Chapter Twenty-Six: Little Hope
"Holy shit," Sydney muttered, jerking away from Jack before he had a chance to read the rest of the note.
"What does it say, Sydney?" Jack Bristow asked brusquely.
"I--" she shook her head as if dazed. "I have to call Michael."
"Tell me what it says, Sydney."
"Dad." Jack watched his mother shoot her father a glare that was part impatience, part frustration, part warning. Not so different than the looks Jack had shot his parents when they'd argued about him leaving the island for college. "I appreciate that you've come to help us, but Michael and I will be making the final decisions when it comes to my daughter, and I need him here with me. It was a mistake to read the note without him."
"So damned stubborn," Jack Bristow muttered under his breath.
"I could say the same about you," Sydney shot back.
"What the hell does that mean, Sydney?"
Jack Vaughn looked back and forth between his mother and grandfather as if watching a tennis match. Only it wasn't tennis balls they were hitting. It was years of pent up anger and resentment.
"I mean you could have been more a part of my life this past decade, if you wanted to."
Jack watched his grandfather's eyes widen in surprise. "I wasn't aware that was something you wanted."
Sydney's eyes filled with tears. "Yeah, well, maybe I thought you should just know." She bit her lower lip, staring off into the distance. "It was hardly an easy decision for Michael and me, Dad. Leaving Mom's organization. Taking your deal. We put ourselves, our children, in so much danger, Dad. We've spent the last decade looking over our shoulders."
Now it was Jack's turn to be surprised. His parents had spent the last decade looking over their shoulders? Funny how he'd never noticed. He'd been too busy hanging out with friends and falling in and out of love and applying to colleges.
Living, he realized now, a completely normal life. His parents had sacrificed so much to give him that life, and he'd never even appreciated it. He'd sulked and made things difficult for them and gotten angry that they hadn't told him more. Why? Why couldn't he have just been like Emily, quietly content to be living an ordinary existence?
But Emily had disappeared, throwing a wrench in that ordinary existence. And Jack's grandfather wasn't about to let Sydney off the hook so easily. "You act as if what you did was so noble," he spat. "The truth is, you got yourself into a bad situation, I offered you a way out, and you took it. Hell, Sydney, you didn't even agree to take it until I threatened you at gun point. Or are you forgetting St. Bart's?"
"How could I forget?" Sydney retorted. "How could I forget you ambushing Michael and I days before we were even supposed to give you our answer? All because you didn't trust me."
"Trust?" her father repeated incredulously. "Forgive me if I wasn't so willing to trust someone who had spent the previous decade as Irina Derevko's willing little servant."
Sydney opened her mouth as if to hurl an insult back at him, then stopped short. When she did speak, her voice was soft, calm. "So you didn't want to trust me, fine," she said, running a hand back through her dark hair with a sigh. "But what has trust had to do with the last ten years, Dad? You could have had more contact with me if you wanted. You could have at the very least gotten to know your grandchildren."
The two of them turned to Jack as if seeing him for the first time. Jack blushed, suddenly wishing he could disappear into the living room carpet.
"I can't take back what I've done, Sydney." Now Jack's grandfather's voice was soft, too. "And we don't have time to spend reliving the past now."
The tears sprung to Sydney's eyes all over again, and she looked away. "I guess we don't."
Her father reached out and placed a hesitant hand on her arm. "Go call your husband," he said, his voice nearly a whisper. "And maybe when we find your little girl…well, maybe that would be a good time for me to start getting to know her."
Sydney smiled at her father, but it was a smile full of sadness, and little hope.
Jack supposed there were too many disappointments and broken promises between her and her father for much of that.