I am not really so hard to read. For all their labeling and diagnoses you would think that someone would be able to figure me out. They must have dozens of analysts around the world whose sole objective is to deconstruct Derevko. Some are too prejudiced to try. Jack, above all, fears to look me in the eye. He is afraid I will see through his mask of contempt. I wish he would try and see past mine. But they have been in place too long, our masks. Erected decades ago as armor for our own private Cold War. Some are simply too confused to make much progress. Agent Vaughn is one of these. He knows how he should feel about me. But he looks and sees something achingly familiar in me. And I can see that he has grown to respect me. Reluctantly, but he has. It pains me to know that Sydney cannot read me. She can read my emotions well enough but ,y heart breaks with the knowledge that she has to wonder if my feelings are genuine. We used to play a game together. We would try to read each others minds. I could see immediately whatever she wanted in her eyes. She would laugh and say, Mommy, you're magic. I would smile at her and tell her that Mommy always knew what she needed. Then it would be her turn and she would crawl up into my lap and take my face in her hands. She would bite her lip and look up into my eyes seriously. I would see the puzzlement in her eyes. Before long she would break into a smile, with cherubic dimples forming on each side of her pouting little lips. Her way of signaling defeat. Every time we played this game I thought the same thing. I only wished that she would see that all I wanted was for her to know that I loved her.

Now she is so grown up but nothing has changed. Her eyes are more serious. And they are much darker than when she was a child. More like mine. I hate that. They are my eyes now. When I look into them they swirl like an ocean that holds mysteries I'll never know the depth of.

Perhaps I am impossible to read. If I cannot read her, when her eyes are so like mine, it must be the same with me.