“Katie,” I tried, using a nickname from our college days, a ghost from a time when she was a pre-med student who laughed at my terrible jokes. Before the lies of omission, before the missions I couldn’t discuss, before the thousand small absences had eroded the foundation of our marriage and become an uncrossable chasm.

“It’s Christy,” she corrected me, her voice as cold as the steel of a surgeon’s scalpel. “And he’s a good man, a respected man. Charlotte will have a better life.”

After she left the room, her footsteps a clipped, final retreat on the hardwood floors, I sat in the profound silence. Through the floorboards, I could hear Charlotte singing now, some Disney song about true love conquering all. The irony was a bitter pill. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Damon Bryan, my former handler and one of the few people on earth who knew what I had really done for my country.