This is not the last turn of the night. There is something different about it, the closeness that follows an atrocity witnessed together, perhaps, and the need to confirm something living in the wake of something that isn’t.
In the morning, she wants flowers.
“There are already flowers. I picked them out myself—the peonies you?—”
“I know. And I love them. But I need to bring new life into this place after… after last night. I can’t explain it.”
Either this is a coping mechanism or a statement of intent or both, and I find I cannot argue with the logic of it, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Instead, I sip my coffee. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“Really? You don’t think it’s silly or?—”
“Not at all. Vet will go with you.”
Molly looks at me across the table with a stillness that precedes something she’s been wondering about. “That’s her real job, isn’t it. She’s my bodyguard.”
There is no version of this moment in which lying is available to me. I look at my wife across the kitchen table, at the warm brown eyes and the slightly crooked mouth and the full, honest attention of a woman who has been figuring things out with or without my assistance since long before I gave her any. Lying will not help my marriage, even if it’s my instinct.
“Yes. She is.”
Molly is quiet for a moment. Is she angry? Hurt, because she’s been managed and lied to all this time? I will weather the storm of it, because I have earned that. This is my responsibility, and I will make it up to her.
She sips her coffee once more. “Thank you.”
I stare her down. This must be a trap. “Thank you?”
“For keeping me safe,” she says, with the simplicity of someone saying a thing they mean without qualification. “Thank you for that.”
“You’re not mad?”
“I could be. I have every right to be, considering everything. But I’ve chosen to be grateful because you gave me a straight answer when I asked and because you have always done things like this to keep me safe.” She pauses. “Understand, I want to be read-in on everything from today onward, but for all the secret ways you tried to keep me safe, thank you.”
Then she kisses the top of my head, grabs her coat, and collects Vet from the parlor, where she’s been since she got in this morning. I stand in the kitchen of my house in the morning light and wonder about the enigmatic woman who read me the riot act yesterday for keeping things from her, then thanked me for that same thing today.
My wife cannot be predicted, and that might keep her alive someday.
Igor finds me in the study twenty minutes later, and we drink coffee and look at the problem with the clear eyes of the morning after, which is a different view than the one the night before allows. The dog has been taken. Fedor now knows his reach intomy life will be met with the calibrated insolence of a man who is not impressed.
But it’s not a strategy. It’s an opening note in a conversation that will require much more development before it resolves.
“We need someone on the inside,” Igor says, which is the conclusion I’ve been circling since Kamila’s number went dead. “With Fedor. Not watching him from the outside—inside the organization, close enough to know what’s moving before it moves.”
“I know. Any suggestions?”
“Sadly, or maybe ironically, Vladimir would have been an ideal double agent. He?—”
My phone rings. It’s Vet’s number, and I answer it on the first ring. I can’t make out what I’m hearing. Pocket dial? “Vet, are you?—”
“I’ve been shot.” Her voice is even with the effort it takes to make it even. “En route to the flower shop. The car was rammed after the shooting.” A pause, and I’m already moving. Igor follows before I say a word. “Molly’s unconscious. Called 911.”
The cold that moves through me is absolute. “Where are you?”
She gives me the cross street, and I’m already at my garage door, Igor two steps behind me, when she says, in the voice of someone using the last of what they have, “Fedor’s man?—”
Nothing.
“Vet? Vet! Stay with me!”
But she’s gone.
