Free The Prodigal Spy by Joseph Kanon Page A

the long lobby of red carpets and potted palms, no one noticed them. On Sunday, when they went to meet his mother at Union Station, he glanced at the telephone booth, then averted his eyes, as if he were being watched. But his mother seemed better, the quiet around her beginning to thaw, like the melting snow.
    It was only at night that it came back, the dread. It was the not knowing. Everyone acted as if his father were dead, but Nick knew he wasn’t. He was somewhere. Nick lay under the covers watching the tree branch and tried to play the cabin game. Over the years, they’d thought of a lot of places where the wind was blowing–the cabin in the mountains, a tent in the desert, that big hotel at the Grand Canyon where they’d gone one summer–but Nick couldn’t picture any of them. Instead there was the committee room, Welles glowering and accusing. A body falling in the cold. The strange walk to the telephone booth. And then, always, the back courtyard filling with snow.
    I hope you die, his mother had said. But she hadn’t meant that. Nick just wanted to know, and then he could rest. It seemed to him that their lives on 2nd Street had ended without any explanation. There had to be a reason. The hearings were starting again. They were looking for more Communists. So things went on. Was that all it had been? Politics, a piece of history? The trouble with history, his father had said, is that you have to live through it. But he hadn’t meant this, half-living in a mystery. One day it will all seem like a dream. But it wouldn’t, just the same mystery. That was the dread: he would never know.

    His mother ended it that spring by selling the house. They would start over in New York, where nobody cared, and Nick would go to Rhode Island, where Father Tim had arranged for a place at his old school. Tim was taking them there himself, in the big DeSoto he drove like a carriage, hands on either side of the wheel as if he were holding reins.
    Nick went with him for gas while his mother finished packing–an excuse, Nick suspected, for one of Father Tim’s chats. But Tim was bubbly, as far away from homilies as a man on a picnic. They drove around the Mall, a last tour. “You’ll like the Priory,” he said. “Of course, people always say that about their schools. I suppose they’re really remembering themselves when they were young.” Nick looked over at him, unable to imagine the ruddy face over the white collar as anything but grown up. “But this time of year,” he continued, taking one hand away to gesture to the tree blossoms, “well, you won’t find a finer sight. And then you’ve got Newport down the road. All the boats. I used to love that. Hundreds of sails, all across the bay.” He stopped, aware of Nick’s silence. “You’ll like it,” he repeated. “You’ll see.”
    “My father wouldn’t like it,” Nick said. “He didn’t want me to go to a Catholic school.”
    Father Tim didn’t say anything to that. Nick watched him shift uncomfortably in his seat, avoiding the subject, his father’s name like a cloud over the bright day.
    “Well, give it a chance,” Father Tim said. “You’ll see. But a fair chance, mind. You don’t want to be a burden to your mother. Not now. She’s had worries enough to last a lifetime. Rose isn’t as strong as she looks. It’s been a difficult time for her, you know.”
    What about me? Nick wanted to say, but he was quiet. Then, “Why do you call her Rose?”
    Father Tim smiled. “Well, she was Rose when I first knew her. She hated ‘Livia’ in those days. Like a Roman wife, she said. You know, Calpurnia. Names like that.” He smiled again, glad to reminisce. “She was just Rose Quinn then. The prettiest girl at Sacred Heart.”
    “Maybe you should have married her,” Nick said, curious to see if his father’s joke had been right.
    “Well, I married the church,” Father Tim said, but he’d misunderstood Nick and looked at him, troubled. “He’s