Chapter 21

Year Three, May 2019

Duck, North Carolina 

The mist rises on the water, smoky and delicate. The sun, a bright red ball, sets over the Currituck Sound, splattering colorful artistic splotches over the Carolina sky. 

Something deep inside me aches. Down to my bones. Like I’m literally in a fantasy book I read as a teen: birthed, painfully, in the swirly moist ether that forms around me. It’s a low energy day, which is less than ideal for my wedding weekend. My eyes droop. I’m exhausted. Ammu scoffs and tells me it’s just stress. Nerves. But I’m out on the balcony off this soulless house, staring out into the sound, because I need a break from the noise. David’s and my parents talking and drinking and eating, the clinking glasses and the scrapes of cutlery, the music and the booms of laughter, my heart galloping away and that ache. 

All over the Outer Banks are cheery cottages, colorful, like confections draped in fondant, with punny nautical names like Off the Hook and What a Beach. And instead, David’s parents chose this extravagant monstrosity, Chez-something-or-another, for their stay. My parents and I, and most of the wedding party, are lodging at the site of our reception, the charming resort down the road where the barrier island thins into an isthmus so the sound and sea almost kiss. 

Assured steps echo on the deck, walking with purpose. It can only be David. I know the rhythm of him, the confidence and the righteousness. He knows just how long to leave me alone, and when to bring me back into the light. 

He comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my shoulders like a pashmina shawl. “My mom is going on and on about the beautiful colors of the subcontinent again,” he reports. 

I sigh deeply. “My mom eats that stuff up.”

“They’re getting along like a house on fire.” 

“Better than the alternative, I guess.” I turn up to look at him. “It’s when they gang up on me that it’s a problem. Helena, dear, you eat too little. Helena, you should wear more makeup.”

“Well—” He gives me a kiss on the forehead. “I, for one, think you’re perfect.” 

I lean into him, imagining him like this chain of beaches off the coast, a bulwark against tropical storms, buffetting the wind. Like he alone can shelter me from thoughts of cemeteries and sonic weapons, of safehouses and gunshots. My port in the storm. My lighthouse, my true north. 

Up here, I can hear the crash of the waves on the other side of the strip, while on our side, the water of the sound gently ripples. I can’t see the mainland. 

“The only point of contention tonight,” he adds, “is Mom is really worried about the ceremony. Like, where they should go and what they should do, and I keep telling her the rehearsal tomorrow will take care of it.”

“Of all things.”

He snorts. “At first I thought Mom was worried if there were any Bengali or Indian elements in it that she wouldn’t know about, so I was like, Mom, they’re Catholic, it’s all standard, but it turns out it’s Mass that’s freaking her out. Her father was Armenian Orthodox so I don’t know what her problem is. She likes to forget.” 

I smile at the utter WASPness of David’s family, but thinking about how different my family is gives me the same inside-out feeling I’ve experienced my whole life, first as part of the Christian minority in India, with our Portuguese-heritage last name—a legacy of the missionaries that converted my ancestors—and then, later, in bum-fuck Carolina, where I was different in every other way. Even the Catholic part was suspect—not a lot of those in Southern Baptist country. 

The glass door slides open with a creak. Ammu’s head pops out like she’s an extroverted gopher sniffing for food. 

“Helena,” she calls. She pronounces each syllable with near-equal strength. Slightly stronger on the first and last. People ask me why my parents gave me an American name if I was born in India and I have to explain it’s an Indian Christian one too. “Join us and be social please.” 

I sigh heavily. Ammu purses her lips in disapproval and draws her head back inside. 

“Here.” David drops my hand and kisses me roughly on the cheek. “I’ll keep the wolves at bay. You come in when you’re ready. “

He saunters in that way he has back in the house, and seats himself at the large family-style table. 

Through the window, I watch him with our families, the handsome grin, the hair flop, strong jaw. The goodness, oozing out of every pore. 

What a gift, to be loved by this man. 

I have to tell him. 

The thought comes in like a fast-moving squall, battering the boarded-up shutters in my mind that I use to separate that life from this. 

Tell him what? Tell him how I betrayed my country, betrayed my oaths, betrayed my agents and my colleagues, betrayed him? Can an FBI agent arrest his own fiancée two days before their wedding? Or would he call in the local field office to do the job?

I weigh the wisdom of just spitting it out. I got pitched by a Russian guy yesterday. No. I think I’m in trouble. I made a mistake that destroyed lives. 

The sun is fading now, the stalwart line of the pier fading away into the haze. The colors run together like watercolor. A seagull squawks. Off to bed you go, then, I think at it. Dream of fish and toddlers spilling popcorn on the sand. 

I disassociate from the moment. Standing here, so far removed from the world I’m contemplating. No grit and grime of DC. No loud snarl of traffic in Granda City. No stark white trailer in a blighted landscape, working 18-hour days. Here. A place that should be peaceful. 

But peace is unattainable. 

The breeze carries on it the smell of low tide. 

I go for broke and join the fracas inside. 

I walk into the middle of what Abbu calls a “friendly political debate” but what I call “rich white people kryptonite,” if you’re raised being taught that politics, religion, and money are off-limits topics. To be fair, my father’s views are idiosyncratic. The nominally-liberal globe-trotting professor of political philosophy, who also thinks the United States has “gone socialist,” which is what he’s arguing now, to the great discomfort of David’s father. 

Abbu spots me, which is a very bad thing. 

“Just ask my daughter, the government expert. She’ll tell you—” 

I raise my hands in a warding gesture. “Nope.” 

“You know, I didn’t know Helena was in the CIA for years. We thought she was in the State Department. She lied about it until she decided to work stateside. Just like a spook, eh?” 

“Da-ad,” I groan. 

Abbu turns his face back to the politely-sitting Deanes, but he’s lost his train of thought. David’s father wears a look of gratitude. 

David’s mother claps her hands. “Well,” she says briskly, “how about a nice cup of coffee. I’ll start the brewing.” She turns to my mother. “How do you like yours?”

Ammu waves her off in a wobbly gesture. “We must return to the hotel.” She eyes the bland fixtures of this faux Mediterranean-style house. “What a charming home you’ve found. We’ll leave you to enjoy the rest of the night.” 

The Deanes stand as one. David’s father reaches out his hand. “Oh. Well. A good night, then. We can meet for breakfast.” 

I wince and catch David’s eye. They weren’t supposed to accept my mother’s terms. That’s not how this works. There should be refusal on one end, insistence on the other, until the haggling concludes on something where each party is satisfied propriety has been achieved. But it’s okay. Both sets of parents get along, but only in small doses. 

My parents leave in the car—leaving David and me behind, because we want to walk back via the beach. My shoulders lower. I hadn’t realized how tense it is to have everyone together. 

We say our goodbyes and hop across to the other side of the island, where the sky is that purplish gray it gets before true darkness. Ghost crabs dart around, finally free from the torment of footsteps and thuds. Only a smattering of people; some are filling in the huge holes they had dug during the day—good on them. The occasional rumble as lifeguards cruise by, on their makeshift lanes at the back of the beach, just before the flat sand meets the dunes. I breathe in. The sea air has always sung to me, making my heart gallop free like the wild horses of Corolla. 

David and I walk hand-in-hand along the surf, shoes off, letting our toes dip into the sinking sand. I lean my head against his shoulders. He grins and pulls me into a pirouette, spinning me back into him. We stand, swaying together, heartbeat to heartbeat. 

“I think it went well,” he murmurs into my hair. “Your parents seem finally at peace with us not getting married in your hometown.” 

Thank God. That’s the last thing I wanted. An extravagant wedding in my small town, where I never belonged, like some prodigal princess who had been treated like a pauper. David’s mother would love it—the society pages, maybe a reception at an old plantation, not that I would agree to that. But I don’t want that part of my childhood history enmeshed with my new story. 

My new story isn’t being an out-of-touch brown girl in a city just outside the cosmopolitan swirl of the Research Triangle, like it barely missed the bands of a hurricane. It’s not being surrounded by a posse of dispossessed genteel southern aristocracy, wary of this new money in their midst. 

The sky finally falls into black, like a hurricane lamp blowing out. And like that light, the spark in my soul begins to splutter. Because the sea is part of my new story—a story that involves beaches in far-off lands. That involves my responsibility in terrible things, maybe even death. 

As the sun winks out, the beacon of the Gothic Revival-style Currituck Beach Lighthouse floods into existence, the legacy of miles of shipwrecks littering the coast. The Graveyard of the Atlantic. Emboldened, I turn to David. 

“I have a question.” I hesitate. “A weird question.” 

He waits for me to go on. 

“Do you think love is really unconditional? What if someone fell off a pedestal? What if they weren’t as virtuous as you think they are. Would you still love them—would you still love me—if I’m flawed? If I’ve made huge mistakes?”

He frowns. “I love you no matter what.” He pauses. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

“Yes,” I say quietly. “Not about you and me. Don’t worry. It’s … it’s work.” 

He leads me toward dry land. The water has carved a ridge into the sand, making a perfect bench on which to rest. 

“Tell me,” he says. 

“It’s been weighing on me recently. I don’t know, maybe wedding stress. But I’ve made some security mistakes at work. That may have led to people getting hurt.” 

He lets out a note of sympathy. “You can’t second-guess yourself on that stuff, Helena. Besides—” he tilts his head in thought. “Your question about love? I love you even if you screw up your job. Damnit, I’d love you even if you were asking about a personal thing, like cheating on me. It’s not the action that would bother me, in any case. It’s the intent. If you intended to have some affair behind my back—not that you would! I’m just saying—or if you, I don’t know. Intentionally made a security blunder? Or, I guess, in that case,” he reflects, “not a blunder. Treason. Whatever it is. Purposefully, willfully, betraying your oaths—to me, or to the country—that would bother me.” He smiles. “I’d still love you though. Even then. It’d just be harder to stay together.” 

I let a breath out, as if I’m relieved. “Yeah, I’m overreacting, aren’t I?” 

“You’re known to do that.” 

“Wedding stress,” I say.

“Wedding stress.” 

We walk onward, my mind racing with the knowledge that I’m forever stuck with this in my soul. No absolution here. It’s like I saw a glow, a light at the end, and I sailed toward it relieved, then ran aground on hidden sandbars. Like a victims of pirates, who would put a light on a nag’s head—hence the name of the nearby town—to fool ship captains into thinking there were other ships in the shallows, that the waters were deep enough to navigate. 

I know this now to be true: if David ever learned about my misdeeds, my life as I know it is over. And so it’s buried in me, beneath my floorboards, a tell-tale heart. 

We’re doomed. We’re utterly doomed, him and me. It’s inevitable. How do you reconcile that? Knowing it’s coming, like a bullet train? All I can do is hold on as long as I can. Soak up every moment, before it all comes crashing down. 

What do you do, when your marriage is built on a lie?