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Cammie Morgan's parents had a lot of friends.
In the mind of a five year old girl, this was a good thing. Friends meant cover, as her daddy always reminded her-they got you out of trouble, and they were easy to use as excuses if you were undercover on a mission. She didn't always know what her daddy meant when he talked about this stuff, but she listened and stored it all away in her brain because she knew, in the back of her head, that it would be useful someday.
The novelty of friends, however, became less shiny when most of those friends had been grievously injured sometime in their lives. Some of the women who pinched Cammie's cheek and called her a 'cutie' were missing parts of their noses, or had huge bruises on their bodies; men that her father would invite over for poker and a few beers would sometimes be missing limbs, and they would talk with strange, rumbly voices as they told stories and said that she would be 'the best damn spy the CIA has ever seen, better than your old man here' whenever she managed to sneak up on them.
Still, Cammie got used to the friends, however strange they were.
But when she met Joe Solomon for the first time, the novelty of friends became so shiny that she even forgot to remember what her daddy had told her about having friends in the clandestine business. All that registered in her little-girl mind was that the man she was staring at was extremely handsome and was devastatingly charming enough to make her blush just by looking at him.
"Wow, Matt," she heard him say, once he had walked into her family's living room and everyone was seated in their normal places-her dad in his old recliner, Rachel on the couch with Cammie on her lap, and the visitor on the love seat, where her parent's friends always sat when they were just talking.
"She looks..."
"Just like him?" Rachel finished, raising a challenging eyebrow. Joe smiled bashfully, and Cammie giggled because, even though she knew her mommy was beautiful, she had never seen a grown man blush around her before.
"And like you, too," Joe said quickly.
His green gaze turned back to Cammie, and she looked back at him as hard as she could. He chuckled, thinking she was being cute, and she huffed in frustration because everyone thought she was being cute when she was trying her hardest to be serious and it was annoying.
"Actually, I don't look like either of them," she said, just to be contradictory. Her voice was small and high, like bells, and its sweet tone rang throughout the Morgan's small townhouse living room.
"Oh?" Joe raised an eyebrow. "Who do you look like, then?"
"Myself," Cammie answered matter-of-factly. "And Aunt Abby, if she had blonde hair."
Cammie's parents were smiling at each other, but Joe was nodding seriously. He was studying her again, and it took everything she had not to squirm. "You know, Ms. Morgan, now that I'm looking... I can see that you're right."
"I know," Cammie said. "I always am."
Joe cracked a smile. The adults talked for a little while longer, but soon told her to go up to her room so they could discuss 'grownup things'.
She nodded dutifully, jumping from her mom's lap. Her blonde pigtails flounced up and down as she skipped up the stairs.
Once she was in her room, she immediately went to the vent that, she had once discovered, let her listen to everything her parents said in the living room. She had listened in on many a conversation that way, and it always made her feel like the super-secret spy she wanted to be someday.
"Is there any new chatter, Joe?" Cammie's daddy asked, his rich baritone voice echoing through the vents. Cammie loved his voice more than anyone else's in the world. It was like a lullaby.
"No," Joe replied. His voice wasn't as smooth as Matthews, but it was still nice. Rugged. "I'm not in any deeper than I was when we last talked."
"And when was that?" Rachel asked. "Six months ago?"
There was silence, so Cammie assumed that they were nodding or doing that weird adult thing were they communicated with looks. Cammie hated it when she couldn't hear what they were saying-even if she didn't understand ninety percent of her parent's conversations, she still liked to hear what was going on.
"I'm working with Catherine now, though," she heard Joe say after a while. If Cammie didn't know any better, she could have sworn she heard her parents both making angry, growling noises. Maybe they did.
"Who put you up to that?" Matthew asked. "James? Charlie?"
"Uh..." Joe started. It was the first time he sounded unsure. "They're both dead."
"She killed them, didn't she?" Rachel asked. Her voice was hushed.
"Yeah," Joe replied. "She did. She wanted the cloister they controlled, and she has it now."
"So everyone else just goes along with it," Rachel mused. Cammie could hear the shock in her voice. "Like it's a wolf pack?"
"Yeah, sort of," Joe mumbled. "It's survival of the fittest out there."
They were silent again. Just as Cammie was getting fidgety, itching to hear more, her mom whispered, "What about that boy you mentioned earlier? Catherine's son?"
"Zach?" Joe guessed.
Cammie smiled to herself. She had always liked that name. She had named one of her goldfish Zach once, but it had died after a few weeks, and she had been so heartbroken that she had refused any more pets after that. Her parents even wanted to get her a cat so she could name it Susie like she had always wanted to, but she didn't want to have it die, too.
"Yes, Zach," Matthew said, all business.
"He's a really good kid," Joe said. Cammie noticed that his voice was warmer now, like her daddy's, and less rough around the edges. He sounded like he was smiling. "I hate to see him there, but he doesn't have anywhere else to go."
"Are you able to... Protect him?" Cammie's mom asked. Her voice was all mommy, and Cammie liked it when she sounded like that.
"Not always," Joe said. His voice was regretful. "Catherine is pretty harsh on him, and the rest of the Circle kind of treats him like a punching bag."
"Jesus," Matthew muttered.
Cammie tsk tsked at her dad for using a bad word, but only because she knew it was what Grandma Morgan would have done.
"Well," Rachel said after a while, "If you ever have an opportunity to get him out..."
"Bring him here," Matthew finished. "We'd keep him safe."
"I'll keep that in mind," Joe said. His voice was rough again.
They talked for a little while longer, mostly about how long Joe was going to be in town (only long enough to go to Langley. The CIA was calling him in again, so he had to take care of the mission before the Circle missed him.) It was all very confusing for Cammie, so she focused on the glow-in-the-dark constellations on her ceiling and traced the imaginary lines between the stars with her fingers.
Soon, she heard her parents calling her back downstairs.
She raced down, ready to see the handsome man again. He smiled when he saw her, and she curtsied for him, which made him laugh. He shook her hand, and made her feel very grown up as he said, "It was pleasure to meet you, Ms. Morgan."
"You too, Mr. Sol... Solonom?"
"Close enough. Solomon," he said with a grin.
He straightened-he was so tall-and gave both of her parents hugs. If his hug lingered with Rachel a little longer than with Matthew, nobody noticed or said anything.
Then he was gone.
Years later-when Joe Solomon would walk through the doors of Cammie's school, scruffy and broken from years of working for two different secret groups-Cammie wouldn't remember that she had met him ten years earlier. The handsome man who stopped by her house on a rainy Sunday afternoon had been one of dozens of other agents her parents had welcomed into their home. He and the strange world he talked about-a world with boys called 'Zach' and ladies named 'Catherine'; a world she would not understand for another year or two-was another government conspiracy, another crazy story that she could never fully understand because she wasn't there and didn't have the clearance to hear it all.
She wouldn't remember the promise her parents made to Mr. Solomon, that they would take in Zach if they could. She wouldn't remember that he born into the Circle, not part of it; she wouldn't remember that Joe Solomon was part of the Circle to learn information, not help their cause.
She wouldn't remember a lot of things about her childhood. Because all those memories blended with the long afternoons spent with her dad on the Mall as he taught her how to blend with a crowd; they melded together with the times she watched her mother get ready for parties, her makeup done and her hair up and her dress skimming over her body like water. Childhood was childhood, and memories-no matter how helpful they may have been later on-were as unreliable and slick as oil.