“Hey,” I said. “Happy Christmas.”
My father was by the fireplace, looking as if he’d been surgically attached to his tablet. At sixty-seven, he still wore the uniform of a conqueror: pristine shirt, open at the collar, a blazer that probably had a name, not just a brand. His hair was silver at the temples in a way women paid money to achieve.
He looked up long enough to glance at my shoes, my sweater, the absence of any visible luxury brand. A faint line of disappointment appeared between his brows, as if I had shown up to a wedding in a tracksuit.
“You still driving that Volvo?” he asked.
“Good to see you too, Dad,” I replied.
“It’s a question,” he said. “Are you?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head, turning back to his tablet. “You’re thirty-six, Madison. At some point, it’s not modesty. It’s negligence. You could at least buy something that doesn’t look like a grad student’s car.”
Jessica laughed, dropping back onto the sofa. “Oh, Dad, be nice. Madison likes to pretend she’s a minimalist.”
Tyler smirked. “Consultants, man. Always ‘between gigs.’”
They had no idea the Volvo was the most carefully vetted vehicle I’d ever driven. No idea how many times that nondescript car had slipped through traffic patterns without drawing a second glance, or how much easier it was to evade a tail in something that looked like it belonged to a social worker than in a Ferrari.
They saw an old sedan. The federal government saw an unobtrusive asset in the D.C. metropolitan area. Perspective was everything.
We made it through brunch, which was really lunch, which was also a performance review in disguise. My mother asked Jessica about her brand partnerships, nodding enthusiastically as my sister detailed the emotional labor of choosing between two luxury resorts for an Instagram campaign.
Tyler talked about his latest startup investment, a “disruptive” app that, from what I could gather, delivered overpriced coffee with motivational quotes.
“How’s work, Madison?” my mother asked finally, in the tone people used when they’ve remembered to feed a pet.
“It’s good,” I said.
“Still consulting?” Jessica chimed in.
“More or less.”
“For what, again?” Tyler asked, eyebrows knitting in an imitation of curiosity. “Development? Nonprofits? Microloans in villages? You were in… where was it?” He snapped his fingers. “Somewhere with goats.”
I’d been in Amman, actually, sitting in rooms with people whose decisions could destabilize an entire region, but goats were close enough.
“Here and there,” I said. “Government contracts. Policy, analysis, crisis response.”
My father snorted softly. “Sounds vague.”
“It’s classified,” I said, which was both the truth and the easiest lie.
“Well,” my mother said briskly, clearly relieved to move on. “As long as you’re keeping busy.”
In their world, a job only mattered if it could be summarized in a business card people recognized. Partners. CEOs. Creative directors. “Under Secretary of Intelligence” meant nothing to my parents because it didn’t come with a logo they could brag about at the club.
Later, when the plates were cleared and the second bottle of champagne had been replaced with a third, my mother snapped her fingers in my direction from across the room.
“Madison,” she called, as if she were summoning a waiter. “The Bordeaux. The good one. Jason wants to make a toast.”
I rose without comment. Decades of muscle memory. I could be in a war room in Langley arguing for a covert extraction, and a part of me would still half expect to hear my mother calling me to fetch something.
The wine cellar was really just a room off the kitchen where expensive bottles lay on their sides like sleeping snakes. My parents categorized vintages with the kind of attention to detail I reserved for satellite imagery and encrypted transmissions. Different obsessions, same meticulousness.