The Scattering. Kimberly McCreight
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back as soon as you can. It’s an emergency.”
Rachel. Right. Of course my dad would call her. Rachel was my mom’s friend. Or ex–best friend. After years of her and my mom being out of touch, Rachel appeared out of nowhere at my mom’s funeral. Ever since, she’s been like some kind of rash we can’t get rid of. She wants to help. Or so she claims. My dad says it’s probably her way of coping with her grief. If you ask me, what—or who—she actually wants is my dad. Regardless, the whole thing is weird. She is weird, and I don’t trust her.
But like her or not, Rachel is a criminal defense attorney. She would know what to do in a situation like this. And Rachel might be a totally shitty person—the details of their falling-out were never something my mom would share, but even she always said that Rachel was the person she’d call if she ever found herself in real trouble, because “Rachel could keep a bragging serial killer out of prison.” And my mom didn’t mean it as a compliment.
“Dr. Lang, if Wylie has nothing to hide, it shouldn’t be a problem for her to talk to us,” Agent Klute says when my dad hangs up.
“Maybe it would be less of a problem if you hadn’t tackled me,” I say, because it seems like my dad could use some help.
“Hey, you fell!” the short agent pipes up. “I didn’t touch you.”
That’s true, of course, but it hardly feels like the important point.
Agent Klute frowns at me. None of this is going the way it was supposed to. And now he is aggravated, but only a little. Like he’s just gotten a small drop of soup on an otherwise dark shirt. “I can assure you, Dr. Lang, we have extremely broad authority to question witnesses in cases of suspected terrorism. And we don’t need a warrant. Wylie is not under arrest. At least not yet.”
“After that”—my dad points to me, my arm specifically—“the only way we’re answering your questions is if our lawyer tells us we have to.”
Agent Klute takes a breath. “Fine. When will she be here?”
“I don’t know,” my dad says, trying to sound like this gives him the upper hand. Though he knows that it does not. And he’s worried about where this situation is headed. I can feel that loud and clear.
Agent Klute stares blankly at my dad. “We’ll just wait for your lawyer then. For as long as it takes.”
FOR A WHILE after, a half hour maybe, my dad and I sit in silence, side by side on the couch. The agents stand as still as statues in each corner. Agent Klute is the only one who moves, pacing as he sends texts. He’s getting more agitated with each one, our floor creaking eerily under his heavy feet.
I want to text Jasper, but who knows what he will say? And if the agents do bring me in for questioning, they could easily take my phone. It’s safer to wait to talk to Jasper until after they are gone.
My dad calls Rachel two more times, but both calls go to voice mail. And so we wait some more. Thirty more minutes go by. Then an hour. I cannot believe how uncomfortable our living room couch is. I don’t think anyone has ever sat on it that long, definitely not me. Eventually, I need to use the bathroom, but I can’t bear the thought of someone going with me. And I am sure they will.
I’m just beginning to think I’ll have no choice but to bear bathroom babysitters when Agent Klute’s phone vibrates loudly in his hand. “Excuse me, I need to take this call,” he says, nodding at the other agents, letting them know they are temporarily in charge before stepping outside the house.
As the front door closes behind Agent Klute, my dad’s phone finally rings. “Rachel,” he answers, desperate and relieved. He’s quiet, listening for a minute. “Well, not great to be honest. Could you come over? It’s kind of an emergency. No, no, nothing like that.” He pauses and takes a deep breath as he stands. But he doesn’t actually go anywhere. He just hovers there in front of the couch. On his feet, he seems so unsteady, like part of him is disintegrating. “There are some federal agents here, and they want to interview Wylie and I’m just—she’s been through a lot, and I want to schedule it for another time.” Silence again as Rachel responds. “I did. They refused. They said because this has to do with domestic terrorism and Wylie’s not a suspect …” More silence. “Yeah, okay. Okay. Thank you, Rachel.”
He seems better, more hopeful when he turns back to me. “What did she say?” I ask.
“That we’re doing the right thing,” he says. “We should just wait here. She’s on her way.”
MY DAD STILL has the phone in his hand when Agent Klute steps back inside the house. “We’ll be in touch soon, Dr. Lang,” Klute says matter-of-factly. As if this is an extension of a conversation we were already having. As if this was already agreed upon. “We’ll schedule another time for that interview.”
But why? Because I am not buying that Agent Klute is taking off because he’s afraid of some lawyer he’s never met. He doesn’t even know Rachel finally called back. Klute nods in the direction of his men. No, they are leaving for their own reasons. Bad ones.
“Where are you going?” I ask though I would probably be much better off not saying a word. It’s not as if I want them to stay.
When Agent Klute looks at me, I feel it again: pity. And it’s worse this time. So definitive and deep. He nods again. “We’ll be in touch.”
I watch as Klute and his men gather together and disappear out the door. And I imagine it like that eerily quiet moment when the tide gets pulled out to sea, right before a tsunami crashes back to shore. Silent and astonishing and totally terrifying.
Six weeks later
I OPEN MY EYES TO DARKNESS. My bedroom. The middle of the night. Jasper calling. Without checking, I already know it is him. But I don’t reach for my phone. Sometimes he only calls once and hangs up. And tonight, for the first time in a long time, all I want to do is sleep.
Ever since we got back from Maine six weeks ago, Jasper’s late-night calls have become an everyday thing. Jasper is on his new phone, of course. Because it hadn’t been him who sent the text telling me to run that day all those weeks ago when the agents were standing at my door.
As soon as Agent Klute and his friends had left our house, I called Jasper back—wanting to be sure he was okay, wanting to know why exactly he had told me to run. But he hadn’t answered his phone. After two more hours of calling and being unable to track down a landline number for Jasper’s family, I’d insisted—over my dad’s strong objection—that we drive over to Jasper’s house and check on him.
Jasper had been completely fine when he’d finally answered the door—sleepy and confused, but fine. He didn’t even have his phone, hadn’t seen it since Quentin had taken it from him at the camp.
The local police had found my phone in the main cabin and had returned it to me that morning during one of the many interviews at the rest stop. But Jasper and I were being questioned separately then. I had just assumed he had gotten his back, too. Actually, I hadn’t thought about it at all. But the officers had never found Jasper’s phone.
Someone had told me to run at the exact right moment, though. And to what terrible end I could only imagine. Maybe they had been hoping that running would get me killed.
My dad did contact Agent Klute later when we realized the message hadn’t come from Jasper. Klute had agreed to look into the text and then sometime later proclaimed the whole thing to be some kind of prank. We did press him for details. A prank didn’t make sense. But Agent Klute stopped returning our calls. And it was hard to object to that when we also never wanted to hear from him again.
My phone chirps again now and I feel around for it on the nightstand. Think again about how I should change it to some less jarring ringtone. But