"There's nothing wrong up there." I said, pointing to her head, knowing fully well how tired she was. She looked at me, my finger pointing towards her head."Trust me, Cammie, everything's gonna be fine." With a sense of remembering, and almost absent-mindedly, I touched a now-faded scar on my temple, indicating that I understood. "I know a little something about these things." Reading the fact that I was (a fact that made me struggle not to blush deeply) her favorite teacher, and that she was fighting the option of potentially letting me down, she simply said "I know." At that moment, I knew she never would know. Not 100% know who I was. Not even Dave did, and I'm pretty sure he was the one man who saw right through my training, saw through ever mask, and every façade. I knew then, she didn't know. And I would never be disappointed, because…
How can you tell a girl whose been through hell and back, what I've done, what her father has done? Cammie went outside to stand next to Macey McHenry. I watched them through the window, and caught the helicopter, the one that now knew where my… home was, for lack of a better term. Rachel came into the room, her cell phone in her pocket. She watched the girls out of the window like I did, quiet.
"You called her Cammie." In the major risk of sounding either clichéd or pointing out the obvious…it wasn't a question. It was a curious statement. "You usually refer to her as 'Ms. Morgan.'" Rachel turned to me. "Why, Joe?"
"Because." I said, looking at the wife of my best friend. "I've seen a lot, and I've heard a lot. But if there's one thing I picked up, knowing you for as long as I have, that a girl sometimes needs to know others are not going to buy into their cover, buy into her mask. She needs…"
"A father." Rachel whispered.
"I don't want to be that to her, Rache." I replied.
"But she needs something. And, let's face it; you've always had a soft spot of Cammie." I blushed slightly.
"Well, when she dubs you 'Uncle Joey' at age two and forgets who you are fourteen years down the road?" I turned to the one person who had ever seen more of me than the world did (aside from Dave, of course.) "Of course you want to be close. Remember, I disappeared for a while. Remember? Look what happened, Rachel." I said. "He's gone…" Rachel pulled me into a hug. Normally, knowing Cammie was fifty feet away, I would have protested. But sometimes, a man needs to let down his cover too.
The next morning, knowing there was a student of mine in the neighboring room, I made sure to shower, dress, and be presentable before sitting down to breakfast. As much as she had seen, and as much as her friends would have liked to hear all about it (a rather embarrassing conversation to pretend you hadn't overheard) I was not about to walk around with my hair looking like it had been blown by a tornado, and wearing only my boxers. While, yes, I worked out to keep my strength and such up, I never wanted people to see the countless scars that ran down my back. It was too much of a reminder, too much of a broken past. Nothing a sixteen year old girl needed to see, after being attacked yesterday. Rachel sat down, still in some flannel pajamas (in late August?) and her hair unbrushed. Cammie, who had seen better days, sat down, dressed in old, warm pajamas and her hair still messy. Although, I couldn't honestly care, I noticed she wasn't trying to fix it, like she normally did. She barely touched her toast. Rachel and I shared a glance, filled with worry and concern, before Cammie looked me in the eye, and said "Is it normal not to want food after a traumatic incident?"
"You tell me, Ms. Morgan." I replied quietly, not exactly perfect at being soft and gentle. That was Dave's expertise, the big softie.
The contemplative look in her eyes, her face, made my throat sting, and I bit back the tears from so much as forming in my eyes. She looked up.
"Well, I'd imagine it would." She said. "I mean, it's not exactly like life goes on after stabbing a guy with a pin, and falling down a laundry chute."
"No, it's not." I said. Rachel smiled sadly, that Cammie had to witness it. She was so very vulnerable at times…
Cammie shoved her plate away, and got up. She came back in two and a half minutes, dressed, showered, and clutching a book. I sat on the couch across from her, pulled out a pair of reading glasses, and opened up a novel, something I didn't do often. Rachel was making a phone call. Cammie looked at me.
"Mr. Solomon?" I looked up, and cocked an eyebrow at her. "Er… I was wondering…" I smiled, egging her to go on. "What exactly is this place?" Something inside me knew, then, she wasn't looking for a deep, hidden meaning behind my ways. She wasn't looking for my past, my broken world of torture and pain. She was… (I almost had to grin) noticing things. "I mean, there's fishing poles, and… cat food?" I laughed slightly.
"Have you not yet figured me out, Ms. Morgan?" She rolled her eyes, and a vision of her twenty-odd year old mother flashed across my memory, doing the same thing in my direction. "I take that as a no. Good." She sat up, and something told me she knew this conversation was totally classified between the two of us. I hoped she knew better than me letting her into every nook and cranny of my nightmare-like life. "See, you're looking at the home of a man, who just may enjoy fishing." She looked surprised. I removed my horn-rimmed glasses. "And, I have been known to house a cat once in a while." Cammie looked over to the lake.
"You swim, Mr. Solomon?" I nodded.
"Of course, Cammie. Why would I buy lakefront property if I didn't like to swim?" She gave me her "because-you're-a-spy-and-there-is-so-much-more-you-can-do-with-this-place" look. Well, at least I was pretty positive about the message behind her look. I drank deeply from my glass of water.
"Have you ever strangled someone with a pair of pantyhose?" I spit my water out, in a fashion that only television shows can pull off (and, if you've seen some of the crap they put on the Disney channel now, they aren't very good at it at times).
"Excuse me?" I asked. She hadn't come farther from the truth. I had once strangled somebody…but I don't remember any female undergarments being involved. "Ms. Morgan, where in the world would I get such a clothing article?" I was a bit too embarrassed to say the actual name, although hanging around with Abby Cameron and Rachel Morgan; you'd think I was immune to that kind of stuff. She blushed, and suddenly, I didn't really want to know her answer to that. "Let me ask you this… where did you hear such a ludicrous statement?" She rolled her eyes.
"Tina Walters." My turn to roll my eyes, but I bit back the really strong temptation.
"Tina Walters says a lot of things, Cammie. Tina Walters is usually wrong." I said, mimicking half of the ladies in Cammie's class. She laughed.
"So, you overhear a few conversations." One tends to, in one of the tallest towers of the school building, hiding in the deepest of the shadows, listening in at mealtimes…
"Yes, and let me set a few more rumors straight for you, Ms. Morgan." She gulped. "No, I have no girlfriend. No, I haven't killed anyone with a chainsaw and a bowler hat, and no, I don't hail from Arkansas." She blushed slightly.
"What else did you here?"
"Everything." I said, embellishing the point. "Remember, Ms. Morgan." I said, looking her dead in the eye. "Noticing things means hearing them too." She nodded.
"So, you mean the part where you dressed as a woman and tried to kill off Adolf Hitler's men is totally true then?" I felt my jaw go slightly slack and turning red. Before I could protest, she giggled and said "Kidding!" I laughed.
"Good." Something flickered across her face, something akin to realization. Before I could question it, Rachel walked in the room and winked at me. Somehow, she had heard our conversation.
"So, double- o- hottie." Cammie looked mortified. I turned dark red in an instant. The look on the youngest Morgan's face told me that she had realized the names the students, awkwardly enough, referred to me as.
"Rachel!" I said.
"Wait, so you overhear everything too?" Cammie asked. Rachel, laughing, nodded. Cammie groaned and curled up into her own lap. I wanted the couch to become suddenly animate, develop a taste for a certain Joe Solomon, and swallow me alive. Because at that point, I had never been so embarrassed in my life. Then again, isn't that what parents are for, to embarrass your children for fun, because they love you? Don't ask me, I wouldn't know…
"That's all right Mom. School will never cease to amaze me." She had gotten over her embarrassment, most likely after seeing how bad mine was.
"How so?" I asked, before Rachel could. Cammie looked at me, grinning.
"Remember the very first practical for CoveOps?" I nodded slowly. "Mr. M stopped me in the halls…and needed me to verify that he'd been having fun." I chuckled.
"Oh, Harvey. For the genius that man is, he sure can be a bit naive at times." Rachel said, adoringly. "It's his nativity of mind that reminds you people out there can still be pure, and innocent, and somehow works in our field." Cammie nodded, and muttered "Liz" quietly, I wasn't entirely sure she had said it, even now, when I think back on it.
"Liz is kind of like that." Cammie spoke softly. I nodded.
"You'll find that Ms. Sutton, having grown up in a sheltered home, has that little bit of faith that this are going to be okay." I said. "It's refreshing; especially to find one that's… accident prone." Cammie nodded. "Which, she seems to have understood herself, seeing as she took the research track instead of CoveOps."
"But even desk agents are needed in a covert operation." I said.
"That's why Gallagher requires a semester of it, Ms. Morgan." I replied. "You still need the skills. That's also why she's been included in some of our pop quizzes." She nodded. Rachel sat down next to me, curling her feet underneath her, and clutching the throw pillow nestled in the corner of the couch. I watched her for a moment, curious. Cammie looked bored. I was tired of reading about very cheesy spies who didn't know how to spy for the life of them, so I closed my book, and went into the room with the Queen sized bed, and two suitcases. Despite the fact that Cammie might be weirded out, and the fact that she was in the neighboring room, Rachel and I had kept her in a safe, warm bed so she could heal. I offered Rachel the other bed. She made me share it, instead. Which, I could care less, because I really couldn't sleep anymore. But it made Rachel feel a bit safer, so I went with it. I found a swimsuit, a towel, and my goggles. I changed, pulled my t-shirt on over the swim trunks, and went into the cool breeze. I pulled the shirt over my head, and delved into the water, where it felt cold, then warm. I came up, my head breaking the surface. Cammie sat on the dock.
"Where's your mother?"
"Sleeping off a migraine." She jumped in, wearing a pair of basketball shorts and an old t-shirt. I plugged my nose and went under. She copied me, accept the fact that I was a ways away, and the water was dark, because of the lack of sunlight. She couldn't see me. I was farther now. I was hoping she'd stay, so I could swim and think. But, she followed, although gratefully, she kept her distance. After a while, I stopped to let her catch up. She didn't. Instead, she floated on her back, enjoying herself. I watched her silently, and looked up towards the sky like I had done every single day for years.
"I'll take care of her, Dave. I swear by my left shoe." I whispered. One of our inside jokes, one of so many, I couldn't remember where it began. "I'll make sure Rachel stays safe, too, man." A patch of sunlight broke through, shining right on Cammie's slender form. Tears welling up in my eyes, I smiled and whispered. "You're welcome, my friend."
It was a long time before I could stop the falling tears.