The Consignment by Grant Sutherland

turned and came back. She planted herself in front of me. “And I resent the implication that I’d send Brad there just to get at you. That’s not why he’s going. He’s a geologist. What’s he supposed to do, cross out the places on the map that you’ve been selling God-knows-what to? Most prospective territory left in the world is in those places. What should he do? Put his career on hold just so you don’t have to feel guilty?”
    “Listen—”
    “No.” She threw up her hand. “If you’ve got any more to say, go tell it to your bimbo.” She veered into her study to retrieve a forgotten file. If I’d told her the truth at that moment, the arguments and recriminations would have ended. But our marriage would have ended too, I never doubted that for one second. So instead of telling her the truth, I remained silent out in the hall. When she came out of her study I put my hand on her arm. She tilted up her chin.
    “Going to hit me?”
    “There is no bimbo.”
    She shrugged my hand off.
    “There is no woman,” I said. “There is no affair.”
    She peered at me. After a moment her look seemed to soften. She raised a finger.
    “Very good,” she said. “Very good.” She walked along the hall, then turned down the stairs. “In fact, you get any better at it,” she called over her shoulder, “you’ll be lying like a third-rate goddamn lawyer.”
    We had been married nearly twenty-four years. When she wanted to push my buttons she knew where they were. By the time I got to the head of the stairs she was down at the front door. I grabbed the landing banister.
    “Fiona!”
    She opened the door.
    “I’m not fucking anyone,” I told her.
    She regarded me coolly over her shoulder. “You’re not fucking me, anyway,” she said. “Not anymore.” Stepping out, she closed the door gently behind her.
    I bounded down the stairs, then caught something from the corner of my eye, and turned. Brad. He’d come down the hall from the garage and was standing by the kitchen, facing me. He must have heard every word. I slowed, then stopped on the bottom stair. We looked at each other awhile without speaking. At last he gestured to the kitchen.
    “I brought down a copy of Barchevsky’s offer.”
    “You heard.”
    He looked away. He said it was none of his business.
    “It’s a misunderstanding.”
    He made a face. “I don’t need a map, Dad,” he said, then he turned his back and loped off toward the garage.
    It wasn’t hard, at that moment, to see that I’d risked, and possibly already blown, the most important part of my life. And for what exactly? Two years’ total immersion in an operation that Dimitri’s actions had turned into a tragic farce? I couldn’t accept that. There had to be more. I didn’t want medals or glory, but when Hawkeye finally folded I had to have more to show for my decision to cloak my life in a lie than a dead ex-friend, a firm handshake from Channon, and a full Army pension.
    When Hawkeye began, it was meant to last six months. Six months had become two years, with Channon shifting the touchline quarterly. I’d embarked on the operation knowing that the price was to be a temporary deceit, but that was all. Temporary. With hindsight, of course, I can see that I’d dug myself into a treacherous emotional hole, one so deep it could destroy me. The months I’d spent on Hawkeye. The petty deceptions I’d practiced on my family. They’d become spurs for me to go on with the operation, as if I could somehow regain what I’d lost and be self-justified by some final overarching triumph.
    But I glimpsed the truth that morning. Glimpsed it and pushed it aside. Two years of deceit. The sudden fracture in my family. Dimitri’s death. I was already in too deep to allow the truth any real life.
    Brad disappeared into the garage, I called his name, and the door banged shut behind him. I stared at the wall a moment. Then turning slowly, I hauled myself up the stairs, and got ready for