Page 84 of The Pleasure of Panic

I shrug. “I guess that’s what I do, right? I’m a fucking FBI agent.”

“For better or worse.”

“Yeah,” I say. There’s something nagging me. Telling me to pay attention. But I don’t want to pay attention. Because I think that nagging feeling is guilt.

Guilt for wasting my twenties being a carbon copy of my father.

Guilt for killing him.

Guilt for accepting the deal they gave me to stay out of prison.

Guilt for being here with her. Because somehow, some way, I’m gonna fuck this up just like I fucked all the rest up.

“OK,” she says. Like she’s been thinking about my questions. “I guess you’re right. I really don’t want to leave those things behind. I know the frame is smashed and the picture was just a digital printout, but I’d rather glue and tape it all back together if it means I can keep something that my grandfather held in his own hands when he was alive. And I know I have that family photo on my phone. But that photo was taken the day before my mom showed up with her new husband and upended my world. To me… it was the last day I was ever truly happy.”

“And the trophy?” I ask. I just want her to keep talking. I want to listen to her for days. Years.

Lifetimes.

“I was presented that award the first year I started public speaking. I was brand-new to the speaking circuit, but my seminars always sold out. People were talking about me. They wanted to interview me. The wanted my opinion. And I remember thinking—who the fuck would want my opinion on anything? And if they only knew who I really was…” She sighs. “Well, when I got that award I decided… that very day, I decided that I didn’t think they’d care who I was. I really didn’t. These people—these strangers—knew the real me. They heard me talk once, maybe twice, and they knew me. And the people in my past never had any idea.”

I just want to look at this woman. I never want to take my eyes off her. “That’s how I feel about you,” I say. “Like I know you. And I realize I don’t, but I feel like I do. And sometimes, you just gotta go with the feeling.”

She smiles, pats my arm, then leans up to kiss me. First on the lips, then on the cheek, then on the neck. “You know what the silliest thing about that trophy is?”

I can’t imagine anything about that trophy is silly. But I really want to hear her talk some more. So I say, “What?”

“It’s so stupid.” She laughs. “It’s like six inches tall, made of gold-colored plastic, and the base isn’t even wood, it’s resin.” She stops to look up at me and smile. Then she shrugs. “But I don’t care. It’s solid gold to me. It’s worth a fortune to me. Because that day I got that, that’s the day I thought to myself, ‘Well, that settles it. You really are Issy Grey now. Because that stupid award says so.’”

“Maybe you’ve always been Issy Grey?”

“Maybe.” And then she thinks about this for a few seconds and amends. “Yeah. I have. I’ve always been her. It just took a while to figure that out.”

“Well, I’m envious,” I say. “Because I’ve always just been me. And I wish I was someone else.”

She tilts her head up at me and says, “Well, I think you’re pretty perfect just the way you are. And yeah, maybe you’ve made some mistakes.”

That’s an understatement.

“But were they honest mistakes? That’s what I ask the women in my classes. Like… did you set out to fuck people over? Or was it more about circumstance?”

“Does it matter? I mean, if you kill your father, does it matter that it was the only choice at the time?”

“Well, let me ask you this, Agent Murphy. Suppose you were a woman. Now suppose you were young, and naive, and a man came into your life and told you everything you wanted to hear. And he made you feel good. And special. And perfect. Now let’s suppose he was lying.” She swallows hard. Takes in a deep breath. “Let’s suppose he hurt you. Badly. And let’s suppose you did something you didn’t want to do, but he was holding a gun on you, and you were holding one on him, and you just happened to shoot true first. Do you think it matters now?”

“Legally?” I ask.

“No,” she says, poking me in the chest, the tip of her finger right over the center of my heart. “Emotionally.”

“No, it doesn’t. But she still did it.”

Issy shrugs. “I guess my point is, do you live with it and vow to never let yourself get in that kind of situation again? Or do you beat yourself up until you can’t take it anymore and give up?”

“I don’t know, Issy. I just know what I did was wrong. And I wish I could take it back.”

“You don’t get a rewind.”

“I know that.”