“I didn’t know you before, but if it makes you feel any better, I like the person you are now.”
“You like ass-hats?”
I laugh. “I like works in progress. I’m kind of one myself.”
Gabe laughs, too, and we fall into a comfortable silence. By now it’s late. Outside my window the city is dark and quiet, my neighbors all at home in their beds. I scoot up mine and crawl under the covers, my phone still pressed to my ear, and try to picture Gabe. Where is he right now? Reclined on his couch? Leaning against his kitchen counter? Stretched out on his bed? The last image is the one that sticks—one arm cocked behind his head, the other holding his phone, big body sprawled atop the mattress.
“Abigail?” he says, his voice low, almost a whisper.
“Yes.”
“Talk to you tomorrow,” he says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. As if I should have known to expect another call.
I smile. “Talk to you then.”
14
Washingtonian Magazine recently gave the Oval Room four stars, which means reservations are harder to come by than a sit-down with the president in the Oval Office, only a block or so down the road. Unless you’re a three-star general, that is, and unless you want a prominent table in a restaurant like this one—one that, were it not for the overwhelming aroma of roasted meats and buttery sauces and truffle oils, would smell distinctly like power.
The hostess leads me into the dining room, ushering me to the table with a Vanna White move.
Mike and Betsy are seated side by side on the burgundy velvet banquette, and the first to see me approach. Betsy greets me with a happy wave, but my brother acknowledges my arrival with a quick flick of his chin, never missing a word of his monologue.
“...even though Langley Park is not technically that far from our offices in Chevy Chase, we’ve found our clients aren’t willing to travel more than five miles or so. This expands our reach all the way into College Park.”
“Hi, Mom.” I lean down between my parents’ shoulders to kiss her cheek, and then the general’s. Circling around his back, I push aside a red silk pillow and take a seat on the banquette next to Mike.
Mike continues as if he hasn’t just been interrupted. “Eventually we’ll keep going southward, to maybe Brentwood or Fairmount Heights, but we need to absorb the costs of this expansion first.”
A waiter appears at Dad’s right shoulder with a bottle of red wine, and I can’t help but notice the general looks almost grateful for the interruption. That Mike is successful in his career, well on his way to building a mini orthodontia empire to the north of the District, pleases our father to no end, I am certain.
But that my brother equates his success with the number of patients in his multiple offices and the amount of zeros at the end of his tax return, rather than the number of stars on his sleeve, is something I’m not certain my father will ever fully appreciate.
The waiter pours the wine and tells us about the specials, then turns to a neighboring table. Mom picks up the conversation at the other end of ours, something about one of her friends from bridge club who’s just had her spleen removed, while I spread my napkin across my lap, straighten my silverware on either side of my plate and pretend to study my menu. Anything but acknowledge my father’s gaze, bearing down on me like a nuclear weapon.
“Abigail,” he says, clearly fed up with my avoidance tactics.
I try not to wince. Ever since Rose’s birthday party, when I overheard his argument with Chris, when my father ordered me to cease and desist any contact with the Armstrongs as if I were a fresh recruit, we haven’t spoken. Dodging his calls seemed easier than dodging the truth, and that is that I’m still thinking about Jean’s offer...though I can’t deny that finding Ricky has pushed me to the far end of the thinking-about-it phase, the side that juts up against a “hell, yes.”
I look up and meet his gaze for the first time tonight. “Yes?”
“Your mother was asking you about your work.”
“Oh?” One glance at Mom confirms it. She smiles widely, bobs her head enthusiastically. I wonder if she has any idea what the tension down at this end of the table is about, or if she’s even noticed. “What about it?”
“Tell us how your work’s going, dear. Any new projects you’re working on?”
I pluck a roll, soft and light as a cloud, from the silver bowl in the middle of the table, smear it with butter the waiter advertised as organic and locally sourced, and haul a bolstering breath. But at the very last second, I chicken out. “Medicare is about to start covering lung cancer screening. Have you heard?”
Dad nods at me over the top of his menu, but his forehead doesn’t clear. His eyes don’t unsquint. The general is a man who misses nothing, including, according to his scowl, the reason behind my non-reply.
So when Mike turns the conversation back to himself, starting in on a long-winded story about some senator whose daughter’s double cross bite is going to single-handedly finance the brand-new Porsche Cayenne he just ordered for Betsy, for once I don’t mind. I sip my wine and try to look as if I care.
Even though the expression my father is wearing tells me he cares a great deal.
Only something about the way he is watching me makes me suspect it is not Mike’s work but mine he is thinking of.
* * *
Between courses, I slip away to the restroom. I take my time in the plush lounge, washing my hands with scented soap and freshening my lip gloss, inspecting my reflection for far too long. A string of what-ifs whisper through my mind, kicking up dust and picking up speed and swirling into a sandstorm of unease and insecurity. What if Graciela never calls me back? What if it really was the wrong Graciela? What if I can never prove the connection between her brother and Zach? What will I tell Gabe?
That last thought rises up and bites me. What will I tell Gabe? I tell myself pleasing Gabe is not the point of this exercise, though I can’t deny that the thought of his expression, when I tell him Graciela called with news, makes my heart beat double time.
“Not the point,” I tell my reflection, but she doesn’t look as if she believes me, either. Rolling my eyes, I pluck my purse from the counter and step into the hallway.
Where I walk right into the general.
I’m too surprised to ask him what he is doing here, and he doesn’t offer an explanation. He just wraps a big palm around my bicep and domineers me farther into the hallway, all the way down to where it dead ends into a wall. I know his next question before he even poses it.
“Why are you still talking to the Armstrongs?” he says in his three-star-general voice.
“How do you know I’m still talking to the Armstrongs?”
It’s a technique I learned from him, this answering a question with a question, and by the looks of his expression, the way his lips curl and his brows crunch into a crease, he doesn’t like it one bit.
But my question is also a provocation, because he and I both know there’s only one way he can know I’m still working on the Armstrong story, and that’s by spying on either me or the Armstrongs.
His tone softens but just a smidge. “I know lots of things, darlin’. Now I need you to answer my question. The Armstrongs.”
I give him an I’m-thirty-two-so-don’t-even-go-there look. “Because I’m not one of your subordinates, and I’m not going to stop just because you tell me to. Jean Armstrong asked me to help her write Zach’s story, and I’m still thinking about it.”
“That doesn’t explain why you’ve been in contact with Gabe.”
“What... When... How do you know about Gabe?” I shake my head in disbelief and maybe a little disgust. “Are you tailing me? No, you’re tailing him, aren’t you? Jesus.”
“Listen to me, Abigail. There are things going on here you don’t understand
.”
“Things like what?”
His expression is like a sluice, locked down tighter than the White House during a terrorist threat. “Things you don’t want to understand.”
“See, Dad, that’s where you’re wrong. I do want to understand what’s going on here, and so do the Armstrongs. They lost a son and a brother, and it’s not right for you or Uncle Chris or anybody else to keep the truth from them. They deserve to know what happened to Zach.”
“He took three bullets to the head. That’s what happened to him.”
“Yes, but from whose gun? And why was his brother there, on the same battlefield? Aren’t there rules for that? The Armstrongs have a right to know those answers, too.”
“Just because something’s the truth doesn’t always make it right.”
I shake my head, and rather vehemently. “The truth is always right.”
I believe this with every ounce of me, from my skin and bones all the way down to a cellular level. I believe that this is where I went wrong with Chelsea Vogel, when I missed the truth about Maria’s past and her scheming, and I believe this is where the army messed up with the Armstrongs, by refusing to admit to any wrongdoing or even contemplate the possibilities of who shot Zach. The truth is always right. Always. And the public deserves to know.
“I’m gonna need you to trust me on this one,” my father says. “I can’t explain. I can’t tell you anything other than that you do not want to get involved in this matter. There is nothing here you need to know.”
And this is where my father and I will never see eye to eye. His life, his entire career, has been built on a need-to-know basis, on clandestine operations and restriction of data and security clearance levels. In his mind, the answer is simple. I do not need to know.
My life, on the other hand, is crafted around my inherent belief that everyone needs to know. The public, the Armstrongs, myself. I need to know.
But this is an argument neither of us will win. Along with my father’s hazel eyes and wonky second toes, I also inherited his dogged determination and fierce competitiveness, and pitting us against each other is like throwing two raging lions into a ring—a roaring, snarling fight to the death.
I steer our talk back onto the road, and I throw out my ace of spades. “Okay, then. What about Ricky?”
“What about him?” Dad says, and without missing a beat.
A chill skitters across my shoulder blades. My question was a test, and my father just failed it spectacularly. By tossing out Ricky’s name, I was digging into his complicity. In knowing Ricky existed, in burying his testimony, maybe even in breaking into my house and swiping my copy of the transcript. But Dad didn’t even blink, which means that he not only knows about Ricky, he already knew I did, as well.
But he can’t know about the copy Mandy pried from my machine’s memory, nor the one she transferred to the memory stick on the key chain tucked away in my purse. Nobody knows about those but me and Mandy.
“Why was Ricky’s name buried? What did he see? What did he know?”
My father is shaking his head before my first question is finished. “Listen to me, Abigail. Ricardo Hernandez is a dead end, both literally and figuratively. Even if he could talk, he’d have nothing to say about Zach Armstrong’s death. He wasn’t there. He saw nothing. He was not part of the battle that killed Zach Armstrong. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Oh, I understand, all right. I understand perfectly. Dad wants me to believe that Ricky’s inclusion on the rogue transcript was a mistake, an oversight, a blunder. He wants me to believe Ricky was nowhere near Zach Armstrong when he was killed. But if that’s true, why would someone go to all the trouble to get me an uncensored copy of the transcript? It doesn’t make any sense.
Which means I also understand something else. I also understand my father is lying to me. Ricky Hernandez knew something, and it’s important enough to the Armstrong case that the army would scramble to bury it. Which means that whatever it is, it doesn’t look good for the army.
Dad leans in, and everything about him softens. His posture, his expression, his ten-hut tone.
“I’m asking you, darlin’, as the man who brought you into this world, to back off. To drop your search for Mr. Hernandez and let this partnership with the Armstrongs die. Now, I know you want to know all the reasons why, and if I could tell them to you, I certainly would, but I can’t. All I can tell you is, let it go. For the Armstrongs, for yourself, for me. Just...let it go. Can you do that for me?”
For my father, there’s only one acceptable answer, and that is “yes, sir.” I hold his gaze and my breath, not moving, not speaking, not capable of lying. Not about this. Not without him seeing right through me.
“Is it a matter of national security?” I say. “Is Ricky a spy or a terrorist or...I don’t know, a being from another planet? At least give me something to go on here.”
“How about this? I am your father, and I’m asking you to trust me.”
I blink into my father’s eyes a long moment, realizing that by turning this argument personal, I’ve been outplayed. Do I trust that my father loves me, that he has my best interests at heart? Absolutely. Without a shadow of a sliver of a doubt.
But for my father, the army has always come first. Duty, honor, country. Everything else is corollary, including the people he loves most in the world. After all, none of us would be here if not for the long, gray line.
He reaches for my hand, tucks it into the crook of his arm, holds it there with a palm. The gesture is both intimate and intimidating. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Trust me.”
His general mask is gone now, morphed into the man who not all that long ago tickled my knees, the man who taught me to drive a stick shift, the man who looked as if he might cry when at eighteen I told him I was too old to call him daddy. I look into my father’s eyes and nod, but it’s sluggish. I know he expects me to, even as I silently admit to myself that by doing so, I’m not being entirely honest.
I do trust him, just not about this.
“Good.” He pats my hand and smiles. As far as Dad is concerned, the subject is now closed. “Now, let’s get back to the table before your mother reports us missing.”
Without another word, he leads me there, sinks into his red leather chair and says to no one in particular, “That ricotta cheesecake looks good. Don’t you think?”
I respond in an equally passive-aggressive manner. By leaving my third message for Graciela from the car on the way home.
15
Ben suggests we meet in the food court at Arundel Mills, a cavernous mall south of Baltimore. At just before four on a school day, the place is a madhouse, packed with after-school shoppers, harried moms and their screaming kids, and a slew of somewhat sketchier types thanks to the casino next door. By some miracle, I find us a table at the edge of the dining area, sit down and wait.
He shows up ten minutes later, and other than a fresh T-shirt, he hasn’t changed much since the last time I saw him. His hair still hangs dirty and long over his eyes, his clothes still dwarf his childlike limbs, his face is still arranged in that carefully disinterested expression. But his eyes find mine from beneath the chunks of his bangs, and I catch their light. He’s eager to hear what I have to say.
He slides his backpack off his shoulder, drops it on the floor and sinks onto the chair across from me, pulling the buds from his ears. “Hey.”
“Hi, Ben. I didn’t know what you wanted,” I say, gesturing to the mini-mountain of Chick-fil-A bags and cups on the table between us, “so I just got one of everything.”
His gaze dips to the mounds of food, then back to me. “The cows will be thrilled.”
Okay, so maybe I went a bit overboard, as I tend to do, but this offering is fueled by more than just guil
t. It’s also fueled by worry for the skin-and-bones kid who showed up at my doorstep all those weeks ago, and the fact that he travels all over Baltimore and the District unsupervised. Where is his father? I rip open a bag of sandwiches and hand one to Ben.
“Maria Duncan’s real name is Maria Elizabeth Daniels. She wasn’t from Detroit, but from Toledo, sixty miles south. She never went to college, never got a degree in business accounting, never worked for any one of those places on her résumé.”
Ben drops his sandwich back onto the table uneaten. “So, she lied?”
His prepubescent voice cracks on the last word, and I wonder if it’s hormones or emotion that send it into a tailspin. Either way, I soften everything about mine when I answer.
“She lied.”
“About everything?”
I nod. “Pretty much.”
“But that’s...that’s insane. The press dug up everything on my mom. Everything. Even shit that shouldn’t have mattered, like bounced checks and speeding tickets. How could they have missed such humongous things about Maria?”
“Same way I did. Because we were so focused on exposing your mother that we didn’t take a closer look at the victim.”
“But if Maria’s a liar, then she’s also not the victim. My mom was.”
By making that connection, Ben is grasping a little at straws, and understandably so. No one wants to believe their mother is capable of cheating on their father, of the dishonesty and pretense and hypocrisy of publicly condemning the very thing she is trying to suppress in herself. But Maria’s lies don’t erase Chelsea’s guilt, and Maria was a victim long before Chelsea came along, just not in the way Ben thinks.
“When Maria was eight, she was abducted from her bedroom in the middle of the night. Her captor broke a window, plucked her out of her bed and stole her from her own house. Her parents were fairly prominent, and they were in the middle of a very loud, very public divorce. But because one of Maria’s first-grade teachers had reported bruises on Maria’s skin a few years prior, the police went after her parents. Her father, specifically. They questioned him for days, while meanwhile across town, a janitor from her school had Maria locked in his basement. Think about the worst thing he could have wanted her for, and that was his reason.”
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