Everybody ready? The truth is revealed…
…
Esther groaned as her brain rebooted. She opened her eyes and for a moment was unaware of where she was. All she could see was a white ceiling, and that reminded her of when she was in a car accident when she was fifteen. Her older friend had been driving, not entirely sober. Her first sight upon regaining consciousness had been a white ceiling, and for a moment she thought she was fifteen again and back in that hospital. Then she remembered: I'm an agent of BOWCA. I was on a mission and I fell off a roof…
"Esther, how are you feeling?"
Esther looked to her right and saw her partner, Agent Zero, sitting by her hospital bed. "Headachy," she answered truthfully.
"Any pain in your back?"
Esther shook her head. "I can't feel anything out of the ordinary. How did I get here?"
"James and I carried you," Zero answered.
"Oh, well thank you."
"It's quite all right."
He seemed to be wrestling with a question that he wanted to ask. "Is everything okay?" Esther asked.
Zero paused. He decided to play it safe for now and ask, "What caused you to lose focus like that? You had him."
Esther turned her head to face the ceiling and said nothing. Oh, well done, thought Zero. You just shut down any hope you had of learning about Isaac.
But Esther only paused for a moment and said, "Bannister mentioned a name. Isaac. It threw me off."
"Isaac Brandt, your former partner?"
"Yes," answered Esther softly. "My partner of two years."
"The same amount of time as you've had me as a partner," realised Zero. "What happened to him?"
It was risky, Zero knew. As he had told James, last time he had asked her about Isaac, she had almost thrown up and had refused to talk to Zero for a whole day.
Esther was silent. Zero cursed himself in his head for having pushed her too far, before she said, "I don't like talking about it."
"I understand it must have been bad, but-."
"It's the only case I failed to solve."
Zero honestly thought he had heard his partner wrong. "What?"
"You heard me. I'm not saying it again."
"The only case you-but I thought you have a spotless record."
"Nearly spotless. I got too emotionally involved, and that's why I failed this case."
"So Isaac was involved?" Zero said.
Esther nodded. Zero could see how much pain talking about the incident would bring her, but the fact remained that clearly she wasn't over it, or Bannister mentioning the name Isaac would not have caused her to react as intensely as she did.
"Esther, I realise that this experience was painful for you, but it might help to talk about it, get it off your chest."
Esther said nothing.
"All right then, how about I ask you simple questions and you answer them? You don't have to give too much detail if you don't want to."
Esther still said nothing. Then she said, "You really won't let this go, will you?"
"No, no I will not."
"Then I am prepared to answer your questions."
"Thank you." Zero wondered where on Earth he should start. He decided to start small, with a simple, "What was your relationship to Isaac?"
Esther hesitated. "He was my partner."
"Anything else? Were you a couple?"
"He was my husband."
"What?" gasped Zero. "I never knew you were married!"
"Let me explain. When I came to England, I took my mother's maiden name, van Dyke, and abandoned the name I had been given at birth: Esther Florentine."
"If I may ask, why did you change it?"
"Because I wanted to start again. Esther Florentine was a naïve girl, who was scared of most everything. I had put all those qualities behind me when I moved to England, but the name Florentine reminded me of who I once was. The child of nineteen years old. So when I moved to England on my twentieth birthday, not only was I going into a new decade in my life, but also a new country. I needed to be a whole new person. So fearful Esther Florentine became fearless Esther van Dyke, BOWCA's best agent.
"But I couldn't have become Esther van Dyke without Isaac. I found out later that he was watching me and my family when we were both in our teenage years. He was "talent spotting", as he put it. Apparently I caught his attention. He had joined BOWCA in his teenage years, long before I came to England, so he was waiting for me when I arrived. He recruited me for BOWCA and I got a job here as his partner. We soon fell in love and he proposed to me. I said yes." Esther took a deep breath. "My wedding day was the happiest day of my life. Walking down the aisle to wed the man I loved most in the world was a dream come true. We even planned the children we were going to have, but fate had another plan." Esther paused. "He oversaw my training himself. Without his dedication, I would have remained Esther Florentine."
Zero was struggling to input all the information he had just heard. "So Isaac made you into the person you are today?"
"Yes."
She didn't offer any more information than that. "…Esther, what happened to him?"
…
Since the original chapter was nearly 2000 words, I've decided to split it up. Next chapter: what really happened to Isaac is revealed!
