BooksBarbecue
Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
  1. :01
  2. :02
  3. :03
  4. :04
  5. :05
  6. :06
  7. :07
  8. :08
  9. :09
  10. :10
  11. :11
  12. :12
  13. :13
  14. :14
  15. :15
  16. :16
  17. :17
  18. :01
  19. :02
  20. :03
  21. :04
  22. :05
  23. :06
  24. :07
  25. :08
  26. :09
  27. :10
  28. :11
  29. :12
  30. :13
  31. :01
  32. :02
  33. :03
  34. :04
  35. :05
  36. :06
  37. :07
  38. :08
  39. :09
  40. :10
  41. :11
  42. :12
  43. :13
  44. :14
  45. :15
  46. :16
  47. :00
  48. :01
  49. :02
  50. :03
  51. :04
  52. :05
  53. :06
  54. :07
  55. :08
  56. :09
  57. :10
  58. :11
  59. :12
  60. :13
  61. :14
  62. :15
  63. :16
  64. :17
  65. :18
  66. :19
  67. 3:46 a.m.

My dad. Ingrid. Lassie. Murdock.

My dad says, “I think you’re right.”

“Me too,” Ingrid says.

Meow.

Bark.

Everyone is in agreement.

“So what now?” Ingrid says.

“We need to talk to President Sullivan,” I say. “I think he has the flash drive somewhere and doesn’t even know it.”

“He’s in Russia,” my dad says.

“We know,” Ingrid and I say at the same time.

::::

The next three days, I wake up, I run into the kitchen, and each day, both my father and Ingrid shake their heads.

He didn’t call.

The hour I’m awake, we try to make small talk, but we spend most our time staring at the phone.

On the fourth day, we’ve all but given up.

“Maybe we should just let it go,” Ingrid says. “I don’t know how much good will come out of this even if we do find the flash drive.”

She has a point. My mom is already one of the most wanted women in the known world. Once a patriot, she is now considered a traitor, a threat to national security, and her name is at the top of every watch list in a dozen countries around the globe. They are looking for her domestically and abroad. It’s not like the world would suddenly find out she was responsible for a young woman’s death thirty years earlier and ratchet up the search for her.

Or would they?

It is one thing to be wanted for torturing enemy combatants on US soil and stealing government secrets. It is another thing altogether to have murdered a young girl in cold blood.

Then there was the family to think about: Markus, Megan, and her mother. Did I really want to make them wade through the muck of Jennifer’s death for a second time?

No.

Certainly not.

And if President Sullivan had yet to return my calls, this obviously wasn’t high on his list of priorities. He was, of course, trying to ward off a second Cold War, which did put the whole thing in perspective.

However, I did hold out hope that if we located the flash drive, my mother would surface. That she would come to me.

I stare at Ingrid.

I see into our future.

At the very most, I could hope to spend 20,000 hours with her, and that’s if I lived to ninety and if we spent every minute together I was awake. If I were normal, if I didn’t have Henry Bins, that number would be closer to 300,000 hours.

I still haven’t told her I want a family. That I want to be a father.

“What do you think, Henry?” Ingrid asks. “Should we just let it be? Move on with our lives?”

“Yes,” I lie.

::::

Lassie is sitting on my lap when it happens. It is the day before we are set to move back into our condo.

It is 3:32 a.m.