Page 7 of The Girl on Hallow's Eve

“Anyway,” I say as the machine hums, “about next weekend. I was asking if you were planning on being busy. I checked the calendar in the office and didn’t see anything written down, but I wanted to make sure there was nothing coming up that is going to need your attention.”

“Are you asking me if I’m planning on there being a crime spree throughout Sherwood that I’m going to need to quash?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He chuckles. “Not that I’ve been made imminently aware of.”

“Good. Because we have plans now,” I tell him.

The microwave dings and he removes my plate to set it at my place at the table as I set a plate with salad at his. It’s the kind of smooth rhythm of marriage you don’t think about before you consider getting married or even when you’re engaged. People envisioning what it will be like to be married think of things like waking up together every morning, celebrating holidays together in your own home, how it will feel to say husband or wife, or to use a different name, or how big it will seem to come home at the end of every day to the same person and get accustomed to not having that stretch of alone time.

All those things apply, of course, but there are other realities that don’t come to mind that I’m convinced no one knows about until they are actually married. Like the impact it can have to watch your socks tumble around in the wash together and have to peel them apart to fold them. Or just how many different densities and hardnesses of mattresses and pillows exist and how intense a conversation around those topics can become. Or the steady, seamless rhythm you’ll develop when doing basic things like checking the mail, doing the dishes, or setting out a meal while having a conversation.

Those kinds of things are my favorites.

“What are our plans?” he asks.

“Well, I was thinking about what we talked about last night,” I say.

“The house?” he asks.

“The mall,” I say. “You were getting so worked up about it, and honestly there are a lot of reasons why you should. You’re completely right—the protestors aren’t just causing difficulty. They could be putting lives and livelihoods at risk. Their own, the construction workers, the police. Everybody is dealing with a pile of nonsense because of them. But you were also totally right when you were talking about progress. The new mall coming to the area is really exciting.”

“I don’t know if I would go that far,” Sam says. “It’s something we can’t avoid, but I don’t know if I would go right to excitement.”

“And that’s why we’re going to go see it,” I say.

He pauses midway through his bite of cold lasagna.

“We’re going to go see it?” he asks, sounding something between confused and reluctant. “You want to go to the opening and battle a bunch of teenagers acting like it’s the first time they’ve ever shopped?”

“Not exactly. Did you hear about the contest they were talking about on the radio?” I ask. He shakes his head as he finishes his bite. “The mall is holding an all-night party to celebrate before the official opening and people can enter to win an invitation. Apparently, a bunch of the stores will be open, the food court will have food for everybody, there’ll be music and dancing, and what they are calling ‘extra surprises’ during the night. But before that, they are having a preview open house of the mall so that people can see it ahead of time.

“There’s been a lot of hype, but not all of it has been great, so I feel like they’re hoping for some more goodwill from the community. The way they were talking about the open house seemed like they’re hoping to get the media, parents, community leaders… the kinds of people who are going to make decisions and really form the reputation for it.”

“And you want to be a part of that,” Sam says.

“Well, I am an influential member of the community,” I note. “I think it’s important.”

Sam gives me a look that says he isn’t going along with that, but he’ll humor me.

“Alright. Let’s do it,” he says.

“So long as there isn’t a criminal uprising by the weekend,” I say.

“Barring that,” he chuckles.

We finish dinner and I get ready for bed, then settle in for a few hours more of work. The case I’m working on feels like it’s right on the precipice of resolution. The pieces of the puzzle are coming together, but there are still gaps. I need to stitch the details together to get the full picture before we can make an arrest. Like I always am at this place in an investigation, I’m tense and on edge whenever I focus on the work. Whether I’m actually out in the field or I’m sitting in my office or the living room going over notes, listening to recordings, and sifting through records in hopes of finding something that has been missed, the pressure of the case is pressing in around me.

It’s not pressure coming from the Bureau or a sense of dread like I’m not going to perform the way I’m expected to. Gone are the days when I allowed myself to feel tread-upon by the other agents or worried about their approval. I’m nowhere near the new girl anymore and I’ve more than proven my skill, intellect, and instinct. I know what I’m doing and by all rights am better at my job than most of the agents I’ve encountered, particularly the ones already established in the Bureau when I started working with the agency and who approached my presence there with disdain and distrust rather than a willingness to work together.

There’s still plenty of derision. I’m not unaware of the commentary or the bitterness that comes from the guys having to accept positions beneath me in investigation teams, or the fact that I get placed on intensive cases that they aren’t. It’s not that I don’t know the way a lot of them think or that I’m not cognizant of the reality that they hold me to far higher standards and give me a margin of error the breadth of a slivered hair when others get away with just about anything. It’s simply that I’ve learned to refuse to care.

Instead, the pressure comes from inside me. It’s the shadow of my parents that pushes me. I know who they are and the impact they’ve made. I know it more now than I ever have. I grew up knowing my father was in the CIA and often worked in cooperation with the FBI on the most complex and challenging cases. I didn’t know the details. I never needed to. All that mattered was that my father was important, and he stood in the dangerous, vital space between the rest of society and the vilest criminals.

All my life I watched him wade into the current of darkness created by death and trafficking of drugs, weapons, and lives, willing to place himself on the line to fight. I didn’t know until many years later that my mother wasn’t standing on the shore along with me the way I always thought she was. She was down there with him, reaching down into the murky depths to grab onto the hands of women and children who’d been taken down beneath the surface. She pulled them back up and brought them out so they could breathe.

I took up their swords when I was eighteen. My mother had been dead for seven years. My father disappeared the day after my birthday. I made the decision then to replace what the world had lost. I can’t be both of them. I can’t ever do what they were capable of doing, but I put the weight on myself to keep trying. Every case is a chance to keep trying. My father came back, but my mother never will, and the world will forever feel that absence. I can’t save everyone. But I won’t be satisfied until I do.

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