71

What is happiness?

On a crisp evening in April, Rory and I walk to a restaurant near our hotel. The air smells clean, a light snow falling over the harbor. As we stroll the streets of Reykjavík, I feel a strange lightness in my step.

We spent the day at our hotel, the Black Pearl, watching Le Bureau des Légendes. It’s good to see Rory picking up French so quickly. It will come in handy. Because of my new contact, headquarters asked me to do a six-month posting to Strasbourg. If it weren’t for Caroline, I would refuse. I would say Rory needs to stay put in his New York City high school, get back to normal life. But what is normal now?

Although he was glad to see his friends, Rory said the streets of the Upper West Side felt different, changed. He had thought a return to New York would make him feel closer to Fred, but it turned out the opposite was true. The city isn’t the same; it never will be. Fred left a hole that can’t be filled, and we are each, in our own ways, coming to terms with that.

We’re waiting for our fish and chips when Rory looks up, his eyes full of questions. “Explain it to me one more time. Harris Ojai was the mastermind?”

I nod.

“And the police chief was involved?”

“Yes, and the head of the school board too. It began with only overseas investors, but Harris realized he needed people on the inside to pull it off. Once he had funding, he got the mayor on board, and then it was simply a matter of time and numbers to convince a few others. Not everybody, obviously, but more than you would think, enough to keep track of which students couldn’t perform, enough to smooth over the rough edges.”

“And Kobayashi really had nothing to do with it?”

“No. They kept him in the dark. Turns out he was a superstar school administrator from Houston before they hired him. Harris Ojai thought Kobayashi’s presence would shield them from scrutiny. Oh, I almost forgot. I got an email from Officer Kyle last night. He quit the police force, moved to Michigan to be with his girlfriend and go to law school. Said to tell you he finished Martin in Space, loved it.”

Rory looks pleased. “I knew he would.”

The plates arrive, crispy fried cod and a side of potatoes to share. A well-dressed young couple takes the table next to us. I glance over, assessing, determine they’re just regular people out for dinner, and return my attention to Rory.

“I understand the overseas investors,” he says. “They didn’t know the kids. It was just business from their perspective. But the others?”

“They got serious money, the kind that pays for Ivy League educations, vacation homes in Hawaii, a major nest egg.”

“These people already had money. How could they need more?”

“Sometimes, the more people have, the more they want.”

“But how could they rationalize what happened to Gray, the Lamey twins, and Caroline?”

I asked Brenda this question after we were back in New York City. I didn’t think she’d talk to me, but I had to try. I was astonished and more than a little embarrassed that I had been wrong about her. Had I been blind because she was another mom, because she seemed so normal? She told me by text that she would give me five minutes on the phone, friend to friend. I do consider you a friend, she texted, despite everything.

“It started long before the incident with the twins,” she told me. “What happened to the kids wasn’t in the original plan, but the investors kept pushing for better and better scores. We’ve all worked so hard to get to where we are. Our kids have worked so hard. Don’t we owe it to them to make everything perfect? The world is a competitive place, Lina. It’s not enough anymore to be smart, lucky, and hardworking. You need to be exceptional. You need to be a winner.”

I tell Rory all of this. He shakes his head, still struggling to understand.

“Want to know the scariest part? She genuinely believed what she was saying.”

He frowns. “It wasn’t only the investors who profited, though. Everyone did, even us.”

“Even us.”

“So people must have known, right?”

“When the twins went missing, I’m sure it seemed like an accident. But the next year, with Gray, and with others being lured away on trips, people might have suspected something was up. Of course, even if they did, they probably just rationalized it away, convinced themselves it couldn’t possibly be true. Still, when you factor in the increases during the years of the Wonder Test, accounting for market fluctuations, discounting for the insane growth of Silicon Valley, the good citizens of Greenfield made more than six billion dollars in equity and home sale profits from this scheme.”

“Do you think the district will get rid of the Wonder Test?”

I finish my margarita. “Probably not. They’ll chalk it up to a few bad seeds, move on. What did Dad say? ‘Everything is far-fetched and impossible until the moment it happens. And then it’s just regular life.’”

Walking back to our hotel, we pause to look at the colorful boats in the harbor. The Arctic sun is beginning to set. Standing beside Rory, I still can’t get used to how tall he is, towering over me. Has he really grown that much in a few weeks, or is he standing up straighter now?

“There’s something else I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Okay.”

“It’s about Caroline. It’s about that first day.”

I knew this was coming. I’ve weighed exactly how to explain to him about Caroline’s father, about our upcoming trip to Strasbourg and the possible deployment to Paris next year. I’ve wanted to tell him about that morning at the Royal Donut Shop. More than that, I’ve wanted to tell him about the struggles I’ve had these last few months, the nagging fear that I am not an adequate parent, that I can’t do this without Fred.

That morning, so badly, I just wanted to pedal away, down Broadway, past the railroad tracks, along the freeway sound wall. I wanted to turn back the clock, return to those days when I still had the paper route, when my family was still intact and the world was new, so many choices ahead of me. But there is no going backward. For better or worse, I can only be the person I am. I can only do the thing I know how to do, the thing that comes most naturally. I can only follow my instincts. And that’s what I did.

That afternoon, when Caroline appeared at the curb with Rory, I was surprised by the speed with which he had found her, made contact, and executed the meet. I watched him in the rearview mirror, talking to his new friend, and thought, Well done, Rory. Perhaps they would have become friends anyway—two only children, enfants uniques, out of place in that strange Northern California suburb. And perhaps in that scenario, they still would have fallen in love.

As for me, I would like to believe I would have gone to such lengths to find the girl if it had been anyone else’s daughter. I would like to believe I would have made that trek into the hills above the Russian River for any kid gone missing. But I’m not sure. There is a bond within the business. Whether the nations you represent are friends or enemies or somewhere in between, there is an understanding among individuals who do this kind of work. A mutual respect that often deepens into genuine friendship. A silent acknowledgment that we are not so different. We may be sitting on different sides of the table, but we’re all playing the same game.

When I was starting out, all those years ago in New York City, I had no way of knowing how this work would permeate my life. Somehow, the job welcomed me behind a strange curtain, a thin veil, really, that I had never known was there. Since then, little has truly changed in the ways of the world, but now I view everything from an altered perspective, eyes wide open, taking it all in. I see the subtext, the nuance. I see the story within the story.

After Fred died, I thought I could walk away. I dreamed of returning to the person I was before this work transformed my mind and soul. The idea was so alluring: moving back to California, starting over, somehow reclaiming what was lost. Somehow, I believed I had it in me.

But the past months have taught me that there is no starting over. As the narrator of Martin in Space says, “I can’t unsee what I’ve seen, I can’t unlearn what I know. Each place, each decision, each experience, has become a part of me, no more than my head, no less than my heart.”

Life is a series of decisions, forks in the road, this or that, yes or no, left or right. We make our choices, we select our path. When I was young, the options seemed unlimited, so many paths to travel. But here’s what I didn’t understand: Every path is a one-way street. There is no turning back, no changing your mind, no trying both options. There is only forward motion. With time, your decisions pile up, compounding, interweaving, slowly turning you into the person you are.

Who will Rory become? I find it harder to know what he’s thinking these days. A young man doesn’t go through what he’s been through and come out the same.

“Mom,” Rory says, his voice deeper now, like his father’s. He’s looking at me, waiting for an answer. “Come on, tell me the story.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

And so I begin. I was out front of the Royal Donut shop, rain on the pavement, a black Peugeot in the parking lot, the man in the red cashmere scarf, the distinctive lapel pin, trois couleurs. A pause, a smile, bonjour.