A GATHERING OF SCARECROWS
Billy Melrose let out a long breath as he leaned against the back of the booth, and Lee sipped his coffee to hide the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. They'd been lucky to get a booth at all that morning — the Pie Plate had been packed full of families when they'd arrived, and they'd waited patiently in the vestibule until a table opened up. But Billy hadn't minded; he'd made a comment about wanting to top off his vacation with a slice of blueberry.
Normally, if he and Billy got together outside of work, they went for beer and steaks. But for some reason Billy had suggested an early lunch, and even though he suspected the place would be jammed, Lee had been happy to oblige, though he'd had to promise Amanda he'd bring her back a slice of apple pie, if they had it.
Now that Lee thought about it, he suspected they'd never met on a Saturday morning because they were either working, or he was nursing a hangover. Saturdays were family days now, usually jam-packed with ball games or errands or some other event — the things Lee had once been sure he'd rather die than participate in. That weekend, Lee was busy boxing up the apartment, and he hated moving enough that he was happy to, as he put it, "get the hell out of Dodge for a few hours."
"So why the early lunch?" Lee asked, pushing his empty plate aside and thinking how Amanda would tease him for moving away from the tried-and-true beef dip in favor of a chicken sandwich, and vegetable soup. He was suddenly worried about "settling down" too much and… softening too much. Not enough to give up pecan pie at the Pie Plate but enough to give him pause when he looked at the menu.
Billy chuckled. "Too early?"
Lee rolled his eyes. "I've been up since six, actually. I have a morning gig as a chauffeur and an afternoon gig as an errand boy."
"I noticed."
Lee shrugged. "It has some significant side benefits."
"I've gotta admit, I never really thought you'd settle down."
"Ah, well." Lee wasn't sure what to say. He knew Billy had never really approved of his man-about-town tendencies, but he'd never come out and said anything. He'd been far more likely to lob a wisecrack in Lee's direction. "You know."
"I do know." Billy sipped his coffee. "Looks good on you, by the way."
Lee leaned back and looked down at his shirt, suddenly wondering if he'd put on weight after all. He'd been joining in on family dinners for months now, but as school started again and they settled into a more regular routine he'd been there every night. For years he'd eaten sandwiches over the sink or a quick omelet, and suddenly he was sitting down to pot roast, pot pie, roast chicken, meatloaf — all the things that were perfect for filling up two growing boys. And there was always dessert — cake or cookies or brownies or, occasionally, pie. He was relieved when Phillip asked him to help train for the high school track team. He needed a way to burn off the home cooking, and the kid was surprisingly fast.
"You know you don't have to eat the cookies," Amanda said when he voiced his fears. "No one will be offended if you pass."
"Of course they will," he insisted.
"Why do you think I bring them into the office all the time?" Amanda asked. "Mother likes to bake — it's her outlet — and I do too sometimes. But the boys can't eat it all and I usually have one and I'm done."
"I thought you brought things in to be nice," he said, surprised, and Amanda laughed.
"Oh," she said, "that, too, I guess."
Now he shifted in his seat and smoothed the front of his shirt, gratified to see the placket still lay flat across his stomach. "You didn't answer my question," he said.
"Something came across my desk the other day," Billy said. "I'd have spoken to you about it then but I was about to get on a plane and you know how it is." Billy drew an envelope from his coat pocket and slid it across the table toward Lee.
"Another opportunity from State? You know I'm not ready to —"
""It's not from State. And you should just read it first."
Lee drew a sheaf of paper from the envelope and began scanning. "Billy, this is a proposal to start a new task force," he said. "Out of the Q Bureau?" He flipped through the sheets, feeling a mix of curiosity and surprise when he saw the proposed roster. His own name at the top, above a team of agents.
'I told you I was working on a few things," Billy said mildly, sipping his coffee.
Lee frowned. "But you'll never get the budget or approval for this. Spending's been frozen for over a year."
"It's taken care of," Billy said. "When I said it came across my desk I meant back from the higher-ups, with a green light. We did some juggling."
Lee set the pages down on the table, still not sure what to say. He'd had a series of long conversations with Amanda about whether to stay in the field or look for something safer, and while he'd begun scoping out the management opportunities and options at other agencies, his heart hadn't truly been in it. He just hadn't figured out how to tell her yet.
"It's yours if you want it," Billy prompted.
Lee nodded, his eyes still on the paper in front of him. "I'll, uh, have to talk to Amanda about it."
"She's fine with it," Amanda said from the end of the table. Lee looked up in surprise to see her standing at his elbow, a coffee pot in one hand. She filled his cup, then Billy's, then flipped over another for herself before she set the pot on the table and slid into the booth beside him.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, dumbfounded. He felt ridiculous, suddenly, that she could sneak up on him without him noticing. Some spy, he thought.
"Mother dropped me off on the way back from the florist." She smiled across the table at Billy. "I thought he'd have said yes by now."
"I think he's a little surprised, is all," Billy said, chuckling.
"Wait, you knew about this?"
"Of course I did. My name's on it, too. You'd have seen that if you'd read it properly." She flipped through the pages to the roster. "See? Analyst."
He looked down at her tapping finger, leaning forward to make sure he was seeing it properly. "So we'd be on a team together again?"
"You said yourself the Q was going to need an analyst," Amanda said. "Remember?"
"Yeah, but I didn't think any of this would happen in any kind of official capacity."
"Well, if you don't want me on your team I can always just go back to Analysis and you can have, say, Jack Dudley instead." Lee and Jack had a long history of not getting along, and Amanda smirked as she said the words. Lee saw Billy's eyes light up with amusement. "I mean I'd have to clear it with the boss, obviously…."
He gave her a wry look. "Very funny. Of course I'd want you on my team. I'm just…" Lee shook his head, glancing down at the papers again, then Billy. "So this is a real thing."
"It's a real thing."
"Why now?"
Billy shrugged. "The game is changing, you know that. We've been talking about mixing up our approach a little."
"Why me?"
Billy laughed, then. "Well, I know you've been thinking about moving up but I get the sense you don't quite want to yet. I thought this might… bridge the gap for you a little."
Lee leaned back in the booth, his hands resting loosely on the table, and considered the offer in front of him. A team, his own team. He'd started to make peace with the idea that marrying Amanda would come with compromises — after all, she'd made plenty of compromises along the way, too — but this almost seemed too perfect. The ability to keep the Q Bureau and keep the danger at a remove, the ability to work with Amanda every day again. The hours would still be a little crazy but not as bad as if he were on the front lines, and Billy had made it clear months ago that he could cut down on travel if he wanted.
"Who's on the team?" he asked, peering again at the names. He'd been so surprised by the proposal he hadn't absorbed any of the details, not really.
"Gosh, you have a lot of questions," Amanda protested, laughing.
"These are all pretty fresh agents, Billy." He knew they were all the best and brightest of what would have been Amanda's graduating class, and the year before. Fresh and young and full of energy and idealism. He felt a little queasy at the idea he'd be responsible for shaping their careers, the way Emily and Paul and even Billy had done for him.
"Yep, they're all go-getters, just like you were." He grinned. "Your own team of young Scarecrows."
"That sounds like hell, to be honest."
"Well, maybe there's a little payback in there," Billy admitted, his dark eyes sparkling with merriment. "I'd have let you hand-pick them yourself, but there were only so many mountains I could move, if you know what I mean."
"I'm not complaining. It's a great offer."
"It's a fantastic offer," Amanda said.
He turned to look at her. "How long have you known about this?"
"A couple of weeks. I was sworn to secrecy." She smiled. "And you know how good I am at keeping secrets."
"Maybe too good," he said. But he wanted to laugh at the thought of how hard this must have been for her to keep to herself.
"Why don't we get a piece of pie and you can think about it," Billy said.
"I'm definitely getting a piece of pie," Lee said, "but I don't need to think about it. I'm in."
"I knew you would be." Billy nodded at Amanda. "You were right."
"What's a team of Scarecrows called, anyway?" Amanda asked as they dug into their slices a few minutes later.
"A cluster, probably," Lee muttered around a mouthful of pecans and pastry.
Billy laughed. "You're probably right." He paused for a moment, thoughtful. "Actually, I think it's a gathering."
Amanda paused with her fork in the air, surprised, and Billy lifted one shoulder.
"Jeannie likes crosswords. Sometimes the clues are pretty obscure." He grinned. "There'll only ever be one Scarecrow, anyway."
"Thank goodness," Amanda said, laughing, pressing her shoulder against Lee's affectionately.
"Anyway," Billy pushed his plate to one side and dabbled at his moustache with a napkin. "There's one more thing. I know you booked off Thursday and Friday but —"
Lee braced himself. He knew all too well what booking time off at the Agency could mean: unbooking for one crisis or another. "Yeah," he said, "I've gotta be out of the apartment by Wednesday night."
"Take Wednesday, too." He nodded at Amanda. "And the week after is on us. Save your vacation for the holidays."
Lee blinked. "What?"
"Consider it my wedding gift to you."
Beside him, Amanda leaned across the table to lay a hand over Billy's. "That's a perfect gift. Thank you, Billy." She'd finally dropped the formalities — Lee had to wonder when. Billy had chided her for ages about calling him Mr Melrose and 'sir,' and made her promise to stop, but he suspected it had taken her promotion to Analysis, out of Field Section, to get her to use Billy's first name.
Lee had always known there was affection between Billy and Amanda but he could see now, plain as day, that Billy considered her an extension of his family the way he considered Lee family. He knew it was the reason Billy had suggested she shadow Analysis when she'd first come back to work, and why he'd pushed for her promotion. He'd always had a sense of her real strengths, even when Lee and Francine had written her off
"You two have had quite a year. I figure you deserve to close it out with some extra downtime."
Lee nodded. "Thanks, Billy. That's great." He could take the boys skiing now, the way he'd talked about but always prefaced with 'if I can get the days off.' They'd only started talking about it now because he knew he'd have to book a place to stay. Amanda had assumed she'd be working and wasn't sure about skiing that winter anyway, but he knew now that she had the time off she'd join them. It'd be their first vacation as a family.
"No arguments about booking off over the holidays?"
Lee glanced at Amanda, who was watching him expectantly. "Not this year," he said. "I have some people waiting for me for a change." His fingers laced through hers as he spoke, and her mouth curved in a smile. And as it had for years, even in front of his boss, his heart sped up when he saw her expression.
"I figured you might." Billy sipped his coffee.
"I'm going to go get Mother a strudel," Amanda said, abandoning her slice of pie and sliding out of the booth.
"She should have come in and joined us," Billy said. Lee had told him about Dotty's inquisition at the restaurant the day it happened, and Billy's big laugh had rolled around in his office as he listened. He said he'd long suspected Dotty would put two and two together, and Lee knew he enjoyed the thought he was the catalyst for them having to confirm her suspicions. He'd spent the past weeks trying to imagine what their next meeting was going to be like and knew that whatever he conjured wouldn't come close to reality.
"I told her that, but she thought we'd need to talk about things she wasn't allowed to hear," Amanda said, her cheeks coloring slightly. "Anyway, I'll be right back."
"So she's known about this the entire time?" Lee said, watching her stride across the dining room, her ponytail bobbling as she walked. She had her old walk back, he realized, graceful and sure-footed, and he wondered when that had happened. In increments, he supposed, without him noticing, the way so much of her recovery had.
"She's a good sounding board," Billy said. "I wanted to make sure we were getting it right. I didn't tell her she was going to be on the team until yesterday, though, and she didn't ask."
"She didn't?" Lee frowned. He thought about the night before, when Amanda had come in the back door with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, toting dinner in three huge take-out bags. He'd left work early to pick the boys up from school to get new suits for the wedding, a job they were all dreading, and had just hidden the evidence of three milkshakes when she'd come in the door. When he'd asked her what made her look so chipper she'd just shrugged and said, "Oh, I just had a good day at work, is all." Now he knew what that meant — Billy had probably come in after he'd gone and shown her the paperwork.
"She said she assumed it wasn't a possibility," Billy said. "And I guess normally it wouldn't be, but even Smyth was willing to make an exception."
"Smyth, huh?"
Billy grinned. "The old bastard likes her. You should count yourself lucky."
Lee felt a jolt of pride. "Everyone likes her," he said. "I don't know how she manages it but they do."
"I can remember a time when you wouldn't have admitted that," Billy said, peering knowingly over the rim of his cup.
"I didn't admit it, no, but it didn't mean it wasn't true." Lee shook his head a little, remembering Amanda's first few cases. "She snuck up on me then, same way she did today."
Billy chuckled. "Maybe I'm getting the wrong agent to run this team," he said.
"You probably are. She's better at the people stuff."
"I put you together for a reason," Billy said, "and I'm keeping you together for the same reason. You play to each others' strengths better than any two people I've ever known."
"I'm not going to argue with you about that, except to say I think she probably has more strengths than I do," Lee said, wryly. "I just have more experience, is all."
"Well, regardless, you're a good team," Billy said. "In and out of the game." He raised his coffee mug, as if in a toast. "Congratulations."
Lee grinned, lifting his cup to clink against Billy's.
"What are you toasting?" Amanda asked, setting a white take-out box on the table as she sat down again beside Lee.
Lee paused, smiling at her. "Partnership," he said.
"Specifically, yours," Billy said. "But I have another." He nodded at Amanda, who picked up her own coffee cup to join in. "Here's to teamwork," he said.
Amanda's mouth curved in a wide smile. "To teamwork," she echoed, as the three touched their mugs together. "And Scarecrows."
