Vaughn couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But you must have thought about this before!” he said, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice so that he didn’t upset her further. Akiko couldn’t pull out now, he thought—not when they’d just completed their first mission. It wasn’t right, and he wasn’t going to let it happen. She was grieving for Steve and his family—and so was everyone else. But he had to help her get over it—and get her back to work.
Akiko smiled sadly at Vaughn. “Of course I’ve thought about it,” she said. “And my feelings haven’t changed—I’m as willing to give my life for my country as I was before. But what I’m realizing,” she said, wiping new tears from her eyes, “is that I’m not willing to leave my children without their mother.”
Vaughn couldn’t help what came, unbidden, to the front of his thoughts. Did my father ever think about the fact that he might die in the line of duty? he asked himself, realizing that he’d been pushing the thought down ever since he’d known for sure that Steve was dead. Did he ever decide that he was willing to let me go?
He shook off the train of thought. “Akiko,” he said. “You’re just upset because of the funeral, and—”
“I’m not just anything, Vaughn,” Akiko said, her voice sounding small and defeated. “This has been coming on for a while—I just haven’t felt sure enough to say anything. Today was the last straw in a long line of straws.”
Vaughn was quiet, realizing that Akiko was serious. “Is there anything I could say that would make you change your mind, Akiko?” he asked. “I mean, you’re my best friend. I don’t think I would have made it through the Farm without you. And I certainly can’t imagine working at the Agency without you.”
Akiko pulled Vaughn into a tight hug, starting to cry all over again. Then, just as quickly, she released him and blew her nose noisily into a second tissue she’d pulled from her pocket. “Uch! You’re going to be the end of me, Vaughn,” she said. “Look at me—bawling all over you like a baby.”
“You can bawl on my shoulder anytime,” Vaughn said honestly.
Akiko waived her tissue dismissively in his direction, reminding him of how she’d shaken her keys at him in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn on the first night they’d met. “Vaughn, the next time I want to bawl on your shoulder,” she said, “is the day you finally marry that girlfriend of yours.”
The following Monday, Vaughn was scheduled to begin work again back at Langley. He decided to ask Betty for some time off to go and visit his mother, whom he hadn’t seen in the last two years. The funeral had reawakened powerful feelings, and he was almost desperate to get home, just to check that his one living parent was safe and sound.
He was also thinking very strongly about paying a visit to Nora.
On the way to Betty’s office, he looked into Akiko’s cubicle with dismay. She’d already cleared out her desk and removed all the photographs and notes she’d kept pinned against the spongy, fabric-covered plastic walls. On his desk chair was an envelope in her handwriting with his name written across the front.
“Oh, Akiko,” he muttered, stuffing the envelope in his pocket to read later, in private. “Did you have to leave before we could even have a last lunch?”
He walked over to Betty’s half-open door. “Do you have a second?” he asked, knocking lightly on the wood and poking his head in.
“Of course, Vaughn,” Betty said, standing briefly until he took a seat. She sat and looked him over with concern.
“I’m thinking I’d like to take some time off,” he said, bracing himself for a negative response.
“Of course,” Betty agreed immediately. “We even recommend it in these situations. Of course, we also have counselors available for you to speak to, if you’d like to look into that.”
Oh, sure, Vaughn thought sarcastically. So you can think I’m some weakling who can’t handle this kind of stuff.
But what she said next was the last thing he’d ever expected to hear from her. “I saw a counselor after your father died,” she said quietly, staring straight into his eyes and nodding. “Yes. And it was more of a help to me than anyone will ever know.”
Vaughn’s mind was reeling. He couldn’t believe what Betty had just said.
“You’re going to talk about my father?” he asked. “Now—after everything that’s happened?”
Betty nodded slowly, like she’d come to some decision. “Vaughn, I know your time here has been difficult, and that there have been times that you’ve doubted my methods with you.” She laughed. “Believe me, when I was working with Steve, there were times that I doubted them myself.”
Vaughn still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The great Betty Harlow had suffered from self-doubt?
“One thing you should never doubt,” she said, “is that for your entire time with the CIA, I’ve been behind you one hundred percent.”
Vaughn exploded, unable to keep his emotions in any longer. “But you’ve been keeping me from finding out about my father’s death,” he railed. “You worked with my father—I’ve seen the files. And you’ve never mentioned it to me at all—you’ve never let me find out what happened to him.”
Betty’s lips settled into a thin line. Vaughn was worried he’d angered her until he realized she was trying to keep herself from crying.
“Vaughn, I loved your father,” she said carefully. “He was my partner and my good friend. When he died, I didn’t think I’d ever get over it.”
“Sure,” he said bitterly. “You loved him so much, you’ve been trying to get me kicked out of the CIA since the minute I walked through the door.”
Betty nodded, as if she’d expected him to say that. “I don’t try to claim that it hasn’t been difficult for me to see you working here after what happened,” she said. “You look so much like your father, and—” She smiled sadly. “Let’s just say that sometimes it’s like having a ghost walking around.”
“Right,” Vaughn said. “A ghost who isn’t half the agent his father was.”
Now Betty’s face became genuinely angry. “Don’t you ever think that, Vaughn,” she said. “It’s true that your father was an excellent agent—one of the best the CIA ever had. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have his doubts. I’ve never thought it was fair how all his files have been sealed to your family.”
A creeping suspicion began to form in Vaughn’s mind. “It was you,” he whispered, only half daring to believe it. “It was you who sent the notebook to my mother!”
Betty remained expressionless, neither nodding nor shaking her head to give away anything. “Your father always kept a diary,” she said. “In all this time after his death, we’ve never been able to locate it.”
“You had it, and you sent it to my mother,” Vaughn said. “And she thought it might be something important, so she sent it on to me with that weird note—because she wasn’t sure how to handle the situation, knowing what she knew.”
Again, Betty didn’t give anything away. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Vaughn,” she said, all business again. “Like I said, the diary was never located.” She looked straight at him again. “I can assure you that no one in this Agency has ever read it.”
She kept it away from the brass all those years, Vaughn thought. For my family—and for me?
Vaughn stood up, his voice breaking. “Thank you,” he said, reaching out to shake Betty Harlow’s hand.
Betty took his hand and gave it a firm shake. She didn’t say “You’re welcome.”
But Vaughn could feel her thinking it.
The wisteria outside his mother’s home had grown nearly high enough to reach his chest. The last time he’d been there, it had barely reached his ankles.
“Maman!” he cried like a five-year-old as his mother came into view at the top of the weathered driftwood stairs, then came flying down the steps to meet him. He’d slipped back into French as if he’d been speaking it every day for the past two years. “You look fabulous!”
<
br /> Amélie Vaughn had always been a very pretty woman, but in the years following Vaughn’s father’s death, her features had fallen into a mask of melancholy, and her straight black hair had gone ashy gray. Now the hair was pure white, and his mother’s vivid blue eyes stood out from her healthy, tanned face as she looked at him with joy. “Michel— finally! You’ve come home to visit! I thought we were never going to see you again,” she scolded, grabbing him by the arm and, with her measly hundred-pound frame, attempting to haul Vaughn and his bags physically up the stairs.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he laughed, taking his bags back from her and hastening up the stairs in her wake.
Vaughn had always loved coming back to his mother’s house, always filled to the brim with her paintings, good wine, and the wonderful smell of her cooking. But now, at the top of the stairs, his mother hesitated, then put her finger against Vaughn’s mouth. “Someone is here,” she said clearly in English. “Someone that I would very much like you to meet.”
For a moment, Vaughn was terrified that his mother, always eager to get him married off, had somehow convinced Nora to make the trip across the country in an effort to seal the deal. But he dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Even his matchmaking mother would never go that far.
“It’s not those cousins you were always talking about, is it?” Vaughn joked as they crossed the threshold, immediately regretting his words as he observed the small, bearded man standing at the center of the room. With his olive complexion, the man looked very European indeed. Who could it be—Vaughn’s long-lost uncle, perhaps?
“This,” his mother said, as if announcing an act at a comedy club, “is Jonas Van Dyck. Jonas,” she said, turning toward the odd man and gesturing to Vaughn, “this is my son, Michael.”
“I’ve been hearing about you for a long time,” Jonas said, walking over to take both of Vaughn’s hands in his own. Vaughn clasped them back, still confused.
“I haven’t really heard anything about you,” he said, turning to his mother with a questioning glance—he hoped he hadn’t insulted the man, whoever he was. But if he’d only ever met him as a young boy, he certainly couldn’t be expected to remember him now. “Um—who are you, exactly?” he asked awkwardly.
Jonas laughed a great big booming laugh, and his mother’s delicate laughter rippled above it. “My boy,” he said, clapping Vaughn heartily on the back. “I believe the term your generation has brought into common use would be boyfriend. That is, I am your mother’s boyfriend.”
Vaughn’s mother nodded, drawing Jonas closer and smiling at Vaughn. “I wanted to tell you before,” she said plaintively. “But I just couldn’t over the phone, and it didn’t seem right to do it by e-mail.”
“We’re planning on getting married next summer,” Jonas declared, puffing out his chest like a twenty-one-year-old who’d just been given his first drink at the bar. “And all I need from you to make her say yes is your blessing.”
Vaughn’s mother looked at him, her eyes shining. “Well, chéri?” she asked, slipping one hand in his and the other in Jonas’s. “Do we have it?”
Resting in his room before dinner, listening contentedly to the laughing and clinking of glasses and the music of Billie Holliday drifting up from the kitchen, Vaughn thought back over the past week. First, there’d been Steve’s funeral. Then Akiko had quit on him. And as if that hadn’t been enough, his mother had revealed that, even at sixty, she was still capable of starting all over again, with a new life and a new marriage.
Would Vaughn ever be able to start on his first?
Akiko! Vaughn suddenly realized that after his tumultuous meeting with Betty, he’d forgotten entirely about her letter. He hadn’t left it dangling on some hanger at home, had he? He scrambled over to his favorite jacket and felt the smooth, long rectangle. It was still safely tucked in his pocket. Withdrawing the envelope, he breathed a sigh of relief.
He opened the letter and began to read.
Dear Vaughn,
Sadly for you, this is not going to be the good-bye note that I know you’ve been looking forward to all weekend (ha-ha). After I met with Betty, she absolutely refused to let me leave the Agency—not just because I’m a great officer, you understand, but mostly because she seems convinced I’m going to sell all my secrets to the highest bidder. We worked out an agreement— I’m going to be the new director of the CIA’s Center for Families, which will coordinate all the activities for spouses and children. This works out great for us: no more day care for Blanche and Eugene (hooray!). As you can see, I’ve already moved my stuff into my new office, which is far swankier than the old one (though I’m sure you’ll be out of this cubicle soon enough), and you can reach me at extension 6754. Give me a call—if you’re nice, maybe I’ll take you to lunch on my new expense account.
Love,
Akiko
Vaughn couldn’t believe it—Akiko hadn’t left the Agency at all. The whole time he’d been mourning the pain of her loss, she’d simply been setting up her new office in another division—one with far better perks, from the sound of it. Maybe he should think of getting into the family racket himself.
“Michel?” he heard his mother call from downstairs. “Depêche-toi! Nous sommes prêtes!”
Get into the family racket . . . with Nora?
As he went downstairs, he saw the glowing candles on the birthday cake before he even realized it was for him. “We wanted to celebrate your birthday with you,” his mother said, taking his hand and leading him to his seat at the head of the table, where she placed a little cone hat on his head, “Because we have missed it these last few years. Jonas is responsible for the hats,” she added quickly.
Vaughn looked at the candles on the cake. . . . They were adding up very quickly. Was his mother trying to send him a hidden message? Was she trying to tell him that time passed quickly—and that he should grab whatever wonderful things came his way as tightly as she had her entire life?
And as tightly as Steve and his father had?
“Life takes enough away from you,” he remembered her answering when he’d asked her, after his father died, why they had to move to California. “I’ve always wanted to live there, and now we shall, while we still have the chance.”
As if she’d read his mind, his mother leaned over to stroke his hair, then began to speak quietly while Jonas fiddled with his camera in the corner. “Your father and I were very happy,” she said. “Now I have found Jonas, and my life would be complete if only I knew that you had found someone who could make you happy too.”
He swallowed, suddenly feeling ridiculous in his child’s hat. He snatched it off his head, hoping Jonas hadn’t already captured the moment. “I may have, Maman,” he said. “But I don’t know if she’s even interested anymore.”
Now his mother smiled fully, her Gallic sense of romance lending a dip to her lower lip. “Well, you will not ever know if you do not go and ask her, will you?” she asked.
Vaughn leaned over and blew out the candles just as Jonas, who had finally figured out his camera, momentarily blinded him with its flash. He figured that the blindness, for now, was symbolic of his mental state.
“I wished that you two would have the happiest marriage I know,” Vaughn said, leaning over to plant a kiss on his mother’s cheek. “But can we start with the pot-au-feu? I’m so hungry I could eat this whole cake myself.”
The trip to New York to see Nora was easier to arrange than Vaughn had thought it would be. He kept expecting crises to get in the way: Nora’s e-mail would have changed, she wouldn’t answer her phone, she would refuse to see him even if she did answer the phone. But when he reached her at home on his first try, she sounded thrilled to hear his voice, arranging to meet with him that Saturday afternoon at Augie’s, a small jazz bar on the Upper West Side near where she lived.
Vaughn arrived early, with a huge bouquet of peonies—her favorite—in his hand. Even as he walked up Broadway, his heart was racing—he wouldn’t be surpri
sed if she didn’t show up after all.
Well, what do you expect, Vaughn? he asked himself. You dump her and tell her you’re leaving the country, then you’re AWOL for practically two years, and suddenly you show up to ask her if she wants to consider getting back together . . . and maybe eventually marry you? You’ve got to admit, for a guy who usually dots his i’s and crosses his t’s with a ruler, you’re not coming off as a very stable prospect right now.
Yeah, but she stayed out of touch too, his other side argued back. You didn’t dump her—you both knew you had to figure out your careers before you could embark on anything serious. Now she’s set, you’re set, and there’s nothing holding you back from each other.
That’s if she’s still interested in you at all, his other side replied. But I guess that’s what you came here to find out.
You better believe it, Vaughn told himself, shutting off the voices in his head and pushing open the door to Augie’s. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, and then he saw Nora, seated at a table in a far corner by the window.
She had not changed so much with the years as she had deepened. Her hair was a warmer chestnut, her eyes even darker. Even her voice sounded throaty as she rose to greet him. “Hello, Vaughn,” she said, the dimples standing out in her cheeks as she smiled. Vaughn caught the familiar scent of her perfume over the smell of old cigarettes and whiskey from the bar.
He was reaching across the table to hand her the bunch of peonies he’d gotten her when he suddenly stopped and blushed. Nora, he saw, had changed in another way too—a big way.
She was pregnant.
Nora laughed and took the flowers, leaning across to plant a slightly awkward kiss on each cheek—the one “Frenchified” custom she’d never allowed when they were going out. “These are beautiful,” she said, smiling at Vaughn’s expression, which he was sure still radiated pure shock. “I’m not as far along as I look, honest—I’m only five months. It’s just that I’ve gotten really fat!”
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