Free The Prodigal Spy by Joseph Kanon

they’d played Scrabble. No, he hadn’t seemed upset. When Uncle Larry suggested she get away for a few days until things died down, she said to him in genuine surprise, “I can’t, Larry. I have to be here, if he calls.” The secret, at least, was safe. She had begun living in Nick’s story.
    “Are you all right for money?” Larry said.
    “I don’t know. Walter took care of all that.”
    “You have to know, Livia. Shall I go through his things? Would you mind?”
    She shrugged. “It’s all in the desk. At least I suppose it is. The FBI went through it yesterday. I don’t think they took anything away.”
    “You shouldn’t let them do that, Livia,” Larry said, a lawyer. “Not without a warrant.”
    “What’s the difference, Larry? We don’t have anything to hide,” his mother said, and meant it.
    The FBI came often now. In an unexpected seesaw of attention, as the newspapers grew bored with the story, the FBI became more interested. They went through his father’s papers, opened the wall safe, asked the same questions, and then went away, as much in the dark as before. His father had signed a power of attorney for her on Saturday, which seemed suspicious, but his mother didn’t know anything about it. And what, anyway, did they suspect? In the quiet study, everything was in order.
    Nick grew quiet too. He wanted to go over things with his mother, plan what to do, but she didn’t want to talk, so he sat listening to the sounds of the house. He thought of everything that had happened, every detail, studying the Cochrane photograph to jolt him into some idea for action, but nothing came back but the creak of floorboards, a windowpane shaking back at the wind, until it seemed that the house was giving up too, disintegrating with them. He read the Hardy Boys books he had got for Christmas, with their speedboats and roadsters and mysteries that were always solved. They rescued their father in one, wily and resourceful. One day, after the snow melted, he walked down A Street to check on the drain, but the shirt was gone, and he barely paused at the corner before turning back.
    It was his decision to go back to school, stifled finally by the airless house. When he opened the door that Monday, the reporters swarmed around, expecting his mother, then backed away to let him pass, like the water of the Red Sea. “Hi, Nick,” one of the regulars said, and he gave a shy wave, but they let him alone. At school, the lads backed away too, nodding with sidelong glances, deferential to his notoriety. His teacher pretended he’d been out sick and apologetically piled him with back homework. She never called on him in class. He sat quietly, taking notes, then went home and worked all evening while his mother sat smoking, still drifting. He finished all the make-up work in three days, turning in assignments that were neater and more complete than before, because now it was important to be good, to be blameless.
    In the weeks that followed, nothing changed at home, but outside the reporters dwindled and at school people began to forget that anything had happened. When Welles suspended the hearings, the papers barely noticed. As Uncle Larry had predicted, things moved on. And it was Larry who brought his mother back.
    “You can’t just sit in the house. I’m taking you to New York for the weekend.”
    “To do what?”
    “Go to a show, go out to dinner. Get dressed up and show your pretty face all over town,” he said, winking at Nick, Van Johnson again, cheerful and take-charge.
    “I can’t.”
    “Yes, you can. Livia, you can’t sit here. You’ve got to get on with things.”
    “By going to New York with you?”
    Larry looked at her and smiled. “For a start. We’ll take the train. I’ll pick you up here at five.
Five
, no later. And no buts,” he said, waving his forefinger.
    Surprisingly, she went. Nora stayed the weekend and she and Nick went to the movies, treating themselves to tea at the Willard. In