August 2014
Henry woke up at four in the morning. The moon was gone, and so was Anna. He sat up, listening. The night bugs were no longer singing, and the oppressive silence made the house feel deserted, a little spooky. Had she walked home? Henry stood and stepped across the room, nearly tripping on a pile of his clothes that Anna had tossed to the floor. All that passion seemed remote now, like something that had happened in another life. Stupid him. Words that he couldn’t take back. He groped for his boxers, pulled on his trousers, buttoned his shirt. Pausing, he listened again, and thought he heard a rustle of paper, the dull knock of a glass being set down on a tabletop.
Moving into the hallway, he noticed that a light was on in the living room, and when he rounded the corner he saw Anna, fully dressed and seated on the couch in an amber glow of lamplight. He smelled coffee, and saw a steaming mug on the table in front of her. She was reading her mother’s letters.
Henry, not wanting to startle her, cleared his throat, but she didn’t look up as he approached. He walked past, taking care not to touch her, but she bristled away from him, anyway.
“You made coffee?”
“In the kitchen.”
He returned with a mug, and took up a position at what he hoped was a suitable distance.
“Making progress?”
“Just getting started.” She still hadn’t looked up, and her voice was a monotone. “It’s clear that all of the letters are from just two people.”
He watched for a few seconds as she pulled folded pages from another envelope and flattened them on the table. Then she finally looked him in the eye.
“I’ve still got some questions. About what you told me last night.”
It had happened during the languid aftermath, as they lay side by side in the moonlit bedroom. That’s when Henry had experienced the ill-advised urge to come clean about his hidden role in this affair. Full disclosure, he decided. It was the only way forward with a clear conscience. Anna’s eyes had a lot to do with his decision. Her gaze was so deep and longing that it worked on his mind like a truth serum. Guilty thoughts of his duplicity simmered to the surface, demanding to be skimmed. And the conditions for confession could not have been more amenable. A breeze stirred the curtains, wafting in honeysuckle. Anna reached forward to stroke his cheek.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she’d whispered. “This whole night.”
“It is. All of it.”
“You don’t think this was a mistake, I hope?”
“Not at all.”
“It’s just that, well, you’ve got this look in your eye, like you’re kind of uncertain.”
So she’d seen it, then, reading him perfectly, even if drawing the wrong conclusion.
“No regrets at all. Not about this.”
“About what, then?” Her eyes again, for the final decisive push.
“There’s something you should know about me. About my work.”
“Oh, God. You’re not CIA, are you?” She smiled, still not attuned to the import of what he was about to reveal. It gave him one last opening to exit. Instead, he plunged forward.
“No. But I didn’t come to Poston just to hang out between jobs. It was part of a new job.”
“For the U.S. Attorney?”
“It grew out of the same connections, but a different employer. Somebody in the national security apparatus, if I had to guess. Although that part has always been a little hazy.”
“I see.” Anna went very still, like she feared what was coming next.
“They put me here to keep an eye on your house. Or, more to the point, your mom.”
“My mom?” Her voice barely a whisper. “You were spying on my mom?”
“Not spying. Observing. What they mostly wanted to know about was visitors, everyone who came and went.”
“Oh, observing, big difference! So when she left the house, you followed her?”
“No. I never followed. I stayed here.”
“Well that makes it much better. Fuck. And what did you do with all this…information you collected?”
“Phoned it in to a guy in Washington.”
“Who?”
That was when Henry realized he couldn’t tell the whole truth. Not without wrecking things. It might even put them in danger. He had done enough damage by revealing half. But, for now, half was all that was manageable.
“I don’t know. I didn’t even have a name.” His first lie, although Henry doubted that Mitch was a real name, so it wasn’t much of a lie. “All I had was a phone number.”
“Then call it and ask.”
“It’s no longer working. They were as freaked by what happened as me, and they cut off all contact.” Two more lies. Deeper and deeper. “I was about to skip town when you came knocking.”
“Which is when you should have told me all this.”
“Yes. I should have. And now I am.”
“Goddamn it, Henry! For all we know, your boss was Merle’s boss!”
“No!” He shook his head, relieved to be back on solid ground. “If they were behind this, do you really think they would’ve hired somebody to keep track of all the comings and goings? And then left me here, like some loose end?”
“Then why did you hang around?”
“I told you. Because of you. I’m working for you, now.”
“Then use your goddamn skills and find out who it was!”
“I will. Or I’ll try. But first don’t you think we should deal with the letters?”
She watched him closely for a moment. Then she slapped him, hard, across the jaw. He barely flinched and never looked away. Her shoulders sagged and she began to sob, quietly but with her body shaking. He moved closer and held her. Somewhat miraculously, she let him, but only briefly. Then she pulled free, sighed loudly, and climbed out of bed.
“I need to sleep on this. I’m too tired to walk to the B&B, so I’ll crash on your couch. Lay another hand on me and I’ll press charges.”
“I really am on your side.”
“So be on my side. But not on top of me, and not in bed with me. I’ll decide in the morning what I want to do next. In the meantime, leave me the fuck alone.”
And, now, here they were—a few hours later, again face-to-face, but still awkward and uncomfortable.
“How long did you do it?” she asked. “Spy on my mom, I mean.”
“Six weeks and a day.”
“Jesus! Six weeks? And hasn’t it occurred to you, even once, that whatever your employers were looking for might somehow be related to what we’re looking for?”
“Of course. Especially once we found out your mom was ex-CIA, and started digging up all this weird crap about Merle. It’s one reason I knew I had to tell you. Although the sum total of everything I observed in those six weeks was so run-of-the-mill that I’d be amazed if any of it had the slightest bearing on what we’re looking for now.”
“You saw nothing out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing. And I never saw Merle, or even anyone who might have been Merle in disguise. I did see your brother walking around on his own a few times, heading off toward the fields. But he was never carrying a gun. Maybe he got it from the barn, or around back where I couldn’t see him. He went off with your mom to the store a few times, or I’m assuming it was the store because they always came back with groceries. With your dad, too, once or twice, in the pickup. But nothing ever felt strange or suspicious, about him or anybody else. Like I said, it was the visitors my employer mostly wanted to know about.”
“Why?”
“They never said. And I wouldn’t have expected them to.”
“Well, what visitors did you see?”
“Practically none. For your mom, anyway.”
“None at all?”
“Unless you count Mrs. Furr, from around the corner. Or the mailman, and a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was so uneventful I started wondering why they’d hired me at all. There were a few guys from Washam Poultry, but they were always for your father. He also got a visit from three buddies probably to play poker or something. Plus some older guy who picked him up one morning to go fishing.”
“Everett Anson?”
“That’s the guy.”
“So you reported that, too?”
“It was part of the job. Anyone who came and went. You can see the log book if you want.”
“No thanks.” Then, after a pause. “Or, yes. I will take a look, if you’ve still got it.”
He nodded and retrieved it from a dresser drawer. She flipped the pages, scanning the daily notations of names and tag numbers, the times of day, his brief notes in the margins. She shook her head when she put it down, and sagged a bit on the couch.
“An hour ago I’d made up my mind to fire you. Maybe even to turn you over to the cops, for God knows what. Peeping Tom? Massive fraud? Then I started thinking, well, maybe it’s a plus if you’re more of a pro than I thought. Not that I didn’t suspect it. But if you can help me figure out what happened, great. Just don’t expect any further unqualified trust. From here on out, we’re strictly employer and employee, and even that’s looking shaky.”
“Got it.”
She gestured toward the letters.
“Back to work, then. Provided you don’t have to report in to your masters first.”
“I told you, that’s over,” the words almost sticking in his throat. Last time he’d checked his phone he’d found three angry texts from Mitch, asking why he’d gone silent. He didn’t dare turn on his phone now.
“Okay, then.” She looked wrung out, but resigned to moving forward. She stood and crossed the room. “First, let’s get some more light in this mausoleum of yours.”
She pulled open the curtains to let in the day’s first pale light. Henry couldn’t help but stare, because there before his eyes was the incriminating view again—the Shoat house, on display like the darkened screen of a drive-in movie. He knew then that he never should have said a word. By trying to split the difference on the truth he had only deepened the deception.
She was right about one thing. Work was the only way forward.