And I did have a memory of one July 4th in particular — the only one I remember when my mother was home — where she took me outside and we ran around the streets with sparklers. I remember her telling me it was the most important day of the year.

“If nothing else, your mother loved this country,” my father mutters.

Something must have happened. What changed her from a patriot into a monster? Or could they be one and the same? Could one live without the other? Could the old man across from me also be deemed a patriot? Could he write off the killing of innocent Americans for the greater good?

I decide this is too heavy to process at this moment. I shelve it for later and ask, “You don’t know of the White Room? Where it might be located?”

“I haven’t spoken to Elena in over a decade. The last contact I had with her was just after 9/11. She was obsessed with something called Project Sandman.”

Project Sandman?

Could this be what was contained on the flash drive she was searching for?

“What is Project Sandman?”

Ewen’s face tightens. He squints one, twice, three times. Looks around the room.

“Who are you? Did Reagan send you?” he shouts.

I glance at my dad. He is as puzzled as I am.

“Someone over there is tipping off the Russians, and we need to find this mole before the entire war turns on its head.”

“Mr. Ewen,” I say softly, realizing I am witnessing what Maggie briefed my father and I on before we entered. “Take a deep breath. We are in your study. It’s 2015.”

“Who are you? You tell Reagan that I will do everything, will use every material we’ve created, to find the mole.”

“Mr. Ewen,” my father says. “Sidney!”

Ewen shakes his head back and forth. Then his eyes open. He looks exhausted, as if he’s aged five years in thirty seconds.

“Uh, yes, I was saying, I haven’t spoken to your mother in, uh, in over a decade.”

A loud crash from behind the door sends Peaches scampering from the table.

“What in the dickens?” Ewen says, pushing himself up, which is a six-step process.

Another loud crash and the door opens.

Maggie sticks her head in and screams, “Oh, heavens, Mr. Ewen! I don’t know how they got inside.”

“Who?”

“The goats! It must be the goats!”

Marshall and Latimer.

“I closed the front door,” she huffs. “I know I did.”

My father and I glance at each other.

“Shit,” we both say in unison.

Goats couldn’t open doors.

But Murdock could.

My father and I run into the hallway. A blur zooms past us and into a room to the right.

A goat.

Another blur zooms past. This one three times bigger.

Murdock.

On his back, riding him like a cowboy in the Old West, is Lassie.

Oh my fuck.