Page 28

I said it so casually, without even thinking. I said it with a continuation of the humor and camaraderie that had mostly ruled

the evening. I said it. I said it.

I couldn’t believe I had said it.

“I didn’t mean that like it’s weird that we’re not together.”

“No. Totally.”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant, Addie. Really.” I glanced at him, and his eyes were wide and vulnerable and, I’m pretty sure, imploring

me not to retreat, because of course I wanted to retreat. “Just... with it being the four of us again, it was easy for it to almost feel like the old days.

Right?”

“Right.” I nodded. “That’s all I meant.”

“I know. I totally get it.” He faced forward again and nodded slowly. “I was thinking that too. And I think that’s a natural

thing for us to have been feeling.”

We sat in silence until I turned off Main Street onto the county road back to the inn. It was right about then that I started

laughing, seemingly from nowhere.

“What?” he asked.

“That was a very nice politician’s way of handling that situation. Are you sure you don’t want to be president?”

Truth be told, his skills had been on display all evening long. It hadn’t been difficult to decipher Cole’s skepticism, but

rather than pushing him toward reconciliation or trying to make things less awkward—which in nearly all circumstances made

things more awkward regardless of who was making the attempts—Wes had been respectful of the skeptic. Not once had he attempted

to pull Cole into a moment of nostalgia, but by the end of the evening, Cole was the one starting sentences with words like,

“Do you guys remember when...”

“Honestly?” Wes asked after several seconds had passed. Several seconds in which I had been thinking about how, long before

we’d gotten to dessert, the ticking time bomb threatening the evening had been defused by a combination of Wes’s refined diplomacy,

Laila’s effusive joy, and Cole’s ability to prepare a steak that would send even Eeyore to his happy place. (Although I don’t

think donkeys in the Hundred Acre Wood eat beef, now that I think of it. Or any donkeys, really. Please forgive the poorly

executed idiom, PETA—and the estate of A. A. Milne.)

“Honestly what?”

“You asked if I was sure I don’t want to be president.”

“Oh.” Oh. “Um, yeah, sure. Honestly.”

“I mostly don’t. I know I can’t be. I won’t be. And I’m fine with it. Mostly.”

“But?”

“But I’m going to miss it. Politics, I mean.” He sighed. “No. Not politics. Not the glad-handing. Not campaigning. Definitely not campaigning. But I like negotiating. I like sponsoring a bill I believe in and following it all the way until it becomes

a law. An actual law , you know?”

“Like on Schoolhouse Rock .”

He laughed. “Yes. Exactly. My life is very much like Schoolhouse Rock .”

I pulled up in front of the inn and shifted into Park just as he asked, “Do you miss the CIA?”

I released air through my lips, creating a raspberry sound, and turned to face him. “My, my. What a complicated, existential

question that is, wrapped up in a deceptively simple, ho-hum topic of conversation.”

His eyes took on that Please don’t retreat! quality again. “Sorry. I’m not trying to pry.”

“No, I know. It’s just... Well, it really is complicated. I loved my job. And then...”

The agency had offered to find me someone to talk to immediately after Joel died. I don’t know. Maybe I should have taken

them up on the offer. The problem, though, was that when the CIA offers to provide someone for you to talk to, it’s not going

to just be some in-network mental health professional they found in the Yellow Pages under “Therapists” or “Trauma Specialists”

or even “Last-Ditch Efforts to Prevent the Complete Loss of Sanity.” You couldn’t talk to any of those sorts of people, or

even the people who love you, because you’d only be able to pour out a heavily redacted version of your heart.

So they encourage you to talk to the one or two highly trained mental health professionals in the entire world who have high

enough security clearance to hear the entire story, which is all fine and dandy and maybe would help. Except somewhere in

the back of your mind you know that these people you’re supposed to trust and be your truest self with so you can heal and

move forward are on the payroll of the organization that (accidentally, indirectly, and so regrettably) got your husband killed.

But then again, so are you.

So you convince yourself you don’t need to talk to anyone. You convince yourself all you need is a little time. A little time

and to stay busy. That’s the key, you know. And then all you have to do is find a way to dull the pain during the moments

when there isn’t enough to do. Easy. Until you realize there’s never enough to do. There will never be enough to do. And pretty soon you have to acknowledge that whatever it is you’re using to dull the pain... there’s

never enough of that either.

“Um... my husband was CIA too. A collection management officer.”

“Were you at the DO too? Is that where you met?” My eyes popped open, and the words began flowing out of him more quickly.

“Sorry. Not prying. If you don’t want to tell me how you met—”

“No, it’s not that.” I shook my head. “I just... Sorry. It was just weird hearing someone mention the DO, I guess. It’s

been a while since I’ve talked with anyone who even knows what a collection management officer is, much less which department

they work for.”

The Directorate of Operations, sometimes referred to as the Clandestine Service, was, in fact, the arm of the CIA with all

the spies. And while I had always been able to easily dismiss the idea that I was a spy (because no, I wasn’t—I just computed and analyzed the information the spies gathered and figured out why it mattered

and how we could use it), Joel had started out at the agency as a case officer. And when you used the official term of case officer , most people retired the John le Carré or Tom Clancy levels of excitement that had been building in their brains. They assumed

a case officer was more like a social worker. A social worker for terrorists, maybe, but still, not all that exciting.

But make no mistake. Up until the year I met him, fumbling around in his new office at Langley, struggling to get the hang

of his promoted position as a collection management officer and so distracted he’d put his tie on inside out, my husband had

been a spy.

“Yeah. That’s where I met him. He was the new CMO and I was a methodologist.” I lifted my eyes to Wes’s, prepared to explain the role of a methodologist, but he was nodding in understanding, so I continued.

“It was just one target analysis report out of thousands of target analysis reports. I don’t even remember which continent the target was on or if it involved national security or foreign policy, but I remember the look on his face as I handed him that manila folder.

I remember how he took the time to smile at me, and I remember thinking no CMO had ever even made eye contact with me before. ”

Wes smiled at me. “It was pretty instant, huh?”

I smiled back. “Yeah. It was pretty instant. So...” I cleared my throat and tried to refocus on what Wes had asked. He’d

probably thought it was such a simple question. “Sometimes I miss the work. I miss taking all the available facts and figuring

out what they mean as my job rather than just a hobby that makes me analyze and mistrust everyone and everything around me.”

He sighed. “Some things just became very clear to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I understand why you were always so good at board games, for one thing.”

He wasn’t wrong. “You were also just really bad at them.”

“That may be, but seriously, I get it now. Years of Balderdash and Stratego and Battleship—”

“Guess Who?”

“Yes! Guess Who?” He started laughing, and I couldn’t help but join in. “I don’t think any of us ever even beat you at stupid

freakin’ Guess Who?”

As the laughter subsided, I shrugged and looked down at my hands in my lap. “I don’t know. Maybe the CIA was what I was always

supposed to do, but maybe I was just supposed to meet Joel Elwyn. And that’s the real answer to the question, I guess. Whether

or not I miss it, I mostly just miss who I was when I was there... with him.”

I was suddenly afraid to look at him. I couldn’t remember the last time I had talked that much about Joel. There was so much

I wasn’t allowed to say, so it was usually easier to say nothing at all. People had asked me questions, but after enough one-word

answers and subject changes, I guess they got the hint.

But Wes hadn’t asked me about him. I had been the one to bring up Joel’s name, and I didn’t understand why, but for the first

time in a really long time, I wondered what it would be like to answer even more questions that no one was asking.

And that, I knew, was my cue to put an end to the conversation.

“Well, I should probably—”

Wes’s hand grabbed mine just as I began moving it back to the steering wheel. I couldn’t help but look at him then, though

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

There was no pity in his eyes. Only concern. Understanding, maybe? Not that he and Wray had had a normal sort of marriage,

to put it mildly, but he’d loved her. Surely he came closer to understanding than any of the newlyweds, caring and compassionate

though they tried to be.

“Addie...”

“I can’t talk about it, Wes.” I pulled my hand away from his. “I appreciate the...” What? What did I appreciate? “The,

um...” The “My Spouse Died and All I Got Was This Lousy Secret That’s Going to Tear My Heart Apart” T-shirt? Well, huh. He did know something about that , didn’t he? “Just... I appreciate it. But I can’t talk about it. I just can’t.”

“Addie...” He lowered his head slightly and forced my eyes to meet his. “I know.”

I threw my arms around him, surprising myself even more than I surprised him, I’m pretty sure, and then pulled away before

he could hug me back. “Go away now,” I muttered with a self-conscious chuckle as I faced forward again.

The fact that he grabbed his blazer from the back of the seat, quietly told me good night, and got out of the truck without

another word was almost enough to make me want to ask him to stay.