Her father was obsessive about guns; there was no other word for it. He collected guns as other people collected old coins or books. He talked guns, cleaned guns, disassembled and reassembled guns, fired guns, carried guns, subscribed to gun magazines, sent off for gun catalogues, made friends only with those who shared his obsession with guns. There was at least one loaded gun in every room of the house; more than that, probably. There were two in her parents' bedroom, both adapted with hair triggers, one on each side of the bed, ready for use the night the supposed intruder came. There were two more in the kitchen, one attached to the wall next to the door, in case someone tried to break in that way, one concealed in a drawer in case the intrusion came from somewhere else. (But who in their right mind would force an entry into a house where a gun fanatic lived?) There were even two loaded guns stored in a locked drawer in the closet of her own bedroom.
Down in the basement there were more weapons than she had ever been able to count, many of them in pieces, while her dad slowly restored them or cleaned them or customized them in some way. He never went anywhere without a gun either in the car or carried on his belt or under his shirt, ready for use. He belonged to gun clubs and training squads, and four times a year went up into the mountains with a group of his friends, armed to the teeth.
Teresa was target training by the age of ten, and was recognized as an aboveaverage shot by the time she was eleven. Her dad enrolled her into the Junior section of his club, made her show what she could do, entered her for every competition. She won and won; shooting came naturally to her. At fourteen she could outshoot her older cousins, most of the men at the training camps she went to during the summer vacations, and even her father. lt was the thing she did of which he was the proudest.
Her accuracy with a weapon thrilled her. She recognized as natural the weight of the weapon in her hand, the way it balanced there, and the jolt of adrenaline that flowed when the recoil kicked at her arm and shoulder, and because these were exciting to her, the condition of gun ownership and use was integral to her personality and identity. Every time she pulled the trigger she felt total power, fulfilment, certainty.
Standing there by the side of the woodland road, thinking of guns, feeling gorged with her family memories, Teresa was tempted for the first time since her arrival in England to pack her bags and go home. She had friends in Woodbdidge, a career in the Bureau, a house, the remains of a life, a certain place in a culture she understood. England was full of mysteries she didn't want to have to deal with right now. She had made the trip in an attempt to move forward, away from her old itinerant fatherdominated past, yet immersion in the quiet sorrows of Bulverton was stirring up too many memories of what she had wanted to leave.
She knew if Andy could have been there with her he would have gone into one of his sessions of criticizing her their marriage, though happy overall, had had its tensions and
brought
up a dozen similar incidents when she had dithered helplessly about which direction she should take. She deserved it, because making her mind up had always been hard.
She kicked loose pebbles against the wheel of the car, and she thought, This is silly. Why do guns still exert their fascination?
Her love of guns, the hold they had over her, had reversed in the instant she received the news of Andy's death. It was as if she had suddenly been able to see her life from a different direction: her fife was the same, but her view changed. From right to left, from looking down to looking up, whatever it was.
That skill she had with guns, the facility, the deadly accuracy, suddenly became a curse to her. In her hand was the object that ultimately had killed the person she loved most in all the world.
She hated the way her father's personality had changed when his gun friends were around, or when he was practising with his weapons: it was as if he grew several inches in all directions, taller, broader, rounder, thicker. His voice was louder, he moved with more energy. His physical stance became threatening or confrontational, became that of someone who could only cope with the complexities of the world by putting out a challenge to it. And she had hated the way her own skill converted to the dark side: a deadly efficiency, the side of her that gave pain, the unyielding side of her.
Also in the long moment of the news of Andy's dying she had thought, for the first time in many years, about Megan.
That shocking instant of childhood had been effectively camouflaged over the years. lt was so long ago she could barely remember it, and whenever she did try to remember it she could not find the truth. She had never really
disentangled what had actually happened from the lies and evasions her parents told her.
They said she had dreamed the whole thing; Megan was an imaginary friend; all little girls had imaginary friends. But surely she had been born a twin? said Teresa, prodding for the truth, knowing this at least was so. Yes, there had been a twin sister; yes, and her name was Megan. But Megan had died at birth, so frail, so small, such a tragedy. You wouldn't remember Megan, they said. What she thought she remembered was untrue, unreliable.
If it had happened the way she remembered, and not the way they told it, how could they have covered up such a death? A small child, killed by gunshot? Even if they had found a way, why had they done so? lt was surely an accident? But they never admitted anything.
What Teresa remembered as a shattering mirrorimage of herself, a dying friend, a gun whose recoil had twisted her arm so painfully it had hurt on and off for more than a year, was changed by them into a tragic delusion, a persisting error.
Then decades later Andy died, and in her moment of penetrating grief and understanding, Teresa had known at last what must be the truth about Megan's death.
Her father's house was full of guns, in every room in any place they lived. The guns were always loaded, always ready for this chimera of expert selfdefence. She, like any other child, explored and tested, and did what she was told she must not do. The greater the warnings of danger, the more attractive were the temptations of ignoring them.
From this, the greater truth: the more there were people who owned guns, who made themselves expert with guns, who prepared to defend themselves with guns, who went on hunting trips with guns, who mouthed slogans about freedom and rights being dependent on guns, the more those guns were likely to be abused and to fall into the wrong hands.
just once, that time when she was seven, her little hands had been the wrong ones.
SO, finally, Andy was dead, and that had been hard enough, but it was not entirely unexpected. The risks went with the FBI territory.
She grieved, she mourned, she was prescribed medication, she took a vacation to see friends in Oregon, she joined selfhelp groups, she underwent counselling. She was a widow, but life eventually began to cohere once more around her. What she was unready for, though, was the other consequence of Andy's death: the profound reversal of her trust in guns.
All her life until this point seemed to be a deceit. Everything she had grown up with, and all the work and training she had done as an adult, she now turned against.
During this period a word, a name, a place, kept circling somewhere on the fringe of her awareness. Bulverton, England.