Jennifer had tried to keep the man’s fate away from William, but Jesus, the man’s head splintered and one of his eyes, plus a chunk of forehead, ended up beneath a rack of St. John knits. If Jennifer saw that, it was impossible that William had somehow missed it, since William constantly took inventory of the world.
The guard had, in fact, lived for a little while—a week—long enough for his vital organs to be harvested. His heart went to a teenage girl in need of a transplant; the Tribune ran a feature story on it and everything. Key words from the story still pinged in Jennifer’s mind, late at night . . . and in the morning and middle of the day, too, if she was being honest: Leaves behind a wife, Loretta, of Batavia. And: The shooter, an under-ten minor from Lincolnwood, is currently under psychiatric supervision. And then, curiously, not a word about Jennifer. The FBI had done their job. They’d moved her and William into protective custody and even managed to get the newspaper to go along with it.
She’d never trust anything she read in a newspaper again.
“It’s not my birthday,” William said. They all sat at the red picnic table at the bottom of the long lawn that stretched from the dock to the front door of their two-story Cape Cod. Jennifer was sure they’d picked this house intentionally: the lawn was long enough that it would be impossible to sneak up on them from the lakeside. Navy SEALs could land on the shore, but they’d still need to walk half a city block to reach the house. The racks of motion lights would likely deter them, too.
Jennifer had to concede that it was beautiful here, if lakes and trees and fish and birds and bears were your idea of beauty. Jennifer’s entire life had been spent in Chicago, so she was still nostalgic for the beauty of high-rise buildings and bombed-out trains and Italian restaurants with peeling wallpaper and the smell of wet cement, but in the months they’d been here, she’d come to appreciate the subtle allure of the natural world. Even her asthma was better.
The woman who was not Jennifer’s mother cut her eyes toward her. “Some help, Caroline?”
Caroline was Jennifer’s name now. She hated it. But the key was that you never broke character; that was hammered into her every day. If you want to live, the FBI told her, forget your name. They didn’t make clear that “living” meant constantly playing a game where you tried not to fuck up your own identity, lest some mob hit man was water-skiing by and picked up a line of conversation and realized you were not just a woman, but a bounty. Jennifer didn’t know what the number was on her and William’s heads, but she figured it was probably a pretty decent one considering the number of agents who rotated surveillance.
“I told you,” Jennifer said. “He remembers everything.”
“In order for this to work, we need your buy-in,” Levi said. He was the man who was not Jennifer’s father. “You tell him it’s his birthday, it’s his birthday.”
“He’s not an idiot,” Jennifer said. “Are you an idiot, William?”
“No,” William said. “Can I go inside and get my Guinness book?”
“Of course,” Jennifer said. “Grandpa will take you, won’t you, Grandpa?”
“Anything for our boy,” Levi said. He took William by the hand. “Let’s go find your book. Do you know where you left it?”
“The kitchen counter,” William said, “open to page 321. Where the man is eating the plane.”
“See?” Jennifer said to Maryann once they were gone. “He’s not a child. He understands what you’re saying.” Two hundred and twenty-seven days they’d lived in this house, and in that time, Jennifer had never felt unsafe, not even after the news reported Cousin Ronnie’s entire family had turned up dismembered in a parking lot in Portland.
That was the kind of gangster shit that happened to gangsters’ families when they didn’t have adequate fear. Jennifer was always afraid, but she also felt well protected, enough so that each day she felt comfortable spending a few minutes reminding William about details of their old life, plus things about his father that he should know, so that William didn’t lose the sense of his father, not just some vague memory of a man who used to live with them. But also, if something should happen to Jennifer, William should have some knowledge about what it means to be a Cupertine. It had been four years since William had last seen his father. Half of his life. So she tried to be as granular as possible, to keep Sal from growing diffuse.
He buttons his shirts from the bottom up.
He was always getting weird infections, so don’t let anything fester. He used to lose a toenail a year!
Dogs always liked him.
He liked you to be called by your full name, so if someone wants to call you Billy, you tell them that’s not happening.
“It’s the small things that will catch him,” Maryann said, evenly. “You don’t want something simple to be the thing that puts his life in jeopardy.”
“I’m not going to lie to him about when his goddamned birthday is. He understands the passage of time. He remembers everything.”
“Then he’s capable of remembering something new,” Maryann said.
“I’m still his mother,” Jennifer said. “I’m still the decision maker. When I want him to have a new birthday, he’ll have a new birthday. Until then, his birthday is December 19. You want to change it, talk to my lawyer.”
“You don’t have a lawyer,” Maryann said.
“That’s probably a violation of my rights,” Jennifer said, “so maybe ponder that, too.”
Jennifer got up and walked down to the end of the dock, sat down, took her shoes off, put her feet into the lake—which was ice-cold, winter over, but only in name, the nights here still frigid and icy—and tried to hit the reset button.
The home she and William shared with these fake grandparents was in a small bay on the lake. On one side was a low hill, a train track cut into the side of it. On weekdays, a train passed through every three hours. On weekends, it was every four hours. Jennifer thinking that, if need be, one day, she could probably grab William, run out onto the tracks, and just leap aboard a passing train. It was a silly fantasy of course, because this placid lake house was also a well-staffed prison: behind the house was an outcrop of granite, a natural wall, and then next door was a guest house where two men with guns stay. How many cameras were about, she had no idea, but she got the sense that somewhere in Quantico, it was some lackey’s job to fill out a report about her every movement.
The two men with guns—U.S. Marshals—however, were different all the time. Sometimes they’d be young guys, fresh out of the academy, she suspected, and they’d come and talk to William, ask him about baseball or TV shows. Sometimes they’d ask him about his father, like it was some kind of test. Sometimes the men were older—men a few weeks from retirement doing one last cushy job so they didn’t end up getting shot before they could collect their 401(k)s—and they tended to view William with only vague curiosity. They spent their time focused on Jennifer. “You’re very pretty,” one old-timer told her, but not in a pervy way, just like it was a statement of fact that was universally agreed upon. “You deserve a better life than this.” On that point, Jennifer agreed, kind of, because she didn’t believe most people deserved anything. You earn the good and the bad.
This day, the two men were young and they watched Jennifer from a fishing boat in the bay, shirts off, lines in the water. One of them—he had a mustache, looked like every cop who ever pulled her over when she and Sal were in the car together; Jennifer always afraid of what Sal would do, but he always kept his driver’s license and insurance current—waved at her. She waved back. Just a normal spring day in protective custody.
After a few minutes, Jennifer heard footsteps behind her. It was Levi, holding two plates of birthday cake. William was back at the picnic table, reading his book and eating cake with his fingers. “Uncle Steve” and “Aunt Britt” had arrived at the birthday party, with gifts and everything. They were Maryann’s and Levi’s primary replacements on weekends, and Aunt Britt had also been William’s primary homeschool teacher. No one bothered to call them and tell them Jennifer was throwing a fit.
Levi sat down beside Jennifer, handed her one of the pieces of cake. Chocolate frosting on yellow cake, which was William’s favorite. They got that right.
“We went to a lot of work to make today special,” Levi said.
“It’s not his fucking birthday,” Jennifer said.
“You made that clear,” Levi said.
Jennifer took a bite. “It’s good,” she said.
“Maryann is quite the baker,” he said.
“Really? She made it?”
Levi nodded. “We’re trying to help your son.” He took another bite. “He’s been getting onto the computer at night. After everyone’s asleep.”
“What’s he doing?” Jennifer asked.
