Two hours after sitting down with Billy and Francine to discuss the biggest operation of her life, Amanda led them out the front door. For the first time in weeks, Amanda voluntarily reached out to her friends, placing a warm hand on the arm of each. "Sir, Francine, I just want to say... well... thank you. I've been a bit difficult lately and I appreciate your... well... your everything."
Francine looked down at the hand on her arm and wondered if it was safe to respond. She could see that Amanda was trying. The look on Amanda's face clearly showed how much effort it cost her to extend this gesture. She hesitated for mere seconds and lost the chance to respond as Amanda was already withdrawing into the house, calling as she went, "I'll meet you at the office as soon as Mother gets home to be with the boys."
Billy and Francine found themselves staring at the front door of the house and they exchanged looks of newfound hope. Billy voiced what they were each thinking. "Well, it wasn't much, but it was a start."
"Let's just hope that we can find Lee. If he is alive, she may just have enough reason to come back to us. If not, we may lose her forever." She inclined her head toward the home, then followed Billy down the steps and out to the street.
Inside the house, Amanda cleared up the coffee cups and straightened the dining room table from their impromptu strategy session. Not surprisingly, Billy had immediately given his total support to an effort to rescue Lee, if he was alive. Not only that, but he had encouraged Francine to assist her and offered agency resources however they were needed. Now as she thought it over, she was again grateful that Billy was so openly helpful. He had always gone out on long limbs for them, just as they would have for him.
Together the three of them had decided to try asking around some of Lee's old 'family'. Amanda felt that some of them would be willing to speak to her. In fact, she knew that at least three would be more than willing. She had been in contact with T.P Aquinas, Rhonda, and Augie Swan in the last month. They had sought her out, with information regarding current case files. When she'd asked them why they were willing to deal with her, they had all responded alike. Lee had trusted her and so would they.
She could recall the first contact with Lee's family after his death. Rhonda, the mechanic, had called her to the station that she worked at and given her information about strange activity in and around the Russian Embassy, heard of course, from the drivers of limos used by the occupants of the Embassy. Not that those drivers were loose lipped, exactly. They simply didn't expect an American car mechanic to speak and understand fluent Russian.
Two days later, Amanda and Francine had busted wide open the underground intelligence circle that had infiltrated the US via the Russia Embassy. Once it was all wrapped up, Amanda had sent Rhonda one of Lee's favorite bottles of champagne as a thank you, anonymously of course. Soon she had received calls from two more of Lee's family and discovered that she and Francine, with the 'family' behind them made a pretty good team.
The slamming of the back door and her mother's voice calling ended Amanda's reverie. "Amanda! Darling, what are you doing home? Are you okay? Did you have another accident? Have you seen a doctor? Should we go to the Emergency Room?"
Amanda shook her head and began to answer, "Yes, Mother, I'm home. I'm okay. No accident and I don't need a doctor or the ER."
She came around the kitchen corner and face to face with her mother. The look of worry rapidly being replaced by relief made Amanda realize that she had given her mother a lot of grief and worry in the last few weeks. Unfortunately, there was a very real possibility that she would have to add to that before this was all over.
"Mother, can we talk?" Amanda led her mother by the hand and sat her down on the couch in the living room. She took a deep breath and sat next to Dotty.
Dotty sat on the couch and watched as her daughter sat beside her, obviously working up the courage to say something. She knew in her heart that her daughter was struggling with some great burden. She had been struggling with this burden ever since Lee's fatal car wreck. She could still remember the phone call she had received from a very distraught Amanda on that night nearly eight weeks ago. The tears in her voice had immediately told Dotty that there was something terribly wrong.
"Mother, please stay calm. I need to tell you something." Amanda had breathed into the phone receiver.
"Oh my Lord, there is something wrong, isn't there? What is it? Tell me, right now, Amanda King!" Dotty's voice was strident with concern. She clutched the receiver and felt for the counter to brace herself for the news.
"Mother, there's been an accident. A car wreck. I'm okay, just sore and bruised..." Amanda's voice faltered and she drew air in sharply.
"Where are you? I'll come get you. I'll call a cab."
"No, Mother. I have to stay here for a while."
Dotty, assuming that she was with Lee stated, "Okay, then I guess Lee will bring you home later?"
"No, oh God no...Mother, Lee is...he was in the car too. He's..." Her voice trailed off into near silent sobs.
"Amanda, what? Is Lee hurt? Darling, talk to me. You're scaring me." Dotty sat down hard on the chair near by. Something was terribly wrong.
"Mother, Lee is dead." Dotty heard the whispered answer but didn't process it until she heard the click indicating that Amanda had severed the connection and hung up the phone.
"Amanda? Amanda? Where are you?" Dotty demanded of the now useless phone.
Dotty heard her daughter's voice pulling her back to the present. She focused on the here and now and asked hesitantly, "Amanda, is something wrong?"
"Not exactly. I want to tell you that I'm very sorry for the last several weeks. I've not been myself and I know that you and the boys have been confused. I don't know if I can ever really explain it to you, but I want to try."
"Amanda, darling, there isn't anything to explain. I mean, you suffered a terrible loss. Lee was very close to you. We didn't expect you to just bounce back."
Amanda took her mother's hands in her own and looked her in the eye. Now was the time for some real talk, for some truths to come out. So that when it was over, they could be what they were going to need to be, a family.
"Yes, Mother, Lee was very close to me. And when I thought he died, I just wanted to die myself. I think in some ways I did die. At least a part of me did. I know that Phillip and Jamie needed me. They were close to Lee, too. I know that they miss him."
Dotty drew one hand out of her grasp and patted her check affectionately. "We all miss him. I mean we were used to him being here and he so obviously made you happy. It hurt us to see you hurt."
"I know. And I shut you out when I should have pulled you in. I just couldn't absorb all that pain. My own was too huge." Her eyes were bright with tears she wouldn't allow herself to shed.
"Amanda, I've known for several weeks, ever since you came home from your trip, that you were struggling with something, something more than Lee's death. Are you ready to tell me about it?" Dotty held her breath. She knew quite well how grief could affect a person. When her husband, Frank, had died, she had become rather distant and had it not been for her sister Lillian, she probably would have withdrawn completely. She had thought of forcing Amanda to talk this through, but she hadn't. She now prayed that her only child was ready to lean on her now.
"I think maybe I am." Amanda stood and walked to the window. She crossed her arms over her middle as if to shield herself from the onslaught to her senses that she now had to face. She had shut these thoughts and feelings off for weeks. Now she had to not only face them, but talk about them. She had to try to explain them to the one person she should have trusted all along.
"Mother, I am the reason that Lee is dead." She stated it flatly, bluntly. The words hung there as if frozen in time and space. She turned to look at Dotty but instead she saw that scene replaying in her mind.
She saw Lee being held in place by the assassin. She saw the gun in her hand, trained on the target. She saw her finger curl around the trigger. Then she saw herself freeze as she focused on Lee's face, right next to Forrester's. She froze and Lee was pulled into the building. She called for back-up then advanced on the building. Before she took ten steps, the place blew and she fell to the ground from the force of the blast. She felt the blast all over again, wincing as she recalled the impact.
Dotty, silent, not sure of what to say, sat back on the couch and stared at her offspring. She had made her statement, then zoned out. Amanda stared at her but she was sure she wasn't seeing her. This was a look she had come to know well in the last few weeks. She did the only thing she could think of. She stood, crossed to stand before Amanda and shook her hard. "Amanda, that is the stupidest thing I ever heard. How could you be responsible?"
Amanda, jerked out of the past, tried to reconcile what she saw in her mind with what she needed to tell her mother now. She knew it was time for some truths, but how much could her mother handle. Billy had already given her permission to tell Dotty as little or as much as she needed to.
"Mother, I am responsible. He was...I was his back-up. I should have been able to save him, but I couldn't and he died...oh Mother..." Amanda's voice rose and cracked then she collapsed into the arms that still held hers and began to sob. Deep, wracking sobs that caused her slim form to shake uncontrollably, overtook her and she soon needed more support than her mother's slender frame could provide.
Dotty felt her daughter's knees buckle and eased down onto the floor with her. She kneeled next to Amanda and rocked her in her arms. She could hear Amanda continuing to talk, but the words were unintelligible. She didn't have to know what she was saying to understand what she needed. She needed to cry, long and hard. She needed this release, both emotional and physical. For what seemed like hours they remained on the floor, Dotty holding her only child in her arms as if she were a newborn baby. Eventually Amanda calmed and began to speak again.
"Mother, I really... need to tell you some things... and they aren't going to be easy to hear, but I need you... to hear them, please." Her voice still was quivery, still broken by occasional small sobs. She drew in a deep breath and stood, assisting her mother to stand with her. Dotty looked at her warily before accompanying her to sit on the couch.
"Amanda, does this have anything to do with why you said you were responsible for Lee's death? Because if it does, I'm not sure that I can sit here and listen to talk like that. It's just the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard." Dotty grasped Amanda's hands in her own and squeezed to emphasize her words. She was slightly shocked by the coldness of the hands she held. She grew concerned when she saw the distant, removed look come over Amanda's face once again. "Amanda, I'm sorry, just tell me what is going on, please."
The younger woman began to speak, her words almost mechanical at first, then more life-like as she recalled that this was her mother and that she deserved to know the truth, the whole truth. "Lee wasn't killed in a car wreck, Mother. Lee was trapped in a fire, in a burning building that exploded after he was taken in. I couldn't stop them from taking him in and he was forced inside, and we believed him to have been trapped in there when it blew."
"Amanda, I don't understand...who took him into the building and how on earth were you supposed to have stopped them?"
"I should have stopped them because I was his partner, his back-up. I had a gun and I should have used it."
"Now Amanda, no one expected you to know how to defend yourself with a gun. Why did you even have a gun? Dotty was shaking her head in exasperation. Had her daughter finally had the breakdown she had feared was coming?
"Mother, pay very close attention. This is going to be very difficult for you to accept. Lee and I are not film producers, we don't work for a film company and he wasn't my boss." She watched Dotty's face for signs of understanding. All she saw was denial and confusion. "We worked for the government. Lee was an intelligence agent and he recruited me and well... now I'm an agent too. We've been working together for nearly five years."
"Amanda, are you telling me that you and Lee were spies? That Lee Stetson was a spy and that he recruited you, a housewife with two children, to work with him in the spy business? I was wrong before. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! Why are you telling me these lies? Why can't you just tell me what is going on in your life?" Dotty, distraught by what she saw as a set back in the conversation, stood and began to pace, with her arms tightly hugging her middle, her face downcast.
Amanda saw that she was not going to be believed so she went to the phone, dialed a very familiar number and asked to speak to Mr. Melrose.
Dotty heard the name and leapt up to ask, "Why are you asking for that horrible little man? I don't want to talk to him. What does he have to do with anything?"
Amanda covered the mouthpiece and told her, "Because he is my boss. He put Lee and I together and I think you need to hear it from him." She turned her attention back to the phone. "Mr. Melrose? It's Amanda. I think I need you to explain to my Mother. She's having a little difficulty understanding. Yes, she's right here." She handed the receiver to her bewildered mother and stood back.
Dotty glared at her daughter. She never had gotten over the intense dislike she had developed for William Melrose during that whole security mix-up a few years back. "Hello, this is Dorothea West."
Amanda watched as she knew what Billy was saying penetrated the shocked fog surrounding her mother. Several moments later Dotty hung up the phone and faced her daughter with a strange expression on her face. "He said that you were telling me the truth and that he had paperwork to prove it. That if I wanted to see him or talk to him, that you knew how to find him."
"So do you believe me now?" Amanda wasn't sure whether she wanted to hear, yes she believed or no, she didn't. Either way, she had a lot of explaining to do.
An hour later, the two women sat once again on the couch, each nursing a cup of hot tea. Dotty finally believed her after hearing the whole story, starting with the train station, twice over. There had been many questions, lots of hugs and an equal amount of tears shed over the rehashing of the last five years. Amanda felt freer and more relaxed than she had in weeks. She'd never realized what she had missed by not being able to share so many of the small everyday things with her mother.
Dotty now knew all that she was free to tell her of her job and the agency. And with any luck, soon Amanda would be able to bring her son-in-law home to be properly introduced. For when, not if, she refused to think of if, she brought Lee home, she would be doing just that, bringing him home. No more secrets, no more lies, no more long, lonely nights for either of them.
Dotty held her hand and her eye and asked one final question. "Darling, I understand why you kept this from us. You wanted to protect us. What I don't understand is why you are telling me now. Are you still in the spy business? Did you get a new partner? Oh Amanda don't tell me that you are out there alone...I couldn't stand it."
"Well, Mother, I am still in the 'spy business' and I wish you wouldn't call it that. I do have another partner, for now. Mother, I...we... have reason to believe that Lee may be alive. And if he is, I'm going to get him." Her voice hardened and her back straightened as she uttered this last sentence. She became the cool agent right before her Mother's eyes.
For once Dotty didn't argue. She didn't quite know what to say.
TBC
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.