Amanda sat in her car in the driveway for a few minutes after getting home. She knew it had been a good idea not to go to Williamsburg – she would never have been able to continue to hide this heart-wrenching grief from her mother, not when it was so fresh. After the service, the three of them had gone to Ned's for what Francine had dubbed the Wake-Up Call – a kind of private pre-wake for just them. The owner, another of Lee's friends, had looked the other way as they'd nursed their drinks most of the afternoon and traded stories, Francine providing most of them since she'd been friends with him the longest. The laughter from hearing those stories had held the pain at bay for a few hours until at last they'd lapsed into one of those silences and it had rolled through her again.
"I should get home," she'd said, standing up abruptly.
"Will you be okay?" Efraim had asked, his concern written all over his face.
"I'll be fine," she nodded. "I just need to be alone and get used to this."
"If you need anything, anything at all, you call me," ordered Francine.
"I will, I promise. And like Billy said, tomorrow will be better, right?"
"Right," Francine said firmly. "One day at a time." She turned to Efraim. "We should go too – I want to check in at work and make sure no one else… that nothing else has happened today."
In that instant, Amanda really understood what it meant to be an agent – to accept that death was an expected part of your day. That you could lose a friend one day and fully expect to lose another the next. She choked back a sob and turned to the exit.
Now it was getting dark and she knew she should go inside but she felt paralyzed. Inside was home, comfort and familiarity, but right now she didn't want any of that. She wanted to yell and scream and rail at the unfairness of it all – that Lee, a man whose life was devoted to the protection of others had died in a mindless act of violence in a dark alley, alone, just as he'd always feared.
What had Lee said that day at the Jefferson Memorial?
"If I'd died, there would have been a little ceremony and a star on the memorial wall of the Agency and after a few days, a week maybe, people would have forgotten all about me."
"They won't forget you, Lee," she whispered, voice cracking. "I won't forget you."
She finally found the energy to drag herself from the car and head for the back door. Part of her mind absently noticed that the kitchen light was already on and assumed her mother had forgotten to turn it off before she left that day, but when she gripped the door handle to insert her key and it opened under her hand, she caught her breath.
Her mother might be scattered about many things, but she was a demon about making sure doors were locked when she left the house. Amanda pushed the door open and stuck her head in. Hearing nothing, she stepped inside quietly and let her eyes sweep the room. There was something in the air, something that reminded her of Lee, something that was almost comforting… and for a moment she relaxed. But as she stepped further in, something wasn't right and she paused, scanning the family room trying to figure out what was… off.
As she turned in place to look into the kitchen, her blood froze and she lifted a hand to quickly muffle the scream that was rising in her chest. There on the counter, displayed in one of her vases, was a bouquet of flowers. But not just any bouquet – no, she recognized this one immediately as the bouquet she had left at Lee's grave just a few hours before, and beside it, the bottle of champagne she'd watched Francine balance carefully on his casket.
She stared at the display mutely, trying to understand how it was even possible. Who would have brought them? And why here? She took a tentative step forward and ran her fingers along the petal edges, trying to confirm she wasn't imagining them, wasn't dredging them up from some deep-seated longing for a renewed connection to Lee.
Then, as she stood there, she heard it. Upstairs, someone was moving around. Heavy steps that couldn't possibly be her mother or one of the boys back from their trip for some reason. No, there was someone in her house, someone who had brought the flowers, someone who could only have one reason to be here. She stared at the phone for a beat, wondering if she could call for help, but then the sound of a muffled curse upstairs helped her make up her mind.
Holding her breath and trying to be quiet, Amanda backed up slowly, until she was outside again. She pulled the back door closed silently, then whirled and ran, scrambling into her car and reversing out of the driveway at high speed.
"If you need anything, anything at all, you call me."
The Agency, she thought. The Agency and Francine would keep her safe.
Inside, Lee padded down the stairs into the family room and looked around. He'd soaked through the bandage on his shoulder injury and had been upstairs looking for something new to cover it. He'd sworn mildly from the pain when he's had to pull off the medical tape, and then he'd realized he was going to need help applying a new one. He was holding the gauze he'd found in the bathroom cupboard in place as he looked around in confusion. He was certain he'd heard something but there was no sign of anyone.
"Amanda?" he called out uncertainly. No one answered.