“If you’ll just check the wardrobe to make sure I’ve gotten everything,” Lucy said.
“It’s the one on the right. And check the drawers.”
“Everything is empty unless the coat hangers are yours. These nice padded ones.”
“They’re Mother’s.”
“Then I assume you want them.”
“Nope. Leave them for the next idiot who ends up in this pit.”
“Lucy,” I said, “it’s not the Bureau’s fault.”
“It’s not fair.” She knelt on her suitcase to fasten the clasps.
“Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
“Legally, you are innocent until proven guilty. But until this breach of security is sorted out, you can’t blame the Academy for not wanting you to continue working in classified areas. Besides, you haven’t been arrested. You’ve simply been asked to go on leave for a while. ” She turned to face me, her eyes exhausted and red.
“For a while means forever.” As I questioned her closely in the car, she vacillated from pitiful tears to volatile flares that scorched everything within reach. Then she fell asleep, and I knew nothing more than I had before. As a cold rain began to fall, I turned on fog lamps and followed the trail of bright red taillights streaking the blacktop ahead. At unwelcome intervals rain and clouds gathered densely in dips and turns, making it almost impossible to see. But instead of pulling over and waiting for the weather to pass, I shifted to a lower gear and drove on in my machine of hurled walnut, soft leather, and steel.
I still wasn’t certain why I had bought my charcoal Mercedes 500E, except that after Mark died, it had seemed important to drive something new. It might have been the memories, for we had loved and fought with each other desperately in my previous car. Or perhaps it was simply that life got harder as I got older and I needed more power to get by.
I heard Lucy stir as I turned into Windsor Farms, the old Richmond neighborhood where I lived amid stately Georgian and Tudor homes not far from the banks of the James. My headlights caught tiny reflectors on ankles of an unfamiliar boy riding a bicycle just ahead, and I passed a couple I did not recognize who were holding hands and walking their dog. Gum trees had dropped another load of prickly seeds over my yard, several rolled newspapers were on the porch, and the super cans were still parked by the street. It did not require long absences for me to feel like an outsider and for my house to look like no one was home. While Lucy carried in luggage, I started the gas logs in the living room and put on a pot of Darjeeling tea. For a while I sat alone in front of the fire, listening to the sounds of my niece as she got settled, took a shower, and in general took her time. We were about to have a discussion that filled both of us with dread.
“Are you hungry?” I asked when I heard her walk in.
“No. Do you have any beer?”
I hesitated, then replied, “In the refrigerator in the bar.”
I listened a little longer without turning around, because when I looked at Lucy I saw her the way I wanted her to be. Sipping tea, I mustered up the strength to face this frighteningly beautiful and brilliant woman with whom I shared snippets of genetic code. After all these years, it was time we met. She came to the fire and sat on the floor, leaning against the stone hearth as she drank Icehouse beer out of the bottle. She had helped herself to a boldly colorful warm-up suit I wore on the infrequent occasions when I played tennis these days, and her feet were bare, her wet hair combed back. I realized that if I didn’t know her and she walked past, I would turn to look again, and this wasn’t solely due to her fine figure and face. One sensed the facility with which Lucy spoke, walked, and in the smallest ways guided her body and her eyes. She made everything seem easy, which was partially why she did not have many friends.