“—culminating in an opening ceremony at two o’clock this afternoon. Developed to be impregnable to individuals like Mr. Epstein, the new Leon Walras Exchange will function as an auction house. Instead of the former NYSE’s real-time trading of every stock, company shares will be offered in daily auctions with descending bid prices. Final prices will be locked in according to the average at which they are purchased, thus removing the possibility—”
He’d overcooked the eggs a little, but the hot sauce made up for it. Hot sauce made up for most everything. Cooper finished the last bites, licked his fingers, and glanced at the clock. Just after seven in the morning. Even with traffic, he’d be at headquarters early enough to review the highlights of the phone taps before the weekly target status review meeting.
Cooper set his plate in the sink, dusted off his hands, and headed out. He skipped the elevator and took the three flights to the ground. It really was a lovely morning. The air was warm and rich with that ionized smell he usually associated with thunderstorms, but the horizon was clear and bright. As he reached the car, his phone rang. Natalie. Huh. His ex-wife was many things—sincere, clever, a wonderful mother—but “morning person” was not on that list. “Hey, I didn’t know you could manage to dial a phone at this hour.”
“Nick,” she said, and at the sound of her voice and the sob that cut her off, all light vanished from the morning sky.
And that was before he heard what came next.
CHAPTER TEN
Cooper’s apartment in Georgetown was eight miles from the house he and Natalie had shared in Del Ray. Like most DC drives, it had moments of grandeur set among long stretches of drab ugliness, all divided into agonizingly short blocks with lights at every damn one. Add city traffic, and the eight miles usually took twenty-five minutes, thirty if you skipped 395 and stuck to surface streets.
Cooper made it in twelve.
He opted for the Jefferson Davis, a distinctly unpretty street, but four lanes each direction. The transponder in his Charger broadcast a signal that marked him as a gas man to every cop within a mile, and so he treated speed limits as jokes and red lights as suggestions. When a cascade of brake lights bloomed before him, he downshifted to third and bumped the car up on the median.
He slowed when he pulled down her street—lot of kids on the block—parked, flipped off the car, and climbed out all in one motion.
Natalie was already coming out to meet him. She was dressed for work, in boots, a gray skirt to the knee, and a soft white sweater. But even though her eyes were dry and her mascara unsmudged, to his eyes she was bawling. He opened his arms and she came into them hard, threw her own around his back and squeezed. There was a humid sense to her, as though tears were coming out her pores. Her breath smelled of coffee.
Cooper held her for a moment, then stepped back and took her hands in his. “Tell me.”
“I told you—”
“Tell me again.”
“They’re going to test her. Kate. They’re going to test her. She’s only four, and the test isn’t mandatory until she’s eight—”
“Shhh.” He ran his thumbs across her palms, squeezed in the center, an old gesture. “It’s okay. Tell me what happened.”
Natalie took a deep breath, then exhaled noisily. “They called. This morning.”
“Who?”
“The Department of Analysis and Response.” She put a hand to the side of her head as though to brush her hair back, although none had fallen. “You.”
His belly was cold stone. He opened his mouth but found no words eager to come out.
“I’m sorry,” she said, glancing away. “That was shitty.”
“It’s okay.” He huffed a breath of his own. “Tell me—”
“Something happened. At school. There was ‘an incident.’” She made the air quotes audible. “A week ago. A teacher witnessed Kate doing something and reported it to the DAR.”
Gifts were amorphous in children, often indistinguishable from simply being bright, which is why the test wasn’t mandatory until age eight. But people in certain roles—teachers, preachers, full-time nannies—were supposed to report behavior they found particularly compelling evidence of a tier-one gift. One of many things Cooper hated about the way things were going; for his money, the world didn’t need more snitches. “What incident? What happened?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. The gutless bureaucrat wouldn’t tell me.”
“And so—”
“And so he asked whether it would be more convenient to test my daughter next Thursday or Friday. I told him that she was only four, that you worked for the DAR. He just kept saying the same thing. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but this is policy.’ Like he was the phone company and I had a complaint about my fucking bill.”
Natalie doesn’t swear. The thought drifted pointlessly through his mind. “Have you talked to her about it?”
“No,” she said. Then a pause. “I’ll—we’ll—have to. Nick, she’s gifted. We know she’s gifted. What if she’s tier one?” She turned away, eyes finally wet, the tears he had seen the moment he arrived now there for the world. “They’ll take her from us, send her to an academy.”
“Stop.” Cooper reached out, took her chin in his hand, turned it back to face him. “That’s not going to happen.”
“But—”
“Listen to me. That is not going to happen. I’m not going to let that happen. Our daughter is not going to an academy.” I miss my son, her sign had read. “Period. I don’t care if she’s tier one. I don’t care if she’s the first tier zero in history and can manipulate space-time while shooting lasers from her belly button. She is not going to an academy. And she’s not getting tested next week.”
“Dad!”
Natalie and he exchanged a look. A look older by far than either of them, a look that had bounced between women and men as long as they’d been mothers and fathers. And then they broke apart to face the children sprinting toward them, Todd in the lead, Kate right behind letting the screen door bang behind her.
He dropped to a squat and opened his arms. His children flew into them, warm and alive and oblivious. Cooper squeezed them both until they nearly popped and then made sure his face was innocent as he leaned back. “Uh-oh. Uh-oh!”
Kate looked up, concerned; Todd smiled, knowing what was coming.
“Uh-oh, I gotta go! I gotta go, who’s coming with me?”
“Me!” Kate, all glee.
“Me too.” Todd, caught between childish joy and the first hints of self-consciousness.
“Okay then.” He stretched out his arms. “Take your seats. In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling. Please swing from them like monkeys. Ready?”
Kate was on his left arm, body wrapped around it like, well, a monkey. Todd had his right locked, their fingers gripping one another’s forearms.
“Okay. Prepare for liftoff. Three.” He rocked up, then back down. “Two.” Again. “One!” Cooper lunged from a squat, using the force of his legs to send them into a spin and then half hurling, half falling into it. Todd was really getting too heavy, but screw that, he just cranked harder and planted his heels and then they were going. The world was the faces of his children, Katie giggle-screaming and Todd smiling pure and wide, and beyond them a blur of green lawn and brown tree and gray car. He pushed harder, feet moving like a dancer’s, arms rising wide, the kids floating now, momentum doing the work for him. “Liftoff!”
Later, he would remember the moment. Would take it out and examine it like the faded photograph of a war veteran, the last relic of a life from which he was adrift. An anchor or a star to navigate by. The faces of his children, smiling, trusting, and the world beyond a whirl of green.