"Wait a minute," Lee interrupted. "You're saying that your mother knows Doctor Smyth?"
Amanda looked at him strangely for a minute. Then, she laughed. Lee shivered when he heard the note of hysteria. "You could say that, Lee. She knows him. Very well, I would think. So does Aunt Katherine."
"How?" Lee shook his head. Dotty knowing Doctor Smyth was unbelievable. Who would have thought a suburban housewife would have ties to the Agency? He looked over at his wife and partner, a former suburban housewife, and decided to hear the rest of the story. "He was your father's best man? That doesn't sound like the Doctor Smyth you and I know and, uh, don't like."
She leaned into his arms instead of answering. He held her, understanding that she needed his physical support more now than she needed interrogation. He leaned back on the couch to make himself a more comfortable pillow. His wife's arms tightened around him and then relaxed. "I wish you could have seen the pictures, Lee. Doctor Smyth looked happy, really happy. He was laughing."
Lee tried to picture a happy Doctor Smyth. Then, he tried to imagine a smiling Doctor Smyth. His imagination was not that good. "So, they knew him through your father?"
Shaking her head, his wife sat up. "No, Lee. Not really." She took a deep breath and started telling her story again. "I was standing there, holding the photo album, and totally speechless. I tried to gather my thoughts when . . ."
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"Are you a spy, Amanda?" She gasped at the question. After all the years of being prepared to answer it, she was totally unprepared to do so now. How was it that Dotty had managed to ignore all the signs before today, but the mere mention of the head of the Agency's name told her everything?
"Dotty--" Aunt Katherine began.
"Don't" was all her mother said. Crossing her arms tightly, Dotty stormed over to where her daughter stood in shock. She demanded an answer to her question. Amanda answered with the only brilliant response she could think of: "Yes."
"That son of a--" Dotty's mouth snapped closed before she finished the sentiment, but Amanda was amazed to hear her even begin it. It was her mother: She had not even talked about Mister Melrose in such a hateful way after the Stemwinder debacle. Dotty turned on her heels and marched away as though she were a soldier preparing for battle.
Katherine stepped in front of her sister-in-law. "Dotty, you should--"
"What?" Dotty snapped. Her fists were tightly clenched by her side. "Accept it? Ignore it? Like I've ignored the choice you've made with your life." Dotty stepped closer to Katherine. "Did you really think I didn't know, Katherine? That I didn't recognize the signs?" Amanda could hear the tears in her mother's voice. They were almost totally hidden by the anger.
"I didn't agree with your choices, but they were your choices to make. She is my daughter, and he promised me. I ignored all the signs that I knew because I still had some faith in him. Idiot that I am."
Aunt Katherine crossed her arms and looked down at her feet. "Dotty, maybe you should ask him--"
"Ask him?" Amanda shivered at the scorn in those words. "Never! I trusted him to at least respect my last request from him. I should have known better. Now, excuse me." The sound of the door quietly closing behind Dotty sounded like the blast of a gun to Amanda's ears.
She looked back down at the pictures, the ones that had caused Dotty's fury to erupt. She could not believe that the smiling man in the picture was the cold, distant one she usually saw in the hallway of the Agency. She considered what everything meant, but her mind was a vortex of chaos. She had heard her mother's words, but she wanted to ignore them. "You are a spy," she finally said when she looked up again.
Aunt Katherine's lips tightened. She walked around to sit the coffee tray on the table. Then, she slowly sat down onto her couch. Her eyes finally met Amanda's. "We don't usually call ourselves that, but then you already know that, don't you?"
Amanda's shaking legs forced her to sit down. She closed the album and almost threw it down on the table beside her. She laid her head down on her crossed hands. Finally, she looked back up to find Aunt Katherine offering a cup of coffee. She reached for it with ice-cold hands. "So, you're an intelligence operative?"
Aunt Katherine's laugh was soft. "Yes, I am," she answered. "I have been for a very long time." She picked up her own cup of coffee. The empty third cup seemed to bother her as much as it did Amanda.
"How? When?" She did not take a drink of coffee. She simply held it in her hands, desperately needing its warmth.
Aunt Katherine took a slow sip of coffee before she answered. "'How' was that I knew the right people and wanted to be one, and the 'when' is after your father died."
Amanda closed her eyes at the answers. The question that came to mind was not the one she wanted to ask right now. She did not think she could handle Aunt Katherine's response. She asked a different one instead: "You knew Doctor Smyth because he was my father's best friend."
Katherine looked down at her coffee cup for a long time before she answered. "Yes," she finally said, but Amanda knew that it was not a complete answer.
Amanda looked down at her own coffee. "And that's how mother knows him, too?"
The small clank of a cup being put down brought Amanda's attention back to her aunt. "No," Katherine answered. She stood and turned away, but not before Amanda noticed the tears streaming down her face. It seemed very wrong to her that such a strong woman was in tears. "I'm sorry, Amanda. I knew that when I asked for reassignment here, I would have to tell you my secrets, but I never expected to have to tell you all your family secrets."
"Family secrets?" Amanda's tongue worked over the words. The idea was so foreign to her. Before the Agency, her life had been as bland as rice pudding. No deep dark secrets. There had not even been shallow, light ones!
Katherine finally looked back at her. Her face was an expressionless mask. "I'm going to be at work tomorrow. I hear you and Scarecrow are working the Q-bureau. I'll come and see you in the morning. Right now, I think you should call a cab and go after Dotty. She needs you."
Amanda opened her mouth to protest, and then she saw Aunt Katherine's eyes. She needed to be alone. Her aunt wanted a chance to gather her own thoughts, too. She nodded slowly, and then called for the cab. The rest of the time she spent in that apartment was used to discuss the choices of décor her aunt had made.
****
When she finally made it home, she found Dotty dressed in her cleaning clothes with her head stuck in the refrigerator. Amanda stood waiting for Dotty to say something, to acknowledge her in some way, but when Dotty rinsed out her rag and returned her head to the interior of the refrigerator, Amanda went upstairs to get in her old clothes.
She slowly got dressed in her jeans and T-shirt, and pulled her hair up and clipped it. She thought about all the questions swirling in her mind, and all the answers she did not want to hear. Amanda had accepted from the beginning that being a spy, that lying, would be a strain on her family. She accepted it has a part of her life, a necessary evil. Never had she considered the idea that Dotty might have her own secrets. Standing in her bedroom, shivering in the warm air, Amanda remembered a dream she once had, where her mother and the boys had been agents, too. She had never questioned it, never believed that there might be some truth in that flight of fantasy.
After sitting on her bed for almost an hour, gathering her courage, she stood and decided to face her mother. The boys would be home just in time for dinner, since Joe was picking them up from school. If they were going to have this confrontation, right now would be the best time.
Walking down the steps on weak legs, Amanda heard a voice she never expected to hear in her home. And it was speaking in a way she never thought to hear anywhere. Doctor Smyth was in her home. And he was upset. She turned the corner to see her mother standing toe to toe with the man. Again, she questioned how the two could have even met, let alone know each other well. They did know each other very well, Amanda knew. Dotty was comfortable with Doctor Smyth, even though she was furious with him. Doctor Smyth was letting Dotty see a part of himself that Amanda would never have believed existed.
"She's a damn fine agent!" Amanda wished she was not feeling so stunned; she wanted to enjoy Doctor Smyth's compliment.
Dotty threw her arms up in exasperation. "Oh, how like you, Austin!" His name was Austin? "I personally think she's a damn fine daughter and mother. You always look at human beings as intelligence operatives and non-intelligence operatives." As she sank down on the couch, Amanda admitted her mother had a point.
To her amazement, Doctor Smyth ran his hand through his hair. He looked different with his hair lying in disarray across his forehead. "I think she's a wonderful person, too, Dotty. I believe she's done you and Carl both proud."
"If Carl were still here--"
Both of the contenders stayed silent for a moment. "I think she's a fine niece, Dotty."
Amanda's jaw dropped open even further. This man was her father's brother? No, that did not make sense. Katherine had said she knew him because she was her father's best friend. She had hesitated, but Amanda doubted she would have lied to her about it.
"Life has always been so easy for you, Austin," her mother shouted. "Why couldn't you respect one request? One!"
Doctor Smyth sighed. "I did not come her fight with you, Dotty. I do not even want to go over all our old arguments, even the 'mother liked you best' one we have argued to the point of being ridiculous. I came because I wanted to explain--"
Mother liked you best . . . An argument between siblings. That would mean Doctor Smyth was Dotty's brother. Amanda covered her ears, trying to hide from the argument. If she thought her world had turned upside down before . . ..
She forced her hands down to her side. She was not a child; she could handle this revelation. She would. Somehow.
Her life was a nightmare. As she watched an argument that got louder and louder, she knew her life would never be the same again.
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"And that is when you showed up," Amanda finished telling her husband, her head resting on his shoulder.
Lee sat, silently holding her for several minutes. "You are saying that Doctor Smyth is--"
"My uncle. Yes," she answered with a nod. She did not blame him for asking the question. She did not believe it either.
"I don't believe it," he said, running his hand through her hair.
She sat up and actually laughed. "I know. I don't either, for what it is worth."
He stood up and began to pace. "Amanda, from what you said, it almost sounds like your father--"
"I know, Lee. I know." Putting her hand into her hands, she sighed. "I believe I have not found out all my family secrets, yet."
*****