The early January sunset was painting narrow bands of gold and crimson across the low western sky when Jack met with Dr. Irene Saunderson on the wide, Southern-style veranda of Emily House.
“I’ve tried every way I can think of—and any number of new ones—to get through to Alli,” Dr. Saunderson said. She was a tall, stick-thin woman with dark hair pulled severely back into a ponytail, accentuating a high forehead and cheekbones, bright, intelligent eyes. She looked like a failed model. “She either can’t or won’t tell us what happened to her.”
“Which is it?” Jack said. “Can’t you at least tell that much?”
Dr. Saunderson shook her head. “That’s part of what’s so frustrating about the human mind. I have little doubt that she’s suffering from a form of posttraumatic stress syndrome, but at the end of the day, that tells us next to nothing. What’s indisputable is that she suffered a traumatic episode. But what form the trauma took or what the actual effect on her is, we can’t determine.”
She sighed deeply. “Frankly, I’m at a dead end.”
“You’re the third shrink to say that.” Jack unbuttoned his coat. A thaw had set in with a vengeance. “What about physical damage?”
“The exhaustive medical workup shows that she wasn’t raped or physically harmed in any way. There wasn’t even a superficial scratch on her.”
“Is there a possibility of Stockholm syndrome?”
“You’re thinking of Patty Hearst, of course, among many others.” Dr. Saunderson shrugged. “Of course it’s possible that she’s come to identify with her captor, but she’s shown no indication of hostility toward us, and given the relatively short amount of time she was with her abductor, it seems unlikely. Unless, of course, he used drugs to accelerate the process, but there was no sign of chemical markers in her blood workup. As you know, the president’s own medical team at Bethesda took charge of her when you brought her in.”
“It’s been three days since I asked to see her,” Jack said.
“You can see her right now, if you like,” Dr. Saunderson said, brushing aside his complaint with a shrink’s easy aplomb.
They always know what to say, Jack thought, even when they’re wrong.
“Shall I take you to her room?”
“Actually, I’d rather see her out here.”
Dr. Saunderson frowned. “I’m not so sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not? She’s been cooped up for the better part of ten days. This is a pretty place, but it’s still a prison.” Jack smiled his most charming smile. “C’mon, Doc. You and I both know the fresh air will do her good.”
“All right. I’ll be right back.” She was about to turn away when she hesitated. “Don’t be surprised if Alli exhibits some erratic behavior, extreme mood swings, things like that.”
Jack nodded.
Alone on the veranda, he had a chance to take in the antebellum atmosphere of Emily House, a large, rather overornate confection whose exterior might easily have been used for a remake of Gone with the Wind. Save for knowing its true purpose, Jack would not have been surprised to find himself mingling with couples drinking mint juleps and speaking in deep Southern drawls.
Emily House, named after a former president’s dog, of all things, was a government safe house in the midst of fifty acres of Virginia countryside as heavily guarded as it was forested. Over the years, a good many heads of state, defectors, double agents, and the like had called it home, at least temporarily. It was painted white, with dove-gray shutters and a blue-gray slate roof. A bit of fluff on the outside, belying the armor-plated walls and doors, the bullet- and bombproof windows, and more cutting-edge security paraphernalia than Q’s lab. For instance, there was a little number called ADS. ADS stood for active denial system, which sounded like something Dr. Saunderson might claim Alli was suffering from. However, there was nothing nonsensical about the ADS, which was to all intents and purposes a ray gun that shot out a beam of invisible energy that made its victims feel as if their skin were burning off. It wasn’t handheld; it wasn’t even small. In fact, it looked rather like a TV satellite dish perched on a flatbed truck or a Humvee. But it worked, which was all that mattered.
Jack, hearing a door open, turned to see Alli with Dr. Saunderson right behind her. It had been only three days since he’d last seen her, but she seemed to have aged a year. There was something in her face, a change he couldn’t quite figure. It was another visual puzzle he needed to decipher.
“Hey,” he said, smiling.
“Hey.”
She ran into his arms. Jack kissed the top of her head, saw Dr. Saunderson nod to him, then withdraw into Emily House.
Alli was wearing a short wool jacket, jeans, an orange Buffalo Brand shirt, a screaming eagle with a skull in its talons silkscreened on the front.
“You feel up to a walk?” he asked her.
When she nodded, he took her down the steps, along the crushed gravel. There were a number of formal gardens around Emily House. This time of year, the low boxwood maze was the only one still green.
Alli ducked her head. “We can’t go too far, you know, without catching the attention of the guards.”
Jack listened closely not only to her words but also to her tone of voice. There was something sad there that touched the sad place inside him. This young woman had spent all her life at the end of a leash, watched over by stern men to whom she could never relate. He resolved to talk with her father about the new Secret Service detail that would be assigned to her when she came home. She deserved better than two more anonymous agents.
“How are they treating you?” he asked as they moved between the low hedges.
“With kid gloves.” She gave a thin laugh. “Sometimes I feel like I’m made of glass.”
“They’re making you feel that way?”
Alli shrugged. It was clear she wasn’t yet ready to talk about what happened, even with him. Jack knew he needed to take another tack altogether.
“Alli, there’s something only you can help me with. It’s about Emma.”
“Okay.”
Was he mistaken, or did her eyes light up?
“Don’t laugh, but there have been moments during the past few weeks when I could swear I’ve seen Emma. Once at Langley Fields, then in the backseat of my car. Other times, too. And once I felt a cool breath on the back of my neck.”
Alli, walking silently, stared at her feet. Jack, sensing that she’d had enough urging recently, chose to let her be. He listened, instead, to the wind through the bare branches, the distant complaints of a murder of crows, crowded onto the treetops like a bunch of old ladies at a funeral.
At length, Alli lifted her head, regarded him curiously. “I felt the same thing. When you were holding me, when that snake—”
“You saw the snake?”
“I heard it.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“You were busy.”
The words stung him, though that was hardly her intent. The wound his inattention had inflicted was still as raw as on the day he’d held Emma’s lifeless body in his arms. There wasn’t anything that could prepare you for the death of your child. It was unnatural, and therefore incomprehensible. There was no solace. In that light, perhaps Sharon’s turning to the Church was understandable. There came a time when the pain you carried inside you was insupportable. One way or another you needed to grope your way toward help.
They had reached the heart of the maze, a small square space with a stone bench. They sat in silence. Jack watched the shadows creeping over the lawns and gardens. The treetops seemed to be on fire.
“I felt her,” Alli said at last. “Emma was there with us in that horrible house.”
And it was at that moment, with the utterance of those words, that Jack felt them both brushed by the feathers of a mystery of infinite proportions. He felt in that moment that in entering the boxwood maze, in finding their way to its center, they had both touched a wisdom beyond human understanding, and in so doing were bound together in the same mysterious way, for the rest of their lives.
“But how is that possible?” He spoke as much to himself as he did to her.
She shrugged. “Why do I like Coke and not root beer?” she said. “Why do I like blue more than red?”
“Some things just are.”
She nodded. “There you go.”
“Why is it different?” Alli said.
“Because Emma’s dead.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what that means.”
Jack pondered this a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t either.”
“Then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t feel Emma’s presence,” she said.
“When you put it that way …”
With the absolute surety of youth, she said, “How else can it be put?”
Jack could think of any number of alternatives, but they all fell within the strict beliefs of the skeptics, scientific and religious alike.
And because he felt the wingtips of mystery still fluttering about them, he told her what he’d never been able to tell anyone else. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, his fingers knit together, he said, “After Sharon and I broke up, I started to wonder: Is this all there is? I mean life, the world that we can see, hear, smell, touch.”
“Why did it come up then?” Alli asked.
Jack groped for an answer. “Because without her, I became—I don’t know—unmoored.”
“I’ve been unmoored all my life.” Alli sat forward herself. “Sometimes I think I was born asking, Is this all there is? But for me the answer was always, No, the world is out there beyond the bars of your cage.”
Jack turned to her. “Do you really think of your world as a cage?”
She nodded. “It’s small enough, Jack. You’ve been in it, you ought to know.”
“Then I’m glad Emma came into it.”
“For such a short time!”
The genuine lamentation broke Jack’s heart all over again. “And she had you, Alli, though it was only for a short time.”
It was growing cooler as the shadows extended their reach across the vast lawns, hedges, and flower beds. Alli shivered, but when Jack asked her whether she wanted to go back inside, she shook her head.
“I don’t want to go back there,” she whispered. “I couldn’t bear it.”
Without thinking, Jack put a protective arm around her, and to his slight surprise, she moved closer to him.
“I want to tell you about Emma,” she said at last.
Jack, stunned, said nothing.
Alli turned her face to him. “I think that’s why she’s still here. I think she wants me to tell you now. She wants you to know all about her.”