HEAR by Robin Epstein Page A

NINE
    I need to cool down, but I can’t. There are so many feelings rumbling through me, I feel like a teakettle coming to a boil. The day is over, and I need to avoid everyone and everything until I can let off some steam. If I can make it up to the observatory and shut the door without Uncle Brian noticing, I think I might be okay.
    â€œKass?” Uncle Brian calls out as I attempt to sneak through the front door. “I’m in the living room. Come on in.”
    Perfect.
    I try to focus on my breathing, yoga-style, to get into a more Zen place before talking to him. But as per always , the exercise not only fails; it seems to make me more anxious. When I walk into the living room, I find my great-uncle sitting in his recliner with his feet up, a large photo album resting on his legs.
    He smiles at me, looking over the rims of his glasses. “Did you have a nice afternoon?”
    â€œIt was . . . okay.” I can’t get into what happened right now. “How are you doing?”
    â€œOkay,” he echoes with a shrug. “It was a tough day.” He nods at the album. “I was asked to gather some personal effects from Graham’s office to use in a memorial, and I found a scrapbook he’d kept since our time together as undergraduates at Princeton.”
    I move to the arm of my uncle’s chair to get a better look. He flips back to the front and points to a picture in the center of the page.
    Three young men, all clean-cut and in suits, sit together on a staircase. The one on the left appears the geekiest—though among these three, “geeky” is a relative term—scrawny with black-framed eyeglasses, the kind now favored by hipsters and architects. His hands grip his knees. The boy in the middle appears the most relaxed of the three, like he’s just aced a calculus test. And the guy on the right smiles widely and squints at the camera. It’s hard to tell if that’s because the sun is in his eyes or because he’s stoned. I lean in and look at him more closely. “Is that you?”
    Brian nods. “Terrible shot. The sun was shining directly in my eyes. The man in the glasses is Graham.”
    â€œWait a second,” I say. I step over to the mantel and point at the photo of the three colleagues, the one I noticed when I first arrived. “This is of the three of you too, isn’t it?”
    â€œThat’s right,” Brian says. “That was taken after we’d been working together for a while. But the picture in this album is where the story begins. It was taken when we were still undergraduates at Princeton, the day we three were tapped.”
    He has my attention now. “Tapped? For what?”
    â€œThe CIA.”
    â€œHa!” I chuckle before realizing he’s not joking. I look more closely at the shot on the mantel and squint to read the words on the seal behind the men: Central Intelligence Agency. “ You were a spy?”
    â€œNo,” he says calmly. “I was employed by the CIA as a scientist, as was Graham.”
    I nod.
    Although if my great-uncle was a spy, wouldn’t he deny it? That has to be one of the first lessons you learn in Spy 101.
    â€œPrinceton always had strong ties to the Agency,” he says. “Allen Dulles, class of 1914, was one of its best-known directors. Several of the school’s most distinguished professors were CIA consultants as well. When we were tapped, it felt like quite an honor.”
    I nod again, my eyes drawn back to the photo of the three men at Princeton. “Wait, what’s the name of the guy in the middle again?”
    â€œChristopher Figg.” Brian closes the album. He takes a moment to wipe his glasses with a handkerchief.
    â€œHe was the one who ran the summer program here when I was a kid, right?”
    â€œ Yes, Camp Dodona.”
    The image of Mara in her tiny kiddie T flashes through my mind. “Speaking of that camp, can I ask