Read Need to Know for Free Online

I ask. I think of the birth certificate buried deep in our fireproof safe. The Social Security card, the passport.
    “I don’t know.”
    “What about Barb and Gary?” I say. I picture the two of them. The matronly woman, the pastel-colored tops that always remind me of something my grandmother would have worn. The man with the belly that protrudes over his belt, his shirt always tucked in, his socks always white.
    “Others like me,” he says.
    Chase starts crying, a distraction that’s strangely welcome. I stand up from the table and walk to the family room. He’s on the floor near the couch where Luke and Ella sit, and I can see the outline of a little blue ball wedged underneath. I reach for it, then pick him up, shift him onto my hip. He’s quieter now, just little whimpers, the ball tight in his grasp.
    My thoughts are a jumbled mess. How could I have been so easily duped? Especially when it comes to Barb and Gary. There were red flags, certainly. I didn’t meet them until the wedding. We’ve only been out to Seattle once, and they haven’t visited us. There were reasons, of course. Ones that made sense at the time, that seem so flimsy now. Barb’s afraid to fly. We didn’t have enough vacation days. We’ve had one infant after another, and who wants to risk a screaming baby on a cross-country flight?
    I felt guilty about it. Seeing my parents so often, his barely at all. I even apologized. “Life has a habit of getting in the way,” he said with a smile. A somewhat sad smile, sure, but he never seemed all that bothered by it. I suggested video chats, but they weren’t comfortable with the technology, were happy just talking on the phone every couple of weeks. Matt seemed fine with it, too.
    And I never pushed it. Did I not push it because secretly I was glad? Glad that we didn’t have to alternate Christmases, that we didn’t have to bust our budget to fly the family across the country on a regular basis, that I didn’t have overbearing in-laws. Maybe even glad that Matt’s affections weren’t split. That his entire focus could be on the kids and me.
    I walk back into the kitchen and sit down at the table with Chase on my lap. “What about all those people at our wedding?” There were at least a couple dozen other relatives there. Aunts, uncles, cousins.
    “Same.”
    Impossible. I shake my head, like it could put all these random facts into some semblance of order. Something that makes sense. I’ve met upwards of twenty-five sleepers. How many do the Russians have here? Far more than we thought.
    Dmitri the Dangle.
Suddenly he’s all I can think about. He’d said there were dozens of sleeper cells in the U.S. He told us so much that didn’t make sense, that made us sure he was a dangle. That the handlers carried the identities of the sleepers on themselves, at all times, when we knew they were stored electronically. The decryption code that didn’t match the one we had from other sources. And the outrageous claims. That sleepers had infiltrated the government, were slowly working their way to the top. That there were dozens of cells buried here in the States, when we thought there were no more than a few.
    That one wasn’t so outrageous after all, was it? And then another realization strikes me.
    “You’re a spy,” I say quietly. I’d been so focused on the lie, on the fact that he wasn’t who he said he was, that I hadn’t fully comprehended the obvious.
    “I don’t want to be. I want nothing more than to actually
be
Matt Miller from Seattle. To be free from their grip.”
    There’s a heavy feeling in my chest, like I can barely catch my breath.
    “But I’m trapped.” He looks so sincere, so pitiful. Of course he’s trapped. It’s not like he can just quit. They have too much invested in him.
    Chase is squirming on my lap, struggling to break away. I set him down on the floor, and he gets on all fours and starts to crawl away, happy little shrieks trailing behind him.
    “You