Fiona Maazel - Woke Up Lonely

At first Noah just flashed his badge and passed them through, but as they got closer, and the barring command got more imposing, the badge no longer cut it. What was needed at this point was a badge plus an extraordinarily compelling reason to bother the assistant special agent in charge — so what, exactly, was their business here?

“It’s the ex-wife,” Noah said. “That good enough?”

He said it loud; there was no way Ida had missed it. And so, there it was. Esme died a thousand times over. And based on the Moses part that opened up before them, the information must have struck the ops with similar intensity, likewise the news choppers overhead, which nearly clipped each other for best vantage of the freedom given this mother and child. Who were they that the way was clear?

Not that Esme had moved. To have had the work of disclosure done for her, without fuss or warning — she was exhilarated and traumatized, though both fell short of the flowered comprehension in her daughter’s face, upturned and saying with unmistakable clarity: Yep, now is the moment when the tropism of my attachments could go this way or that. Now is your chance to shine on me the torch you’ve been carrying for my dad, and we can be a family whether we get to him or not.

Esme knelt so they were eye level. She didn’t know where to begin. But Ida had it figured out; she turned away and headed straight for the Helix House.

Ran for the house, so that when a cop scooped her up, it was a tantrum like no other. She bit his arm. Drew blood. Esme did not expect her to listen, but she said, “Sweetie, stop, I’ll explain everything, I swear,” and like that, Ida was calm. She walked back and pressed her whole body into Esme like she was the dunce and Mom was the corner. It was Ida’s first kindness in days and maybe her first ever apropos the labor of forgiving your parents, and so when she whispered, having pulled her mom in close, “Can you help Dad?” Esme didn’t have it in her to say no.

The special agent in charge came out the Tactical Operations Center to greet them and share the latest: You took too long. The feds are done talking. They were done hours ago, but now they are really done. Thurlow’s dad was back in the house against orders, Norman had cut off all communication, the hostages were probably still in the den, there were guards straggled throughout the compound, and unless Esme had a better idea, it was T minus five.

The team had set up in the living room of the Tudor house across the street. Persian rug, mahogany hutch, and, above the fireplace, a mantel of framed days in the life of the family displaced by this operation. Kid in Little League, missing teeth. Kid in hockey helmet, missing teeth. Girl plus trophy held high. And it wasn’t that these photos had seized for posterity special moments in time so much as the feeling inspired by these moments: You are a marvel, you are forever.

Esme looked at Ida, who sat recessed in a loveseat, hands in a clump between her legs, chin to chest. And without warning, it happened: Esme felt the right thing at exactly the right time.

She had compulsions, hangups, fear, but she also had clarity. Her parents were dead. Her brother had died with her name behind it. She and Ida had no one left; they barely had each other. But what they did have with Thurlow was a dynamic, and in this arrangement of lives vectored to and from each other, whole universes were given home. Isn’t that what people mean when they talk about family? The unspoken, unseen, but eminently felt?

She told the SAC that she did have a better idea, yes. And after she laid it out, he extended his arms as though readying for a catch. She could see his palms — the skin was thick and dense like beeswax — and understood anew the expression The whole world in his hands.

The math was easy. Risk Esme, who was trained and largely responsible for this situation, or risk the hostages, because, without credible intel, anyone caught with so much as a hot dog in hand would get shot. If Esme got taken or hurt, HRT was going to assault the compound anyway; if she could end this thing without bloodshed, all the better, job well done.

The SAC said: “If you’re not out in ten, we won’t wait.” Esme understood. She asked for a second with Ida, but when they went to the other room, she didn’t have to tell her much. Ida was on board — she was brave, a natural — and fleeing the house within five minutes of the bustle grown up around Esme as they fit her with a camera. Her plan? To rendezvous with Ida at Reading and McMillan, at a manhole the city opened last week. Ida would find it easily — just walk south and walk fast, and if Esme wasn’t there in an hour, call Martin.

At last, Esme was in the Helix House. In the first-floor pantry, where hostages might have been but weren’t. Same for the den and the other rooms. Her team of four was gone. Unclear where, though she suspected they were scattered throughout the underground of Cincinnati. No problem; she’d pick them up later. In any case, they were not here, and that was good, and Wayne agreed. She’d found him toting his wife and bird down the hall. Under the circumstances, he should have been pleased to see her, but no, the look on his face was all hate. He said no one else was left in the house but Thurlow, and then he kept walking.

Esme knew she had to get to Thurlow ASAP, but instead she dwelled on the stuff around her. The pens he’d held. The pillows he’d touched. She disconnected her headcam. So long as SWAT thought the place was rigged and manned, they had time. Ten minutes wasn’t much, but it would do. That, a few cans of gas, accelerant, and a lighter.

She paused outside Thurlow’s door and rested her hand on the knob. They had been happy once. Since then it had been x days, months, years, and she still missed him with a degree of agony that would have sent most people running back to him a long time ago. But not Esme. Instead, she had ignored the need, boxed it up, put it away, acquired new experiences to box and pile until her tower had grown nine thousand boxes high and there was no chance she could feel that first box on the bottom, right? Princess and the pea. Such a deranged moral to offer a child. The more sensitive you are to pain welled deep in your psyche, the more noble your spirit? It was better to be noble than happy? She pressed her ear to the wood. And the weeping she heard inside needed no interpretation. It’s true that when your subject weeps and so do you, it is hard to tell your hurt from his. For a person who listens, rare are the moments you don’t have to.

THEY WERE TOGETHER. It was a party. Left, right, red, blue, let’s examine this with love, and on network TV, too. In the house, the House of Representatives: the makings of a scandal, a probing of the facts.

421 Rayburn, Washington, D.C. Oak and silk and fleurs-de-lis.

The chairman and his statement. Thanks to you and you and you. Today is momentous. It is about accountability and oversight and truth, but in human terms, it’s about everyone we are missing. Four Department of the Interior employees. One cult leader. One ex-wife. Our key players have disappeared, and here we are, holding the bag. Among developments of equal sensation, there has been OJ in his truck, Rodney King, and Columbine, but for analogue to the hopes and dreams of the masses bound up in the fate of a few, we have on heart Baby Jessica’s two-day ordeal at the bottom of her uncle’s well in Midland, Texas. The organizing sentiment back then? If she is okay, we’ll be okay. Everyone just wanting to be okay. So, okay, order in the House. Let’s get this hearing under way.