If they’re not talking about me now, they will talk once they’re on the way home, thought Dawit. Even Shila, who knew something of his background, had never been to the house—the estate, he thought, had never seen how he grew up. Eli would tell everyone back at the lab, that is, if anyone listened to Eli. Chen and Edgar. Now I know Chen’s secret and he knows mine. Lying here, he thought, not joining in just makes it worse.
“The FBI would prefer gay agents to be out,” said Edgar. “That removes any opportunity for blackmail. But he’s Chinese and he’s scared. You know, let a thousand flowers bloom and when they lift up their heads, lop ‘em off.”
She somehow doubted Chen knew much about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. But Edgar did. The lover of an FBI agent, an unlikely leftist. As unlikely as her son joining the FBI. As unlikely as the life she’d married into, up at the end of the long drive lined with centuries-old oaks. Here, the magnolias in bloom dropped their grenades. She had swept the Jacaranda Walk early that morning and then again shortly before people started to arrive so no one would slip on fallen blossoms. Natalie believed in doing things for herself and somehow she had ended up with a staff. She never used the word servant. She was glad Connie had the day off, and Ramiro along with the cousin who worked with him, the young man certainly undocumented, at least she hoped so, she wanted to give a chance to someone who would find chances hard to come by. Closed borders kill people. Like Amalia Torres, strangled to death. She could never remember Ramiro’s cousin’s name. Maybe she should have been inclusive, invited them all to the barbecue as guests. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit distracted,” she said to Edgar.
“Death penalty appeal?”
She searched his face. “Yes, a particularly terrible one. This Saudi woman—girl, really? She came to the US with her family as a child.” With the obvious result: they were strict; she was American. “She ran away from home, ended up on the streets in Hollywood.” A thirteen-year-old girl busted for soliciting needs help, not punishment, Natalie thought. “In and out of Juvie and foster homes. After the prostitution busts, her family wouldn’t take her back.” Then came the more serious bust, prostitution and drugs, at age nineteen. Adult. “It landed her in deportation proceedings. She’s terrified. She’s going to be shipped back to Riyadh with documents showing she’s a prostitute and addict. They’ll behead her, or stone her to death.”
“You’re representing a case in a Saudi court?” Edgar asked.
“No. It gets worse. In the immigration detention center, it’s overcrowded. They had all these women sleeping on plastic under the cafeteria tables. She stripped one night and used the legs of her jumpsuit to strangle the woman sleeping next to her. She figured the death penalty in the United States would be more humane.”
Edgar had been kind to listen, but now he was speechless.
Sometimes I hate this country, Natalie thought. Khadija was a killer but she was also a very screwed-up teen. And our immigration policy shared responsibility. Khadija should never have been in deportation proceedings. Amalia Torres should never have been taken from her children, who are orphans now. And my son, Natalie thought, is working for the government I can’t trust.
“How did we get here?” she’d once asked Shel.
“We bought before the real estate boom,” he said, a good man who didn’t understand.
Someone at the FBI must have known—there was a background check, but Chen had no idea that Dawit grew up this way. So, almost as a parting gift, each one of them had been willing to reveal a truth.
The grounds! The house itself wasn’t large. He did a walkthrough when he went inside to use the bathroom. Living room with African carvings on display. Dining room he suspected was rarely used. The art on the walls was contemporary and large. The kind of thing that woman, Virshaw, would do. Though these couldn’t be hers. What a weird conflict that would have been. For some reason, he found himself thinking of Norman Rockwell, the image of the children in a classroom, the little boy reaching forward to dunk the girl’s pigtails in the inkwell. Of course, Virshaw had brought that to mind, the inky ends of her ponytail. Large eat-in kitchen with the de rigueur island, copper-bottomed pans, two different kinds of ovens in the wall. Steps leading down to a sunroom at the back of the house. He hadn’t even reached Dawit’s old bedroom when Eli walked in and caught him snooping.
“Looking for the bathroom?” Chen said, and pointed. “That way.”