than I have. What do you think he wanted me to do when he disappeared?”
“I think he wanted you to lie low until I could help resolve this. Hopefully without his face ending up on the news. Hopefully with a way for you all to keep your identities intact. And, if necessary, with me finding a way to move you all so you could stay together.”
“That’s where you lose me,” I say. “Every time.”
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“What are the chances, Grady? If you moved us, what are the chances they find us anyway?”
“Slim.”
“Meaning what? Five percent chance? Ten percent chance?” I say. “How about the leak last time? Was there a slim chance of that happening too? Because it did happen. Owen and Bailey were put in jeopardy under your watch. Owen wouldn’t want to risk that. He wouldn’t roll the dice on something happening to Bailey.”
“I won’t let anything happen to Bailey—”
“If these men did find us, they would get to Owen however they could, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t stand on ceremony or particularly care if Bailey got caught in the crosshairs. That’s correct, is it not?”
He doesn’t answer me. He can’t.
“Bottom line is that you can’t guarantee that won’t happen. You can’t guarantee me and you couldn’t guarantee Owen,” I say. “Which is why he left her with me. Which is why he disappeared and didn’t come directly to you.”
“I think you’re wrong about that.”
“And I think my husband knows who he married,” I say.
Grady laughs. “I would think if this taught you anything it’s that no one knows who they marry,” he says.
“I disagree,” I say. “If Owen wanted me to sit still and let you run this, he would have said so.”
“So how do you explain the email correspondence he sent me? The detailed files he kept? They’re going to help ensure that Avett is punished for his crimes. The FBI is already into a plea deal that is going to put Avett away for the next twenty years…” he says. “How do you explain your husband doing that? How do you explain away his setting everything up so he could enter witness protection?”
“I think he did that for another reason.”
“What’s that?” he says. “His legacy?”
“No,” I say. “Bailey’s.”
He smirks, and I can hear all the things he wants to tell me but feels like he can’t tell me. I can hear all the things he knows about Owen—the same things
Nicholas knows, but with a different sheen on them. Maybe he thinks telling me something closer to the truth will move me closer to his side. I’ve already picked a side though. Bailey’s. And mine.
“I’m going to say this as simply as I can,” he says. “Nicholas is a bad fucking man. He is going to punish you one day. Bailey may be safe, but if he can’t get to Owen, he’ll punish you in order to hurt him. You’re completely expendable to him. He doesn’t care about you.”
“I don’t think he does,” I say.
“So then you have to know how risky this is for you to just try and go back to your life?” he says. “I can only protect you if you let me.”
I don’t answer him, because he wants me to say yes—yes, I’ll let him protect me. Yes, I’ll let him protect us. And I’m not going to say that. I’m not going to say it because I know this much is true: he can’t.
Nicholas can probably get to us anyway, if that’s what he wants to do. That’s what this all has taught me. One way or another, things come back. Things just came back. So I may as well take a shot at doing the best thing for Bailey. And, by doing it this way, Bailey gets to stay Bailey.
No one gave her that choice before. She is already losing so much. The least I can do is give it to her now.
Grady starts the car up again, heads back into traffic. “You can’t trust him. It’s crazy for you to think you can. You cannot make a deal with the devil and expect it to turn out okay.”
I turn away from him, look out the window. “Except I just did.”
Finding My Way Back to Her
Bailey sits in the conference room. She is crying hard.
And before I even reach for her, she jumps up and races toward me. She holds tightly to me, her head in the crook of my neck.
I hold her like that, ignoring Grady, ignoring everything but her. She pulls away, and I take in her face, her eyes swollen from crying, her hair sticking to her head. She looks like the little girl version of herself, needing more than anything for someone to tell her that she is safe now.
“I shouldn’t have left the room,” she says.
I push her hair off her face. “Where did you go?”