"Are you okay, Dad?" Sydney asked as she watched her father pour his second cup of coffee. He had just poured out the remainder of the first cup.
"I'm fine," he muttered. She knew he was lying. After glancing down the hallway, he said to her. "You are the only double agent they have in SD-6. They need you. You have the power, and you should use it."
She munched on her cereal. "You mean force them to reassign Vaughn to my case."
"Him, or at least someone smart enough to know this isn't a game you are playing," he told her before taking a sip from his steaming cup.
Sydney looked down the hallway. "Dad, does Mom know?"
"What?"
"About your job. Does she know that you work for the CIA?" she asked.
His eyes shone with compassion. He knew that she was looking for an excuse. "She's always known, Sydney. It was no secret between us, even before we were married. I'm not the one keeping secrets in this marriage."
They both heard the bedroom door squeak. Sydney watched her father's shoulders tense as her mother breezed into the room. "Good morning!"
"Good morning," Jack muttered. Sydney smiled her greeting as she took another bite of her cereal. "I need to get going."
Sydney watched in surprise as her mother and father kissed. She took her eyes off them and began studying her cereal. The recent tension between the two of them had bothered her more than she wanted to admit. She understood her father's anger; she shared it. But now that anger had burned its course, and she wanted answers, explanation. She wanted to hear Laura Bristow explain her choices, so that maybe she could forgive her.
"Mom," she said after Jack had left. "How about we go out to dinner?"
"You want to go out?" Laura asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
"Yeah, I want to go out. After work settles down." Sydney stared at her mother. "I have a lot of questions to ask you."
Laura sipped her coffee, and Sydney could see that she was
lost in thought. "Okay," she finally said. "When everything
slows down at work, we'll go out for dinner."
***
"Hey, Dad," Sydney said as she walked into his office.
He smiled and kissed her on the cheek. "Hey, sweetheart. How are you doing?"
"Good," she answered as she slid into the chair. He smiled at the sight. She had spent a lot of her teenage years sitting in the chairs across from his desk. "Work is finally slowing down."
Jack sighed. "You could say that. I read your recent debriefing."
She had stolen a case out from the nose of Anna Espinosa. Then, she had met with Anna because K-Directorate had the key to the case. She had managed to remember the entire code before the page it was written on was destroyed by acid. Then, she had given it to the CIA and to SD-6. Reluctantly. Vaughn had told him that she had been furious about his order to give the correct code to SD-6. Then, later, in Spain, she had to fight Anna to get a Rambaldi artifact made out of some polymer that SD-6 had been unable to identify.
She had even managed to find out new information about her mother. Laura had devised the plan to have K-Directorate and SD-6 meet and cooperate instead of having Sydney go into K-Directorate headquarters to steal the key. So now the CIA knew that Laura Bristow was a game strategist. Just like him. He shifted uncomfortably at the thought of how much his wife was like him.
"Did Francie get moved in all right?" he asked. Sydney nodded, and he could tell that she was uncomfortable about something. "It really is okay for her to stay with us, Sydney."
She smiled. "I know; you've always welcomed my friends. It's just that Charlie's been calling her all morning, and she's refused to talk to him."
"Not the best way to handle a relationship," he said as he sat down.
"No," Sydney agreed. "Following him instead of talking about it probably wasn't the best thing either."
"No, in a relationship, honesty is . . ." His voice trailed away as he realized that he had no right give that familiar speech anymore.
The pain in Sydney's eyes hurt him. "Dad, I'm supposed to have dinner with Mom sometime soon. Now that everything is settling down. I told her I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask her."
Jack's stomach turned. He didn't want answers. He craved answers. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. "Sydney, you can't tell her what you are doing."
"Dad--"
"You can't."
Sydney slid her legs out from under herself. She leaned forward in her chair as she used one hand to push her hair back behind her ears. "She's my mother."
"And you don't know where her loyalties lie," he snapped. He didn't know.
"She wouldn't betray me to Sloane," she said.
He stared at her. "Sydney, the Laura I knew would never betray this country. She never liked Sloane, not really. And yet, today she works for him. I don't know what or who she is loyal to, and I'm not willing to risk your life to find out."
He saw the protest in her eyes. "I'm also not willing to risk Vaughn or anyone else helping you, either."
The look of protest died; her shoulders slumped. "Maybe I can find out why."
"Maybe. But you don't know if she's going to tell you the truth." He thought about all those trips she had taken over those years. He had never suspected that anything was wrong. "She's a wonderful liar, Sydney."
"Like me," she whispered. He opened his mouth to disagree, and then he thought about those bank trips she had taken over the last seven years. He shut his mouth without responding.
***
Laura rolled her head around, trying to relieve the knot between her shoulder blades. She started walking towards McCullough's office, stopping only when Sydney stepped in front of her. "You have a meeting with Sloane?" her daughter asked.
"No," she told her. "I've got a session with McCullough. Not exactly my favorite part of this job, but I'm used to it."
Sydney nodded. "Everything worked out in Berlin."
"I know," Laura told her. Even though she had known that the meeting with Anna should have been safe, her stomach had tossed and turned until Sloane told her that Sydney was on her way home. It had been her plan, and she had been terrified that she had made some error of judgment, an error that would get her daughter killed. "I need to be going."
"Are you free Thursday night? Free for our dinner?" Sydney looked hopeful as she asked.
Laura nodded. "Sounds wonderful," she answered. She knew she was lying. Just as she would be lying Thursday when her daughter demanded answers from her.
Sydney smiled and walked away.
Gathering her courage again, Laura began counting as she walked
towards McCullough's office. She hated Psych Evaluations. Hated them with a passion. She didn't like having anyone poke and prod into her brain, even if she was an expert at hiding her real self.
McCullough began the session in his usual manner. He quickly put the pads on her face as he gave his spiel about answering honestly and completely. He even told her that it was a matter of national security; she didn't laugh in his face but she wanted to. They both knew that was a lie. Or maybe it was the truth. All the junior agents worked so hard to protect a country they were really hurting by their actions.
He began working to relax her. "You feel light, thin air, and as you continue moving downward, you feel more and more relaxed. The escalator continues down and the closer you get to the light, the more relaxed you feel."
She saw the escalator in her mind. She took a deep breath and felt the light, thin air. Her muscles began to relax.
"The escalator seems to continue forever, and you feel safe and relaxed."
Her lips smiled as her mind provided an image of Sydney's bedroom. Her first bedroom. The crib Laura had picked out with Jack's help sat in the corner. The teddy bear that Grandma Bristow had given her granddaughter smiled at her from the baby bed. She took a step closer into the place she had first felt safe.
"Still listening to my voice, you keep going and the farther you go, the more comfortable you feel."
Jack stood in front of her. Her whole body relaxed as she stepped towards him. He turned, and she saw that Sydney lay in his arms. Her precious little baby spotted her and began a screaming cry. Jack's voice was harsh when he told her, "It's only a matter of time before we both find out the truth, Laura."
She gasped and sat up in the chair. "Are you okay, Mrs. Bristow?"
She began yanking off the pads. "I'm fine. Just give me a minute, okay?" she said as she strolled towards the door. She leaned against it as soon as it closed behind her. She couldn't take the chance. She just couldn't.