I feel my face twisting with incredulousness, as if to say, I don’t have the time for this nonsense. Except I have all the time in the world for this nonsense.

“It’s a yes, for you, Tiger. Of course. When do you want to begin?”

I want to be irritated that he calls me Tiger, but I can’t be. It reminds me of the nickname that Luke gave me when we were kids, one later adopted by the rest of the team—Bomber. So Tiger it is. It gives me comfort that maybe this man, however improbably, sees something of what I was. He sees Katie Cleary. He sees Bomber, wrapped in the unimpressive shell of Liz Sullivan.

“Tomorrow,” I say, not caring how he interprets my urgency. “Does tomorrow work?”

“Tomorrow,” he says. “Four p.m. is my only time.”

I nod. I have a tour from two to four, but I will cut it short to be there in time. I will reroute it to end at Casa Rosada. I am filled with heady anticipation at the idea of slotting back into the familiar role of protégée, of being coached, especially by him.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Penny Is a Good Big Sister

SHORTLY AFTER my sister moved back to Coeur d’Alene to start her new job at the Kootenai Health Clinic, she called me to complain about our parents. Penny had gotten herself into a bit of money trouble and thought they were overreacting.

“Mom and Dad are freaking out, they’re being total jerks about it,” Penny told me over the phone. “I just overspent a little. They’re acting like I’m a criminal over a couple hundred bucks.”

There was a subtext to the accusation, something that always simmered just beneath the surface of our relationship: Mom and Dad spent so much on you growing up, Mom and Dad love you best, and now, you owe me, you need to take my side. So I agreed with her that they were blowing things out of proportion; I told her I’d talk to them.

I called my dad to try to get him to see reason. I knew this was why Penny had told me, to recruit me—in her eyes, the favored child—to be her ally. And she had a point, after all. A few hundred bucks? Not even enough for a pair of ski boots.

As a rule, my parents didn’t discuss Penny’s issues with me. They wanted to preserve their relationship with her, and our relationship with each other. Looking back, I see that they wanted to avoid her becoming the “bad” one.

“Dad, I just got off the phone with Penny. What’s going on with you guys?”

“She shouldn’t be putting you in the middle of it, Katie.” My dad sounded exasperated.