“—The Lighthouse.”
He sucks in a breath. “Right. The so-called Lighthouse doesn’t exist in any official capacity, so it certainly isn’t a governmental entity. So it can’t ‘classify’ anything in any meaningful way. They can demand confidentiality, but breaching it isn’t a federal crime. At most, it’s a civil matter. And I happen to know a good lawyer.”
She chuckles.
He continues, “But more importantly, the people who have possession of the primary sources Linda used believe the documents are of historical value. So to the extent they ever were classified, they are now effectively declassified.”
Biz studies him.
He hopes he’s not sweating. He’s good under pressure, but telling the truth about the Lighthouse without saying too much is a tightrope act.
She nods slowly. “Okay. I’ll represent the estate, find the right publisher, and make sure it gets the attention it deserves.”
“Thank you.”
She pauses. “Have you seen Caleb lately?”
“We went to the National Zoo with him, Emmaline, and the baby last weekend. I’m not sure Henry got a lot out of the experience. He mainly drooled and slept. But Caleb seemed really solid. He mentioned he’s working on something new.”
“He is.” Biz smiles. “He sent me pages from a literary fiction novel. He’s calling it Dust and Divinity. It’s the story of a fallen Egyptian deity.”
“Is it good?” he asks.
“I think it might be brilliant this time.” Biz’s expression is thoughtful. “He’s got something to say now.”
He cocks his head. “He didn’t have something to say before?”
“Not enough to support the story he wanted to tell. It’s about complicity and ambition. It’s raw. And the problem was never his writing. The thrillers proved that. He just needed to live and, well, fall.”
“Will it sell?”
“It might. But that’s not why he’s writing it.” She picks up her coffee again. “He’s writing it because he has to.”
“I think that’s why Linda wrote her book, too,” he says before he stands and shakes Biz’s hand.
At Linda’s memorial service, her daughter cornered him and Sasha near the exit. The reception had been winding down—coffee going cold, the last of the pastries picked over. She’d introduced herself as a foreign service officer, which made him wonder if that was her job or her cover.
“I always knew Mom had a lover from work,” she said, her voice low. “But I didn’t know one single fact about the person. Not a name, not a gender, not whether they were still alive or dead or married or what.” She looked between them. “They were two women who spent their whole lives keeping secrets. They hid everything from the most mundane, to the most explosive, to the most important things about themselves.”
She paused, then said, “I wonder how things would have turned out if Mom had been a regular librarian and Ruth was a botanist or something.”
Now, zig-zagging between the still-stopped cars on his way to the Metro, Leo wonders too.
But he also thinks about him and Sasha and the secrets they kept for the first decade-plus of their marriage. She was bound by client confidentiality. He was bound by national security. There are missions she’ll never hear about, and cases he’ll never know she handled.
And, after all that, they still chose to enter this life together. To join the Lighthouse. But it’s a decision they made together so that their secrets would be shared secrets.
He hopes that’s enough. He hopes that thirty years from now, Finn and Fiona won’t be standing at his memorial service, wondering what they never knew about him. Wondering how things might have turned out if he’d been a regular history teacher and Sasha had been a regular librarian.
But then again, Sasha has never been a regular anything. And neither has he.
Chapter Forty-One
Four weeks after the gala
It’s Friday. Pizza night. Family.
Sasha sits on the couch between Connelly and Finn, watching the skateboarding sleuth solve another case through careful observation and logical deduction.
