The prodigal spy

She nodded, then placed her hand on his, just a touch, and looked out the window at the river. “I wonder if they’ll find John Brown,” she said finally.

“Count on it. I hope Hoover nails him personally. He’d be just right. They both lived with their mothers.”

He turned the car toward the Mall.

“This isn’t the way to the airport.”

“No. I thought we’d take the train. For old times’ sake.”

She looked at him, the first hint of a smile. “Okay.”

He drove past the Mall, where crews were cleaning up litter from the rally, then up the hill, turning into the street behind the Supreme Court, the lighted Capitol dome. A spring night in the South, the magnolias thick and glossy, lights on in the row of houses. The big forsythia bushes spilling over the wrought-iron fences. He stopped the car, idling.

“Was that your house?” Molly said.

“Yes.”

Lights on upstairs. His bedroom window no longer scratched by the tall tree, which must have been taken down. When? Inside, a woman passed in front of the window. Everything was quiet in the street.

“Does it bother you?” she asked softly.

“I thought it would.”

And for a second, just one, he was looking out the back window on that last day, the sidewalk covered with moving cartons.

“But it’s just a house,” he said, shifting into drive, the frozen picture moving again.

She looked at him. “Your house.”

“No,” he said. “Not anymore.”