Spy Another Day Prequel Box Set: Spy Noon, Mr. Nice Spy, and Spy by Night in one volume (Spy Another Day Prequels clean romantic suspense trilogy)

by Jordan McCollum

  Okay, honestly? I’m impressed. I’m half-tempted to buy the house, if I knew I’d be in Ottawa a few more years — but I don’t think I make enough to afford it with my jobs combined.

  Danny looks impressed, too, and I think Roger’s noticed by the time he starts up the stairs. “The owners have already moved, so they’re motivated to sell. I think we could get a good deal, and they’ll want to close quickly.”

  Danny heads up the dark wood stairs. We peek into the full bath and three decent-sized bedrooms before Roger practically runs ahead, as if he’s preparing for the big reveal.

  “Sure you don’t want to buy a house, darlin’?” I whisper to Danny as we stroll after Roger.

  “You know, I never said that.” A smile fights to get past his poker-face defense.

  That would certainly send a message to his mom. We reach Roger, and he flings open the double doors to the master.

  Danny and I stand in stunned silence. “Oh my,” I finally murmur. “That’s — that’s —”

  “Chartreuse,” Danny names the hideous yellow-green all over the walls.

  I look at him with wide eyes. “Apparently you don’t need a designer if you know what color chartreuse is.”

  The smile he was fighting is gone. He doesn’t even smirk at my joke or my accent. He fixates on the carpet and doesn’t move to go in the room.

  “Danny, darlin’, don’t you think you’d better take a peek?”

  He doesn’t answer, but steps two feet into the room.

  I come to stand next to him. “I take it you don’t like the color.”

  He shakes his head without looking at the walls. His lips compress, his whole countenance grim.

  No idea what’s going on. “You’re right, honey, it’s the ugliest thing I ever did see. But a little paint can fix this. A nice greige or maybe a navy —”

  “I’m done.” He wheels around and walks out of the room. Roger and I exchange a mystified glance before I go to snap some quick photos of the master bathroom (corner tub and a corner shower?) and walk-in closet.

  Danny’s waiting at the door. He tells Roger he’ll call if he’s interested, but it’s obvious he’s not, not after the master bedroom. Roger gives me his card (I pretend to have forgotten mine), and we make our escape.

  After five minutes of heavy silence, I’m totally at a loss. I haven’t seen Danny like this, ever, not even when he was talking about his bad breakup. “I take it you don’t want to talk.”

  He stays focused on the road. “And say what?”

  “For starters, you could tell me what that color ever did to you.”

  He clams up.

  “Look, I know that color just existing is a crime against fashion and good taste and humanity —”

  “Don’t.” He interrupts without cutting me off; his tone is firm but gentle. I stop and look out the window, like my CIA-trained land navigation skills will help me in this conversation.

  Nope, still lost.

  We’re on the Ottawa side of the river before Danny parks (not all that far from my apartment, but I’m not volunteering that info). He seems to brace himself before he looks at me.

  I could use all those tools I used on Vasily yesterday, even if they didn’t work so great. I could pretend to be whoever Danny would be most likely to talk to.

  Or I could just be someone Danny can talk to. So I turn in my seat to face him and wait.

  Talia’s sitting there, and I don’t know what to say. I’ve tried, I’ve tried to work through this, but suddenly coping with time and cooking seems pretty pitiful.

  No. I’ve coped. I just haven’t talked about it. With anyone. Ever.

  I look at Talia again. She’s waiting, patiently, for some explanation of why I freaked out over a freaking paint color. I know it doesn’t make sense. I know it’s stupid. But when I saw it, the memories fell on me like a ton of titanium.

  And to explain, I’ll have to open all those wounds.

  Come on, man. Rip the Band-Aid. “We were engaged.”

  She barely blinks. “You and Kendra?”

  Have I told Talia her name? “What, are you Facebook stalking me?”

  “You mentioned her once. This was your bad breakup last year?”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  After a long silence, Talia takes a stab in the dark. “And chartreuse is her favorite color?”

  Yeah, that’s why I shut down. I’m that unstable. “She picked it as our wedding color. I didn’t even care, but my sister hated it. I just wanted everybody to be happy. So one night, I suggested maybe it wasn’t the most flattering color, and . . .”

  I clench my fists, my whole body tensing like that’ll be enough to will back the wall of memories and emotions threatening to crush me.

  Maybe I haven’t coped with this. Maybe I’ve just tried to ignore it and push it away and move forward like it never happened.

  Talia’s hand lands on my wrist. I pry my other hand off the wheel, place it over hers. I can do this. “Suddenly, I was the worst human who ever walked the Earth. Everything I said made it worse. She said I didn’t want to get married, I was looking for any excuse to get away, I hated her. . . . It was like someone flipped a switch.”

  I pause for a minute. Is that enough? Do I have to tell the rest?

  “Danny,” she says. “Seriously, that sounds like a symptom of mental illness.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that sometime between when she started throwing all my plates at my feet, and when I went to stop her, and she punched me in the face. Or maybe it was when she said if I told anyone about that, she’d claim I tried to rape her. Yeah, that was probably the time.”

  Talia doesn’t say anything at first, but her eyes grow wider. “What did you do?”

  “Said something like, ‘You’re right, I don’t want to get married,’ and walked her out.”

  “I mean, what did you do, like, in your life?”

  I focus on the steering wheel. Still don’t know how to pilot through all this. “I . . . I couldn’t go to work with a black eye ‘not’ from my fiancée. I called in sick for two days, and worked from home for another couple weeks.” I stop for a second, remembering how trapped I felt — but at the same time, I wasn’t. “Then I realized what my life had become with her. I mean, at first, everything was awesome. I was the greatest boyfriend she’d ever had, and everyone else she’d dated sounded like a long stream of creeps who’d hurt her and morons who never appreciated her. I was everything, the best thing that ever happened to her, and I thought she was the same thing for me. I thought this was it, this is why people get married.”

  Talia scoffs, pulling me back to the present. I glance at her, and she realizes her mistake. “Sorry. I’m . . . kinda cynical about why people get married.”

  “You’re cynical?”

  She holds up her hands, surrendering the point. What was I saying? Why I thought it made sense to marry Kendra? “I only wanted her to be happy. I wanted everything to be perfect, and maybe she was a little dramatic. Then out of nowhere, she cheated, and I took her back, and she dumped me and begged me to take her back two days later. We had a fight — I wasn’t committed enough — and she ‘accidentally’ broke my Xbox. But I thought I could prove I was committed if we got married.”

  I wait for Talia to object again, but she just gives me a tiny, pitiful frown.

  Pitiful sounds about right. “She was in charge of everything for the wedding. Seemed normal to me. Whatever she wanted, I went along with. What difference did it make to me?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “But when she was gone — and after I kicked her out — for a while she went total silent treatment, not even wondering if I was okay. I should’ve been crushed, and I was, but . . .” I take a deep breath and sigh it out. Feels almost as good now as it did then.

  Talia leans forward in her seat, ready for me to continue.

  “I felt free. I saw how small my life had become, always walking on eggshells, always trying to make her happy, al
ways falling short. I had to take her side on everything or I was the villain. I couldn’t play video games or go to my sister’s or talk to my mom if we were together — all the focus had to be on her. Suddenly, I didn’t have to constantly reassure her I loved her, she was wonderful and everything else.”

  “And then you felt bad for feeling good.”

  I check with Talia again, but this time I’m surprised for a different reason. I wasn’t expecting her to get it, but for a minute, I realize her shields aren’t just down; they’re gone completely, like never before.

  This is all of her — the person who was hurt before, who still doesn’t want to be hurt again, who’s open and waiting and willing and scared but here, listening, understanding.

  I nod slowly. “Still do, sometimes.”

  “Have you seen her again?”

  I grimace and shift against my seatbelt. “No. After a few weeks, she tried to contact me. She called; I changed my phone number. I blocked her on Facebook; she messaged me from a friend’s account.”

  “Hence no Facebook.”

  “Yep. Scorched earth. She kept coming to my apartment, so I moved. She tracked me down again. Then I moved back to Michigan. She followed me, tried to come see me at my parents’. When I wasn’t home, she got my number and left a message saying she’d kill herself if I didn’t respond. I didn’t, and she did.”

  “She committed suicide?”

  I make a sound to say sort of. “She tried. Ended up in the hospital.” I pull my wrist free from Talia’s fingers, folding my arms. “The worst part: I know I could’ve stopped it. I could’ve prevented it, and I — I did nothing.”

  “Danny, you know she needs help.”

  I turn to Talia. “I was supposed to help her. I was ready to spend the rest of eternity with her, taking care of her, and . . . I failed. She begged me to help her, and I couldn’t. I. Failed.”

  She lets the words die, and then stays on her same track. “She needs professional help, and until she gets that, she’s in no shape to be in any relationship.”

  “I don’t know.” Everything she says makes total sense, but I’m still having a hard time buying it. I’ve tried telling myself the same thing, but . . . I still feel like it’s my fault.

  “Have you thought about talking to someone about it?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  She shoots me a smirk. “Seriously. Couldn’t hurt.”

  Famous last words. “Talia, I’ve never told anyone this. Ever. Not even my mom.”

  That makes her smirk fall away. “Why —?” She cuts off her own question, her eyes trailing away toward the windshield. “You were keeping the family secret. Because maybe you were the crazy one. The bad one.”

  “Not making me feel real good.”

  Her gaze tracks back to me. “Sorry. I’m . . .” Her focus moves away again, like she’s thinking or remembering something. “Did you have Family Home Evening growing up?”

  Okay, abrupt subject change. “Yeah?”

  “What’s the worst one you can remember?”

  I have to scan my memory of the weekly spiritual lesson from my parents. “One time my brother and sister and I ended up wrestling on the floor, fighting. Why?”

  “When I lived with my mother, our best Family Home Evening was when she sat us down in a circle. She pointed to my brother Troy and told him three things he was doing wrong. The way he chewed was one. Then we had to go around the circle, everyone telling Troy why he was bad. If we couldn’t think of something, Mom screamed at us until we did. No matter how long we cried — and if you cried, it was your fault, and you didn’t love Mom, and you were a horrible per-son. Then it was Trevor’s turn.”

  I can feel my jaw slowly dropping. The tangent’s starting to make sense. My mom’s overbearing sometimes, but this is straight evil. “Why would your mother do that?”

  “In her twisted mind, it made her feel like she was doing something right — doing everything right. She thought she was perfect and couldn’t stand to see us do something right half the time — or worse, doing something wrong. I begged her to put me in ballet but she pulled me out after a year because she thought I was awful and making her look bad.”

  I can’t even — “Why?”

  “Because she’s insane. Really, truly mentally ill. And she’ll never get help, because the last person who thinks they need a psychiatrist is a narcissist. Everything we did was wrong. We never did enough. We never loved her enough. We bent over backwards to be perfect, and we weren’t enough. She spent years breaking us down until we couldn’t function without her.”

  Every word sounds eerily familiar.

  Then it dawns on me. When Talia said everyone’s been hurt, I figured she had a scumbag ex. Her scars run much deeper. Deeper than mine. “How did you survive?”

  She shrugs. “Kids are resilient. We ran away after five years, and Dad won custody again.” Though I don’t know how she can, she smiles. “Years of therapy helped, too.”

  “Yeah, I guess it would.”

  For the first time since she started talking, Talia meets my eyes. “I’ve never told anyone — anyone — about that. Because it was my family secret. I spent five years not knowing that kind of life wasn’t normal. I spent five years thinking I was the crazy one. I spent five years believing I’d done something wrong. But most of all, I spent five years hiding, trying to kill off my emotions, withdrawing.” She sighs softly. “Know what? It never really helped. It never solved anything.”

  I sit there for a minute, absorbing everything she’s told me. How does anyone survive that type of abuse?

  That word hits me like a shockwave. Abuse. It’s the word for what Kendra did to me, too.

  And even with all Talia’s been through, she’s only tried to help me heal.

  “Hang on a sec.” I unlock the doors and get out. Talia leans forward to watch me round the car, raising an eyebrow when I go to open her door. She accepts my hands and stands, and I wrap my arms around her.

  “It’s been thirteen years, Danny. I’ll be okay.” But her voice quavers a tiny bit, and she slides her arms around my waist, laying her head on my chest.

  “I know.” I’m holding on for me, too, and she doesn’t let go. Because it just feels right. Not like hey, I’m attracted to you, let me find any excuse to touch you. More that she gets how I ended up in this bizarre mirror world and understands how that breaks you — and she doesn’t think I’m stupid or weak or anything else. No judgment. Just —

  “Danny?” she asks after a minute.

  “Yeah?”

  Her shoulders fall, and she pulls back enough to see me. “Thanks for telling me. Trusting me.” Her eyes add an unspoken postscript: thanks for letting me trust you.

  “Oh, you know, anytime.”

  Talia maintains her serious eye contact. “I know.” She steps back to lean against my car frame. “Can I say something?”

  “At this point, you can say pretty much anything.”

  “I’m not a psychiatrist, but everything you said reminds me of a personality disorder, like my mother. But diagnosis or not, what happened with Kendra was her fault. Her responsibility. All of it.”

  I shove my hands in my pockets and pivot to face my car. “Yeah.”

  “But —”

  I turn to her again.

  “ — it might not hurt to do a little digging to figure out why you stayed with her when you knew she was hurting you.”

  “Because I’m an idiot.”

  Talia pushes off my car and moves closer, waiting for me to look at her. “You’re not an idiot. I think there’s another reason.”

  “You going to start dropping hints?”

  She gives me a frown-smile. “If I knew, I might. That’s on you.”

  I sigh and hold her door for her. Intellectually, I know about the cycle of abuse. Even as someone who’s been so mistreated — abused — I still can’t quite wrap my brain around why you’d stay with a person who’s hurting you, no mat
ter how great that initial honeymoon period was.

  I only wanted to take care of her, to make her happy. I thought I loved her.

  Maybe I was wrong. Or maybe that wasn’t enough.

  I get in my side of the car and buckle my seatbelt.

  “Danny?” Talia tries again. “Telling me about this — it’s big.”

  Yeah, knew that.

  “You’ve really moved forward.”

  Doesn’t feel like it — feels like a jumbo jet pushed me back nearly a year — but she might be right.

  Now I just have to figure out what’s wrong with me.

  I’m still pondering my last conversation with Danny as I huddle on a park bench two days later, pretending to know what I’m doing with some needles and yarn. On one hand, how can I not feel good Danny confided in me and let me confide him? I’ve never been able to tell anyone, not even my therapists, about the finer points of Mom.

  But on the other hand, a selfish part of me doesn’t want Danny to make strides toward healing. Because if he moves on, he’ll be ready to think about dating and marriage. And I won’t.

  And on a third hand, I need to focus. We’re intercepting a dead drop, not worrying about Danny.

  Next to me on the park bench, Elliott updates Eric on our position: backs to the school where Vasily made his last drop. (Rearview mirrors in fake glasses are the best invention ever.) (That may be an exaggeration.) Vasily’s on his way this direction, and friendship stress or not, coming here means one thing: he’s making a drop.

  “We’ve got a signal,” Eric reports. “Probably five minutes away.”

  Elliott switches off the minimic in his lapel pin and snaps his newspaper. I click my needles together. “Doing anything fun tomorrow?”

  “One last desperate attempt to book Shanna’s dream spot.” He groans quietly.

  I choke back a scoff.

  “How about you? Any plans for the weekend?”