Adam, Kate, and both of the kids dyed their hair. Kate cut Trudy’s short—short and dark, a look she kind of liked. It was the only time the teenager had smiled in days. Billy went blond, basically white. He looked almost albino, like a spy in a James Bond movie, and elicited just as rare a laugh from them all. Adam shaved his head and began growth on a goatee. For a moment it was as if they were prepping for a costume party, putting on disguises to go out into the world and have some fun. Then for each of them, a wave of truth would waft over the hotel room and they’d remember what it was that they were dressing up for.
The dye and the haircutting accessories had been on Adam’s list. Clothes, souvenirs, and maps were accoutrements to make them look like three tourists heading home to New York. Kate had gone online and bought three plane tickets. She had checked every item off the list. She had been a good wife, agreeing to help her husband with everything he asked of her, and yet she constantly consulted her watch, she could barely endure the minutes and hours before their departure time. Before she could fly away from him.
Adam watched the clock for a different reason. He needed to steady himself to say good-bye. He knew this send-off would be different, knew that it was more than probable that he would never see any of them again—at least not as a free citizen. He was in tune enough with Kate, even in light of all that had gone on between them, that he felt what she was feeling—that she was spent. The last three years had taken everything out of her as far as he was concerned, as far as “they” were concerned. He knew it was over and his heart was broken. He didn’t have the words or the will to try to change her mind. All he wanted now was to get the kids and her to safety.
Sometimes at night, as he lay alone in the mildewing hotel room with her in the room next door, bunched in with the kids, he’d think of the early days when he won her heart in Ann Arbor. He remembered how full she made each moment, with her beaming smile and syrupy laugh. He’d flashback on how much he used to love to make love to her, how happy he was to come home to his lady in Royal Oak after a night on patrol in Ann Arbor. It was all a distant world away now. The memories were ashes, remnants of a house fire, flames he himself had started and events had taken and stoked to a blaze. He had lost Kate and Billy and Trudy, lost them in the fire.
* * *
BEFORE THEY LEFT, before he put them in a taxi to Heathrow, he wanted to speak with them all. Especially the kids. He wanted to try to explain to them what had happened. He wanted them to have some sense of who he was in the light of who he’d become. He sat the kids down in the rickety desk chairs in the room he slept in.
“I want you both to know that I love you. I love you so, so much.”
“Why can’t you just come with us, Daddy?” Little Billy wanted to comprehend it all but he didn’t. “Why can’t we all just go home together? Why is it so important to for you to see Georgie Turnstile?” Trudy rolled her eyes, but knew enough not to make a sarcastic remark. “Let’s go see Poppa and make him come with us to Chicago, please?”
Kate felt a strong pang of guilt at her inability to tell her boy what had happened to his grandfather. She turned away and steadied her jaw as Adam responded.
“I have to make things right, Billy. I can’t run away. You three are all that I care about. I have to set things straight, Billy. If I don’t, we’ll all be hiding, running forever.” Kate knew he was about to choke up a good ten words before he did. She knew Adam rarely let his emotions get to him or overcome him, but she saw it coming on like a lonely car’s headlights floating forward on a darkened road.
“I have to clear my name—our name. Okay, Billy?” His son nodded. He wrapped himself around Adam’s shoulder and announced that he was never letting go. Adam started sobbing but bucked up, stayed the course with his explanation.
“Some people have made everyone think that I did something that I didn’t do. They’ve used the fact that I had made a mistake once before, so it was easy for them to make people believe that I had done it again, but I didn’t. Powerful people. Do you see? They’ve done some very, very bad things and they have to answer for them. I have to make sure they do. All of them. Then I can come home, home to you.”
Out of nowhere his eyes erupted with a rain of pain. A steady wash of fear and anger buckled him farther to the floor at his son’s feet. Kate’s eyes caught the same storm. She couldn’t help herself. In that moment, she knew she wasn’t free. She wanted to be harder, tougher than she was, but it wasn’t so. She was still his wife. It wasn’t going to be as easy as she thought. She hadn’t in fact emotionally emancipated herself from him.
She wandered alone into the other room and collapsed onto the broken, doughy mattress. There was no one else left in her life but Adam, everyone else was gone now, and though she hated him for that, against everything she was feeling, everything that made sense to her about her life, she couldn’t abandon him—not now, not here. It was over—she was more and more sure of it every day—but she also knew it wasn’t how she would be able to let it end. She didn’t have it in her to leave Adam alone in London.
She picked herself up and went back into the other room. She spoke low, with a steady surety.
“We’re staying.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Adam. We’re staying. Here. We’ll wait. We’ll all leave together.”
“No, no, Kate. No. You can’t.” The kids were relieved. Billy held on to his father even tighter, locked his arms around his legs with all his might.
“Please, Kate, don’t do this.” Billy reached up and put his hand on his father’s mouth, his eyes flushed red with an overdose of youthful anguish.
“Yes, Daddy, yes! We are staying. I’m staying with you.” Trudy fell to her knees, grabbed Adam by the waist, and locked her arms around him in another bout of tears. Adam looked over the crumpled kids to his weary wife.
“I can’t let you stay, Kate.”
“You don’t have a choice.” It was obvious she was set on her newest course.
They would stick firm, live there in the hotel room, and help him. She and his two children would support him in any way that they could. If she didn’t, if he met any form of danger—was arrested or, worse, killed—her children would never forgive her and she herself would live with nothing but unbearable guilt. Her only path was laid out clearly. She had no other road to take. She would dig in and fight, and in the fight maybe, just maybe, she would find some way back to Adam.