will come of anything else.
‘I’m all right.’
‘You still consulting?’
‘Yes, here and there. Thinking of writing another book.’
‘I’m glad.’
She poured water into the coffee maker. ‘Jack, where have you been hiding?’
‘The Netherlands.’
‘I suppose I should have considered that as a possibility. So many young people from around the world, crowding around the canals. You went there for the drugs, I suppose.’
‘No, Mom, I went to grad school. I tried pot but frankly I would rather read a good book or see a movie.’
She blinked. A smile wavered near her mouth. ‘Grad school. On the run from the police, you go back to school.’
‘Well, under an assumed name.’
‘How did you get a new identity? Transcripts? How did you pay for tuition?’ Then she raised her hand, as if warding off a flash of fire. ‘Never mind. Best I don’t know what additional crimes you’ve committed. You can tell the attorney. My God, now the Dutch will be bringing up charges against you.’
Including manslaughter, he thought, maybe. Best not to go there.
‘I would like to see Dad’s grave.’
‘There is no grave. I had him cremated. He’s in the study.’
‘He’s here?’
Now she turned back toward the coffee maker. ‘Of course, did you think I threw him out?’
‘They call it spreading the ashes, Mom.’
‘Well, he’s still here.’
He wandered back into the den. An urn sat atop a large bookshelf, next to a row of volumes on art history. It was very pretty. He felt tears hot inside his face, aching for release. He glanced at the desk, at the carpet, the grief a well in him, deep and dark, and every awful memory rushed back in an unbidden surge.
‘How could you be so thoughtless?’ His father’s voice rising in shock and shame. ‘The police want to arrest you. What you’ve done is a felony.’
‘I know.’
‘A felony! What the hell did your mother and I ever do to you to deserve this? You’ve destroyed your life, do you understand that? Over what? Pranks? Proving that you’re smarter than everyone else? Because all you’ve done, Jack, is prove that you’re stupid beyond compare.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
‘Sorry you did it or that you were caught?’
‘I don’t know. I just did it.’
‘You’re not innocent? It’s not a mistake?’
‘No, sir. I did it all.’
‘Why? Why? Did you sell the information you stole?’
‘No. I don’t know why I did it.’
‘You expect me… ’ his father caught his breath, ‘you expect me to believe that a boy as smart as you is incapable of knowing his own motives?’
‘I just did it, it’s done.’ Jack’s voice broke. ‘I love you, Dad, I’m sorry. I love you.’
‘You love me? Then why do you flush your future down the toilet?’
‘That’s all you care about, my future?’
‘Are you trying to suggest you did this for our attention, Jack? Oh, please. That’s such a shallow reason. Babyish, almost.’
‘I don’t know why. I just don’t.’
The agony in his father’s eyes had cut Jack more deftly than any ax. Then his father had sat down at his desk, pulled a yellow legal pad toward him, picked up a pencil. He began scribbling thoughts on the paper. ‘We have to start considering your options. Your mother… and I… ’
And then his father, bunching up the cloth of his shirt over his chest with a surprised fist, saying ‘That’s not right… ’ and then collapsing to the carpet.
His mother, hurrying in, screaming his father’s name. Jack grabbing the phone, calling 9-1-1, pleading for the ambulance to hurry.
He’d set the phone down and then his mother, very calmly, said: ‘Get out.’
‘The ambulance is coming, Mom.’
‘Get out.’
‘I can’t, I won’t leave him.’
‘You did this. Your selfish stupidity did this to him and I want you gone.’ She knelt by her husband; she didn’t look at her son. ‘You have to go or the police will arrest you.’
‘Mom, I can’t leave Dad.’
‘You know, in jail, there will be no computers. I don’t quite know what you will do.’ Odd, her calm.
‘I don’t care.’
‘He’s dead.’ His mother looked at him with a fierce, burning glare that frightened him, because it was hatred. ‘You’ve taken him away from me. Go. Get out of my sight right now, Jack. I don’t ever want to see you again.’
He had turned and ran and when he went out of the building the ambulance was at the curb, lights flashing, too late.
*
His mother stood in the doorway, watching him stare at the urn. ‘I think, from a legalistic standpoint, Jack, you should surrender to an attorney immediately.’
‘I wanted a night here, Mom. At home first. Please.’
‘Of course.’ But the tension was tight in those two words. As if she was the one who was going to be in trouble. She walked back into the kitchen; he followed her.
‘I’ll stay out of sight. I know what you said before – but if you didn’t want to see me you wouldn’t have let me come up here. Don’t you want to spend time with me?’ She didn’t answer; she upended the precisely measured water into the brewer. The maker began to chug.
‘Of course,’ she said again. She was turning over his crimes in her head; he knew the pinched look on her face. What he had done here was nothing compared to his misdeeds in Amsterdam. Well, I hacked for some bad guys. I didn’t know how bad they were but now they want me dead and I have a notebook that they want so badly they will kill me for it because it will blow them open and I don’t even understand what I know means and I’m going to sell it to the CIA and you’ll never see me again, Mom. But you were already resigned to never seeing me again .
‘I think tomorrow we should call a defense lawyer.’
‘You’re right, Mom. Tomorrow, okay?’
His mother turned to him, an uncertain smile on her face. ‘I’m right? Um, you’ve never said that before. I don’t know what to say.’
‘I wouldn’t say I told you so. Maybe just enjoy being right. For once.’
She surprised him with a laugh. ‘All right, I’ll bask in the glow. I am happy to see you, Jack, I really am.’
‘Mom… ’
The awkward silence felt like a curtain. Neither seemed to know what to say, how to lay the first plank in the bridge.
‘I wish I hadn’t gone to Amsterdam, Mom.’ He wanted to grab the words hanging in the air. What had possessed him to confess this? It was pointless. He’d only come to say goodbye before he vanished to Australia or Fiji or Thailand or wherever he went with the CIA money. What was he hoping for? She didn’t know what he was here for. She was just someone to whom he needed to say goodbye. ‘Jail would have been better. At some point I’d have been free. Now I never will be.’
