The Shadow Patrol

“At the mall. And then a movie. I think something in three-D.”

“I’d like to meet them.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Give me a little credit.”

“I know you, that’s all.”

Her certainty nettled Wells. “What do you know?”

“You’re very goal-oriented, John. ‘Must reconnect with son.’” Heather delivered that last sentence in a mock Terminator voice. “‘Building family ties, very important. Highest priority.’”

Wells nearly flared up, said something like, Still bitter after all these years. But he hadn’t come this far to argue. “I don’t even think of you as an ex anymore, Heather. We’ve been apart so much longer than we were together.”

“Another way of saying you only called to see Evan.”

“It’s another way of saying I hope we can be friends.”

“Sure, John. Friends.” She nodded at the absurdity of the idea. “I want you to know I don’t regret anything about us anymore, John. You gave me that boy and that’s plenty.”

“Why’d you let me come, then?”

“Wasn’t my choice. When you called, I asked Evan what he wanted, and he wanted to see you. And he’s old enough to decide for himself.” She plucked out an orchid from the bouquet, twirled it in her fingertips so its delicate scent bloomed. “So how’s D.C.?”

“I haven’t been there in months. Like I told you, I quit—”

“Officially. But that doesn’t mean anything, right? And especially not for you.”

“It does and it doesn’t,” Wells said, thinking about his last mission. Even though he’d been working privately, he’d used the CIA. And vice versa. “It adds a level of complexity. But anyway I’m mostly up in New Hampshire these days.”

“With the new girlfriend.”

“Her name’s Anne. And yes.”

“She’s a cop, you said?”

“Correct.”

“You going to make an honest woman of her?”

“She doesn’t need me to make her an honest woman.”

“Same old John. You must be bored. You always loved playing on the front lines of history.”

Wells couldn’t tell whether she was being ironic. “That’s not how it feels.”

“No?”

“It feels like I’m putting my finger in a dike.”

“John Wells, the little Dutch boy.”

“More like a plumber. With a very specialized skill set.”

Evan walked into the kitchen, basketball under his arm.

“Hi, Mom.” He gave Wells a big fake grin. “Hi, Dad.”

“Take a shower and lose the stink,” Heather said. “And not just how you smell. John came a long way to see you.”

“Good for him.”

“And no girl showers today. Keep it short.”

“I thought you wanted me to get clean.”

“No need to wear out the plumbing. John probably gets himself clean in twenty-two seconds with a Brillo pad.”

“I’m in the field, I find a clean patch of stone and strip down and just scrape myself across it,” Wells said.

“And he waxes. Less hair to get dirty.”

“Every inch. Little-known Special Forces trick.”

“You two are gross,” Evan said. He backed out of the kitchen.

“Thank you for that,” Wells said, after Evan’s footsteps had disappeared upstairs.

“For what?”

“Getting him to smile. He may have agreed to this, but it doesn’t look like he’s aching to bond.”

“You need to understand, John. All you can hope for at this point is to be a friend. Someone maybe he’ll call if he’s back east. And that’s the absolute best.”

“I get it.”

“What were you expecting, John? You’d sail in and five minutes later everything would be cool?”

“I told you I get it.”

Upstairs, a shower kicked on. While they waited, Heather filled him in on Evan’s life, his difficulties with AP Biology, his love of basketball, his dream college — the University of California at San Diego. “I don’t know if he has the grades for it.”

“What about girls?” Wells said.

“Nothing serious. These kids don’t really date. They text one another and sneak over to one another’s houses and we can’t do much about it unless we want to lock him in his bedroom all the time. Which would only make it worse. And I don’t want to be a hypocrite either. Not like I was a nun in high school. So I told him to be careful, not to get anyone pregnant, and he looked at me like, ‘I’m not an idiot. I know.’”

Evan reappeared freshly scrubbed fifteen minutes later. “Ready, Pops?”

“Where to?”

“I figured you could take me into the backcountry, show me how to blow stuff up. Survival training. Make a man out of me, know what I’m saying?”

Wells looked at Heather. “Please tell me he’s joking.”

“Of course he’s joking.”

“Of course I’m joking. We’re going to this coffeehouse downtown. By the U. It’s kind of a cliche, but the coffee’s good.” Evan kissed his mother on the cheek. “You were right. He doesn’t have a great sense of humor.”

“I warned you.”

“I’m in the room,” Wells said. “I can hear you. Both of you.”

GRIZZLY COFFEE had overstuffed couches and grainy black-and-white photos of car accidents on the walls and a community corkboard with offers of rides to Seattle. The guy behind the counter had an ornate zombie tattooed across his right arm, its red-and-yellow eyes iridescent in the late-day sun.

Wells ordered a large coffee, skim milk. He was obscurely pleased to see Evan do the same. The tables in the back were empty.

“Here we are, father and son, together at last,” Evan said.

“I want to thank you for seeing me, Evan. From everything your mom’s said, you’re an amazing young man.”

“I’m here because I figured you wanted to give me the key to a secret bank account with, like, a hundred million dollars.”

“If I had it, it would be yours. I just thought maybe we could get to know each other.” As soon as Wells said the words, he wished he hadn’t. Get to know each other. Like this was a first date. A bad one, with no chemistry.

“I just threw up in my mouth.”

Wells sipped his coffee and waited for Evan to talk. To distract himself, he watched the barista make drinks, working the knobs and handles of the machines behind the counter as expertly as a nineteenth-century trainman running a steam engine.

“You’re just going to stare into space until I start talking,” Evan said after a few minutes.

“Waiting is one thing I’m good at.”

“Fine. You win. Ve have vays of making you talk. So let’s talk.”

“I just wanted to tell you face-to-face, I thought about you all these years. Wondered how you were, what