Gwendy’s Final Task

Charlotte returned abroad when the training program ended, but the two women stayed in touch via telephone and email, and visited often during Charlotte’s thrice-yearly trips home. When Charlotte got married to her second husband on a private Delaware beach in 2005, Gwendy served as one of four bridesmaids. The following winter, when Charlotte gave birth to a healthy baby girl—on her forty-ninth birthday!—she and her husband chose Gwendy to be the child’s godmother. Years later, when Gwendy’s mom passed away on a cold October afternoon, Charlotte hopped on the next available flight from New York and was holding her friend’s hand later that same evening. In many ways, Charlotte Morgan became the older sister Gwendy had always wished for.

As Gwendy parked her car by the Lake Fairfax boat ramp in Reston, Virginia on the morning of December 9, 2023, and spotted her old friend sitting alone on a bench near the water’s edge, she prayed that their long history would be enough … or at least a start. Charlotte glanced up from the book she was reading, flipped Gwendy a wave, then lifted her hands to her shoulders in a What’s going on? gesture. Gwendy got out of the car and slowly made her way over to the bench, carrying the canvas bag in her right hand.

“No security?” Charlotte asked, only half-joking.

“I’m driving a rental Kia. That’s security enough.” Not to mention the button box, Gwendy thought.

“You’re killing me, dear one,” Charlotte said, closing the thick hardcover on her lap. “It’s got to be ten degrees out here. Spill it. Why all the secrecy?”

Gwendy took a seat next to her friend, placing the canvas bag by her feet. “Have you ever considered me anything other than completely sane, reasonable, and honest?”

Charlotte’s smile faded. She looked closely at her friend. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“You could say that,” Gwendy agreed. “Please answer the question.”

“Other than your bull-headed allegiance to the Red Sox, you’ve proven to be one of the most sane and trustworthy people I know. Top two or three, for sure. You know that.”

“Then I need you to listen to me very carefully. Can you do that?”

Charlotte didn’t answer right away—she was still too stunned by the turn the meeting had taken. She’d come expecting Gwendy to tell her that she was finally dating someone after the last four years of living like a nun, but this sounded much more serious. She didn’t care for the drawn look on Gwendy’s face.

“I can do that.”

“Be sure, because I’m going to tell you something that will be very difficult to believe. Then I’m going to show you what’s inside this bag and give you a demonstration of how it works.”

Charlotte leaned forward and gave the drawstring bag a closer look. She opened her mouth to respond, but Gwendy cut her off again. “If you start to interrupt, I’m going to walk back to my car and drive away and pretend this meeting never happened.”

“You’re scaring me, Gwen. Are you sure we shouldn’t call it quits on this conversation right now while we’re ahead?”

“Only if you don’t want the world to stick around long enough for Jenny to graduate from high school and go to an Ivy League college and have babies of her own one day.”

“You’re serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

The Deputy Director, never once breaking eye contact, was silent then. It was her job to know when people were telling the truth. “Okay. Tell me.”

Gwendy told her.

When she was finished, almost forty minutes later, Gwendy picked up the canvas bag from the grass by her feet, pulled out the button box, and placed it on her lap. It was the first time she’d laid eyes on it in almost twenty-five years. She could hear Richard Farris’s voice whisper inside her head: Don’t touch the button box or even take it out of the canvas bag unless absolutely necessary.

Was a thing absolutely necessary when it was absolutely the only way? Of course it was.

“Do you remember the part of my story about Jonestown?”

She nodded. “You believe you caused it. Or rather that strange box did. May I …?” She reached for it.

Gwendy pulled it away, clutching it to her chest. Because it would be dangerous for Charlotte to touch it, yes, but that wasn’t the only reason. There was jealousy, as well. She thought of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings: “It’s mine, precious, my birthday present.” Gwendy didn’t want to feel that way about the box, but she did.

It was terrible, but there was no denying it.

“I guess I may not,” Charlotte said. She was giving Gwendy a measuring look, and Gwendy knew, old friend or not, she was only a few steps from deciding Senator Peterson was barking mad.

“It would be dangerous for you to even touch it,” Gwendy said. “I know how that sounds and what you’re thinking, because I’d be thinking it, too. Just give me a little more rope, okay?”

“Okay.”