Hope sat on the park bench watching her children play. She brought them to the same park every afternoon while her husband was at work. She had been bringing them here for years. This wasn't the first time she had seen the man in the distance watching her. He showed up around the same time every year and stayed for a few days, but never said anything to her. She knew who he was, but she was waiting for him to make the first move.
"Mama, the man over the gave me a lolipop!" Jason pointed in the direction where the man had been sitting, where he had sat every day for the last week, but he was gone.
"That's nice, let's go grab your sister and get home so we can fix dinner for daddy."
"He came up to Jason today." The look on her husbands face could have killed. She had known this man since she was thirteen, the things they had been through together since they were eighteen would have shocked their friends. The things they found out about their parents had shocked them.
Her children had a grandmother, something she and her brother Michael had never had. There parents were raised in an orphange and met in a college class their first day at Ohio State University. Or so they had thought until that fateful day in 1986.
Washington, DC
1986
Paige knew something was up. She just didn't know what it was. She had always known something was weird with her parents. They ran hot and cold with each other in a way her other friends parents didn't. Even Matthews parents were always just *cold*, frigid even. They hadn't been that way when they first moved across the street, but they got that way over time.
They weren't allowed in the basement. The one time she touched the fuse box, her dad caught her, and had raised his hand to slap her until he caught himself. "Don't touch that," he said after he had calmed himself down. Paige thought he was going to cry, she never went into the basement again.
It had started a week earlier, she had came home from graduation practice early and her mom and dad were at the kitchen table. Her dad's hand was wrapped in a bandage and he was applying make up to her mom's face like he was trying to cover a bruise. They had gone out late that night and didn't return until after lunch the next day. Carla had been babysitting them since she was in high school, and she was due to start an internship the next week.
I hope they can find a sitter who is as flexible as I am with these hours." She had joked. Maybe Carla knew more than she was telling.
Things only got tenser as the week went on. It came to a head the night of her graduation. At least the ceremony went off smoothly.
She got home from a friends party after 5 am. Her dad was waiting up for her. She assumed she was going to be in trouble for being out way too late. Her dad just went up to her and gave her a hug.
"Go to your room, get together anything you can not live with out and enough clothes for a week. Wake Henry up and tell him the same."
She went upstairs like she was told, while she was up there she heard screaming downstairs and went down to investigate. She rounded the curve in the stairs and saw her dad and Mr. Beeman pointing guns at one another. She didn't even think her dad had ever held a gun, but he sure looked like he knew what he was doing, holding the gun steady to Mr. Beemans head.
"Go get Henry!" her dad yelled.
"No, go get Matthew first, then your brother.
"
She looked from one man to another, trying to listen to her father but not understanding any of this.
"Go across the street. Maybe together you can explain this Henry one day." Her dad said.
When is someone going to explain to me, she thought as she crossed the street, barefoot at 5 am and being kicked out of her house, or so it seemed.
Mrs. Beeman was waiting for her when she got to their door.
"What's going on?" She asked her. "We don't know either honey, we just have our instructions.
"
Wordlessly, Matthew grabbed the duffel at his feet and walked with her across the street back to her own house. The scene was still the same, her dad and Mr. Beeman holding guns to one another.
"Where is mom?" She asked. She was getting enough a feeling about this to take the silence as not a good answer.
"Paige, get your brother and the three of you get the hell out of here!
"
"Philip, does she even know how... to disappear.
"
"No," her dad shook his head. She could sense the disappointment in his voice. "We always assumed that one of us would be able to go with them. That it wouldn't end this way.
"
"What, you just thought you could walk away?" Mr. Beeman asked, shocked.
Kids, listen to me very carefully. Take my car, drive the speed limit, don't draw attention to yourselves. Take turns driving and don't stop for the night. Ditch the car in Philly and pick up another one.
Matthew finally spoke, 'from where.'
"Paige, do you remember when I taught you to hot wire a car?" Of course she did, at fifteeen she thought it was the coolest thing ever. "Ditch the car in the parking garage of a high rise office building. Pick the nicest car with the doors locked. The owners will have the insurance coverage to cover theft."
When her dad stopped talking, Mr. Beeman picked up without missing a beat. "Do the same thing in Cleveland and Indianapolis, and every 200 miles after that. Always pick big cities. Settle down where ever you want. Change your names, get jobs. In the fall enroll Henry in school. Stay off the radar.
"What about IDs?" She asked. Her dad looked over at Mr. Beeman, who nodded his head. He put the gun on the table and reached into the duffel.
"Here, new identities for you and your brother. I don't have one for Matthew."
"don't worry about that yet, son."
Paige tried to control the tears, but it wasn't working. "Will one you just tell us what is going on! Where is my mom!
"
You will know soon enough, her dad said.
She finally reached over for the duffel her dad had, she looked inside. "How much money is this," she asked.
A million dollars, her dad answered. Don't spend it all at once, don't deposit it all at once that will draw attention to you. Don't pay rent in cash, use it for gas and food and other stuff.
"Philip we are running out of time, they have to get out of here now.
"
When her dad nodded his head in agreement, she went to get Henry. They were out the door in fifteen minutes.
That was the last time she had ever spoken to her dad.
The next morning, they were getting gas in Ohio and she saw the front page of the USA Today. The front page of the Washington Post at the library had the same story. The local newspaper had the same story too.
KGB spies living undercover in America for 21 years had been busted. The FBI agent accused of aiding their escape, was implicated in giving them information for years, had been arrested. The three faces staring out at her where her mom, dad, and Mr. Beeman.
They settled in Chicago and took all the advice they had been given, she and Henry had changed their names to the Americanized versions of their parents birth names. Over the next few months all the news could talk about was how the two best undercover agents the KGB had in America had escaped custody and were on the run. The only person left untouched by the story was Mrs. Beeman, the poor FBI agents wife who didn't know anything. Her son had went to stay with her parents in Missouri, the press said. No, she had know idea her travel agent neighbors were KGB spies, she had told investigators. They had believed her because they knew Stan was a master manipulator when he wanted to be.
A month after they settled in Chicago, Mrs. Beeman arrived, with false identities for her and Matthew. "How?" Paige asked.
"Your father gave us a code for Matthew to send letting me know where you were. I saw it in the classifieds and followed it here to you."
Are my parents still alive?
As far as I know. Part of the deal your parents made with Stan was that you kids would have a chance to escape first
"But why did dad stay behind and take the fall for it? Be indicted for espionage and treason? Why?" Matthew asked.
"Because he is guilty. Not of giving information to your parents,"she looked at Paige. "but the woman he had an affair with for 5 years. He saw it as his way out."
"Why couldn't we go with our parents," Henry asked.
"It was easier to hide this way better chance for you to stay safe."
Paige and Matthew, well Hope and Noah, got married six months later. They loved each anyway, but this way they wouldn't have to worry about someone else finding out their secret. Henry lived with them until he went to college, his mom lived three houses down. They were a normal family. When she looked back at her childhood, Paige could see all the signs something was different about her family. But they were still her parents.
Chicago
1996
The next day, Hope saw two people sitting side by side in the distance. A man and a woman. They didn't approach her that day, but she felt they would soon.
She looked at her children, 8 year old Jason and 6 year old Jennifer and wondered how her parents could have lied to her and Henry for so long. The more she had learned about her parents "true lives" over the past 10 years the more confused she had become. She had accepted a long time ago she was never going to see her parents again. She wasn't even sure they were still alive.
It was two days later before she finally took matters into her own hand. As the kids were playing with their other friends at the park, she approached the couple in the distance. They were holding hands and smiling at one another as she got closer. She had never seen them hold hands as a child.
They didn't look all that different either, her dad had gray hair, her mom had colored her hair. Their faces showed signs their age, after all they were 10 years older, both closing in on 55.
"Hi," she said simply, calmly, even though she was anything but. The smiles on her parents faces were worth it. "Do you want to meet my children?"
I'd like that very much, her mom answered. "But what will you tell them?"
"That you are Philip and Elizabeth Jennings, people I had known when I was a child."