Page 24 of Love at First Sighting
Her own fear is palpable, but she’s putting it aside. I can only guess it comes down to how terrifiedImust look. I’ve never let anyone see this side of me before. I don’t know whether to feel embarrassed or afraid or comforted that it happened so easily.
The anomaly dips behind another hillside and vanishes into the night. A few seconds later, the whir of machinery fades to nothing until all I hear is El and me breathing.
“I think we have a lot of digging to do, Carter,” she says.
The next day I feel like a kid who forgot to do the homework. It’s the same creeping feeling as when the teacher works theirway up the desks and you know her grade book is just a few stops away. I’m confused, and when I step into the office, I worry I don’t exactly work where I think I do, or I got every answer wrong.
I spend the day filing the (somewhat falsified) information I do have about El’s case in the system, while Toby does his internet sleuthing. I debunk several videos for him by lunchtime (one is a balloon, one is a smudge on a camera lens, and another is a clip from Steven Spielberg’sWar of the Worlds, which is surprisingly good despite the fact that Tom Cruise is there). I log research of her social media activity, classify the type of craft she saw—Type I, a small nonpiloted disc-shaped craft—and leave it open for now, for Marcus’s eyes only.
At six p.m., I send Toby home and most of the other agents roll out as well. I try to keep my head focused on the day-to-day, instead of letting my mind wander and succumb to the mystery.
It’s just Marcus and me left. Now that I live on my own, we really only see each other at work, and he’s quickly dragged into meetings and calls. Some days, all we get are short waves and manly nods, at most.
He’s got a new cigarette lit and the window cracked open. The smoke puffs in curvy plumes in the warm glow of his office lamp.
I climb out of my seat and nudge his door open. That’s when I notice the sheer amount of paperwork stacked on his desk. I find him half-behind his desk, sorting file folders. Marcus is usually pretty paperwork-light for a reason. His secretary, Deb, handles most of it and places final reports on his desk for signature. But this is a mess.
“Did a tornado blow through here, or…?”
Marcus glances up and runs a hand through his hair. There’s a dazed, exhausted look in his dark eyes, like this has taken ten years off his life. “Yeah, a tornado called the federal government.”
“What are you even looking for?” I ask.
“The department is having us purge deceased and inactive agents from our files. They’re encouraging us to go digital-only to free up space in the regional archives. I’morganizing.”
Deceased agents. My dad included. Marcus says this like his own ex-partner isn’t one, like it’s no skin off his back if we never have answers.
“Aren’t we going to…need those one day?” I’m trying not to panic, to play it cool, but I’m already thinking about how this factors into El’s and my plans. How I’m going to get my hands on this file before it disappears.
“They’re backing them up.Wejust won’t have ’em anymore.” He reaches for a highlighter on his desk and highlights a name on a roster. “What?”
My chest feels heavy and tight. “If we get rid of them, they’re gone.”
Marcus blinks slowly. “Yes?”
“My dad’s file.”
Asking to see my dad’s file has never gone well in the past, and when I’ve questioned him on it, he’s assured me it’s clean as a whistle. My dad was a rules guy with no skeletons in the closet.
Marcus sets the folder down on the stack and leans back into his desk chair. “Carter.”
“I’m serious. His file’s going to be one of them, right? Once it’s shipped off, it’s gone forever. We’ll never know what happened.”
“I know what happened,” he says, slipping off his reading glasses and setting them on the table. “I’ve read the file. Trust me, it was a hit and run. Nothing in there you didn’tlivethrough. It’d just be dredging up old memories neither of us want.”
My memories of the accident are so sparse and cracked apart that I couldn’t fully piece it together, and perhaps it’s for the best most of the time.
“I just want to see it. Once.”
“Carter.” He sighs. “I can look out for you a lot of ways here, but I can’t help you with that. It’s not in this office and hasn’t been in a long time. And I think it’s for your own good, kid.”
He’s right. Anyone else would have fired my ass years ago, but he keeps me on the payroll, keeps the other agents from harassing me, and finds whatever ways he can to make me useful.
“I really have to get back to sorting through all these files,” he says, and his voice drops lower, like a frustrated plea. Asking him about my dad feels like backing him into a corner, and he always pushes back. We don’t stay there long. Marcus was never the sappy type, but my dad was still like a brother to him. Losing a sibling has to feel like losing a limb.
When my dad died, it felt like losing a head and a heart at the same time.
