The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

what we did know was that at the Agency, Betty sat at a desk along with the rest of us, the Ivy League men who were her peers during the war having become her bosses.

We’d want to stop and ask her about her days fighting the Nazis—about whether she still thought of those days while sitting at that desk waiting for the next war, or for someone to tell her to go home.

We all typed, but some of us did more. We spoke no word of the work we did after we covered our typewriters each day. Unlike some of the men, we could keep our secrets.

We bonded over the belief that a life of adventure wasn’t reserved for men, and we set out to claim our piece of it.

but it was at that first party that I became a Swallow: a woman who uses her God-given talents to gain information—talents I’d been accumulating since puberty, had refined in my twenties, and then perfected in my thirties. These men thought they were using me, but it was always the reverse; my power was making them think it wasn’t.

I think I would’ve liked to die there, in that place that felt as if it were conjured from Borya’s dreams.

My body had adapted faster than my mind. Isn’t that the way it always works, Anatoli?

I’d always known I’d stay; I just wanted him to beg.

But as Yuri and Lara were ever on his mind, Big House was ever on mine.

She created the perfect conditions for his writing. Although he never told me, I believe that’s why he stayed.

“It means fellow traveler,” said Irina. “I think it’s quite poetic.” “No,” Norma said. “It’s terrifying.”

He knew he’d done something that was not only irreversible, but dangerous.

What Borya had done was akin to treason. If the West was to publish the novel without permission from the USSR, they would come for him—for me.

“Well, I know they don’t put women like that behind a reception desk,” Norma said. “And if they do, it’s for a reason.”

“It’s not about being right. It’s about knowing enough to be able to quickly evaluate what kind of person someone is.

I knew a world like that existed, but at the same time, I had no idea. And what I had heard was nothing at all like this. It was like stepping inside the wardrobe and emerging in Narnia for the first time.

Plus, I knew there was no path that wouldn’t dead-end.

I’d had friends who convinced themselves the only way out was to step off a chair, a noose wrapped around their neck.

After years away, it felt good to be back in the game, to know secrets, to be useful.

I’d imagine what it would be like to completely disappear into someone new. To become someone else, you have to want to lose yourself in the first place.

I thought about how we could never be that couple—kissing, or even fighting, right out there in the open for all to see. The thought came over me like news of someone’s sudden death, and I realized I had to put a stop

to whatever was happening between us and just mourn what could have been.

I was convinced, as only a young man can be, that deep down I had the soul of a Russian.

She was my equal, and someone who challenged me. I knew if I married one of the girls I’d dated back in college I’d be bored before the first child was born, and I didn’t want to turn into the cliché Agency man with a woman or two on the side.

she got up and left me on the cold steps. I watched her red hat become a smaller and smaller dot in the white landscape.

I’d always maintained the upper hand with sex. I’d gauge my partners’ reactions and move, pose, and moan accordingly. This was different. She didn’t expect anything of me. I was powerless.

It was like watching a film in Technicolor for the first time: the world was one way, and then everything changed.

When she said she loved me, instead of telling her the truth—that I loved her too—I pulled away and said I wasn’t hungry, that she probably should just go. And she did.

To operate fully under instinct was a gift given to the animals; how much simpler life would be if humans did the same.

I knew that what I really wanted was impossible. But I wanted it anyway. I wanted the excitement, the home, the adventure, the expected, the unexpected. I wanted every contradiction, every opposite. And I wanted it all at once.

I knew what people called it: an abomination, a perversion, a deviance, an immorality, a depravity, a sin. But I didn’t know what to call it—what to call us.

We never talked specifics of our missions, but tired meant things hadn’t gone well, hungry meant things had, and need a drink meant exactly that.

She let the silence linger—an old trick she must’ve forgotten she’d told me about, something she picked up during the war to get people to start talking. People will do anything to fill an uncomfortable silence,

it wasn’t until after all that that I realized my silence was also an answer.

If it had been one of us, we would’ve had it resized the day we got it. But Irina wasn’t the flaunting type.

When we asked about bringing dates, Sally told us that this party was for us gals. “It’ll be more civilized,” Sally said, laughing.

She never said “Sorry” or “Please” or “Just a thought.” She spoke the way the men spoke, and they listened.

My cover would become my life.

He said I was perfect just the way I was, and his sincerity filled me with an inexplicable rage.

Teddy tried to pull me out of whatever I’d fallen into. He tried and tried, and I almost loved him for the effort. I tried to love him, I really did.

I relished the notion of shedding who I was, shedding everything, and becoming someone new. It was a delicious feeling, and for the first time in a long time, I smiled.

I thought there’d be time. Time to make amends, time to let her know I supported whatever decision she made, time to tell her how much I loved her, time to embrace her as I hadn’t done since I was a little girl. But there wasn’t. There’s never enough time.

But I did know she’d made it to wear at her own funeral, as I’d first seen it the morning she didn’t wake up—pressed and laid across the rocking chair in her bedroom for me to find.

He even put it above his own life. His book came first and always would, and I felt like a fool for not having realized that sooner.

There’s no telling when the sky will open up.

They were the ones who had taught me to become someone else, after all, to lie about who I was. And turning my new power back onto them felt good.

“To make them smaller,” Father David replied. “To hide them.”

His life has led to this precipice; how can he not take this final step, even if into the abyss?

“What does it matter? You forgot it last year too.”

When I thought of him—and I always thought of him—my insides felt as if they were filling up with cold, dark smoke. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d lie on my back and picture the black smoke twisting out of my mouth and curling toward the ceiling.