“Kimberly? The dictaphone?”
“Yes, right!” Kimberly said, pulling open a drawer. She was right about the dress needing to be taken in—she appeared to have lost five pounds in a week. Not that Alice would mention it. Like the way Alice headed off conversations that might involve sympathy, Kimberly got sick of people constantly assessing her state of health.I get comments like thirty times a day, no exaggeration,she once said.I promise you, I’ll tell you how I’m feeling if it’s relevant. I should put that on a sticker. Thus, Alice went to a lot of effort to sound effortlessly normal.
“So, what’s the story with the spy?” Kimberly said, lowering her voice.
As they searched, Alice gave her as straightforward a rundown of events as she could, given that the circumstances were far from straightforward, with Kimberly interrupting at least three times every minute with a “holy shit, you’re kidding!”
“Sounds like he’s got you convinced,” Kimberly said when Alice was finished.
“Does it? Do you think I’ve been sucked into something? He seems legit. As did those gunshots.”
“I’ve never in my life known you to get sucked into anything. You have good instincts. So are there, like, actual FBI agents at your house right now? I hope they don’t look in your bedside drawer.”
“How do you know what’s in my bedside drawer?”
“Haha, I don’t. But I can guess now.”
“I hope they’re not tearing the place apart. Oh God. That house is everything to me.”
“And you know my thoughts about that.”
“It’s my anchor, okay?”
“Sure, anchors can be good things,” Kimberly replied, searching an accordion file, “or they can hold you back. That place is a mausoleum. You think it’s stability and belonging but it’s a holding pattern. You dream of seeing the world, and yet you’re scared of leaving the house you grew up in. You teach at the school you attended.”
“Yes, thank you for the observations, Doctor.”
“But hey, look at you now—on the run with an actual spy. And one who’d give Daniel Craig a run for his money.”
“And all I want is to go home and shut the door and read an Ian Fleming. I prefer to get my kicks vicariously.”
“Life is wasted on you. Vicarious kicks are all I have left right now.”
“Oh, stop with your guilt trip. I’d love to be some kind of free spirit who blows around in the wind and doesn’t worry about tomorrow, but I’m just not. I want toreadspy thrillers, I don’t want to be in one. And I am doing something consequential, in my day job—I’m educating the leaders of the future. And okay,” she added, catching Kimberly’s side-eye, “those kids are a very small minority of the ones I teach, but some of my students have gone on to great things. Moderately interesting things, anyway.”
“And you’re envious of them, aren’t you?”
“I envy their courage.”
“Courage is something you have to nurture, to build. It doesn’t come naturally to everyone.”
“And the people it does come naturally to are the people who tend to die young. No offense,” she added quickly, realizing she’d used the D-word, not that Kimberly shied away from those discussions. “What’s in that box up there?”
“None taken,” Kimberly said brightly. “That’s sheet music. Got any students who play the trumpet? I can’t even get a parp out of mine anymore. Have a look—the dictaphone could be in there.”
“Why would the dictaphone be with the sheet music?”
“It’s always in the last place you look… You know, courage isn’t a lack of fear—it’s doing what you believe in despite the fear.”
“I believe in the authorities and justice. I believe that if I go straight to them with this, it’ll blow over. No, it’s not in here.”
“Then maybe you need the courage to do that. Check the box on the middle shelf. Cake baking stuff, mostly.”
“Why would it be…? Oh, never mind. You think that’s what I should do—go to the cops?”
“I think you need to follow your instinct and not let fear chart your course.”
“Ah, but fear is the most basic survival instinct.”
