A/N: If any of you read my story Summer of '84, then you know where my character Victoria came from. I am writing this version of SMK from my own altered timeline of when Lee and Amanda got together. If you haven't read the story because it had an M rating, you won't be lost in this tale. I just needed the reader to know where I was taking my reference points from. I hope you continue to enjoy reading this tale.
Mother's Day Chapter Two
Amanda sat in her garden sipping her morning coffee thinking of what the day would bring when all of her children showed up to their home in Arlington. She hardly got any rest the night before. Victoria had her worried. She was beginning to remind her of Lee when they first met. Losing a parent is never easy, but Victoria never seemed to move on from it. If she was completely honest with herself none of them had. Lee's death placed a hole in their family much larger than Lee Stetson would have ever thought it would. In the last ten years she just hadn't figured if it was just him dying or the way he died that made it harder on all of them.
While the boys had been in their twenties, Lee's death still took a toll on them. Phillip went through a phase where cars, a fast life, and faster women were his normal typical day. Then he met Carly while she was studying at the University Culinary School. She was British, spunky, and refused to believe any of the lines he tried on her. That was five years ago. "Took them long enough, Stetson, I swear I never thought they would set a date to get married."
Jamie on the other hand internalized it all and showed his pain and grief in his work. His photographs of war torn countries and poverty stricken children and their families ironically helped him heal. Little by little you could see his healing through his assignments. Jamie met Ashlyn on assignment in London. She was an American just on holiday and Jamie walked up to her and said, "Can I take your picture?" That was it for him. He knew he had found the person he wanted to spend his life with. She was just traveling and so since she had no definite plans she traveled with him. "Now we are going to be grandparents, Lee can you believe it?"
Victoria came to mind and Amanda felt like Dotty, always asking if she was seeing someone. If she was did she think it would be something serious? Victoria would just smile and say, "Mom, I like being alone. There is nothing wrong with it." Victoria was very smart and as she completed her degree in Criminal Behavior Amanda was certain she was headed straight for Quantico to the FBI. Victoria applied the summer after graduation and began the following January. She saw cases that Amanda couldn't even fathom, working in the missing and exploited children division. Amanda knew that working in the FBI that her daughter's life would be nothing short of the same life as Lee and her own. Victoria was constantly in the line of fire and like her father, when Amanda first met him, she knew her daughter damned the consequences and fired ahead. Her only saving grace it seemed was that from what Amanda heard Victoria had a partner that pulled her out of those tight spots. "Lee she is your daughter in and out."
Finishing her coffee up she then went to go change her clothes she knew Victoria would be there any time to pick her up. Before heading down the hall Amanda stopped to look at the last family photograph that was taken of all of them. It was from Lee and Amanda's sixteenth wedding anniversary, their last. She took a minute and wound the music box Phillip had given her, listening to the sweet love song playing. "Oh, Lee, I wanted more time."
Amanda waited patiently at the house in Arlington for her three children to arrive. She was hoping that telling them the story of Lee and her time at the Agency that they might better understand his death and why they should not feel as much sorrow when they think of him.
Phillip and Jamie walked into the backyard first. Amanda smiled listening into their argument about the difference in their driving choices.
"Look here, Jamie, all I am saying that truck of yours is not a family truck. What are you going to do bring the baby home in the bed of that truck? A baby has to be facing backwards in the back."
"What in the Sam hill do you know about babies, other than dating woman for most of your life that was younger than my shoe size? Ashlyn has a very capable baby ready car. I am not getting rid of that truck; you don't know a damn thing about that truck. You weren't even with me or around when I bought it."
"Lee helped your brother pick it out and they fixed it up together. It was the biggest eyesore for months around here. I never thought the oil was going to get out of Lee's hands." Amanda gave her boys a kiss and sat down as she told them that she had ice tea and coffee if they wanted it in the house.
They both emerged from the house to sit with their mother and Phillip was saying, "What is so wrong with having a flashy car? I don't have kids, Carly and I don't want any, and I work hard for what I have."
Jamie rolled his eyes and countered his brother by saying, "It must be really hard protecting dirty old men and crooked Politian's."
"Jamie, that isn't fair. He has a right to defend anyone that pays his outrageous retainer and hourly fee and in Washington that isn't hard to find. You have to know all the good he does for the community as well. I am proud of both of you." Amanda stated.
"Mom, that almost sounds like you approve of what he does?" Victoria said as she entered the back yard joining her family.
"I am proud of all of you," looking them all in the eye one at a time, "even if I don't always agree with what you do in your life at times."
"Did Grandma approve of you and Lee working for the Agency?" Jamie asked.
"You are getting ahead of my reasoning for having you here. So, now that your sister is here and she has her coffee I will get started. Lee and I met in late 1983 at the train station. I was taking Dean to the station because it was supposed to rain. I was in a nightgown and overcoat and the next thing I know I was being pulled aside by a waiter telling he needed my help and that it was a matter of life or death. You know that little voice inside you that tells if something is right or wrong; well, something in his eyes told me he was telling the truth so I helped."
Amanda waited for questions but when none came she continued. "Lee and I didn't get along in the beginning of our work relationship. Even though he technically dragged me in that first time, it wasn't Lee that kept me there. Billy thought I would be an asset not only for the Agency as a civilian worker but also as a partner to Lee when possible to keep him more focused and less on the edge of death. Lee lost a partner about a year before meeting me and after that loss, he would be the first one in a firefight guns blazing, damning his own safety at all costs. Billy thought I would be a good balance to him because he knew that I had you two at home and he would have to think more clearly if I was around so I could get to come home to you. See as much as Lee hated admitting that he needed a partner he hated admitting that he needed me as that partner. In his mind along with a few others at the Agency what could a housewife do?"
"So, I guess you and Daddy weren't always moonlight and roses huh?" Victoria said marveling in this new light of her parents' relationship.
"No, we were more like oil and water. We didn't mix. He was night clubs and champagne and I was PTA and hot chocolate."
"When did that change Mom?" Phillip thought he knew when but he wanted her confirmation.
"In the summer of 84 when you and Jamie had left to go visit your grandparents and Mother went on a trip with one of her friends. By that time, Lee and I had found a rhythm working together. I had been broken up with Dean a few months and had gone on a few dates, but it seemed like whenever I was on a date I would be thinking about Lee or comparing them to Lee. I knew that my feelings for him had changed although I hadn't realized that his feelings had changed for me."
"Did he just come out and let you know?" Jamie asked.
Smiling at the memory of his caveman bedroom routines she said, "Yes, in his own way he let me know in no uncertain terms that I was what he wanted as much as I did him. Of course nothing goes smoothly with us, two days after we made this great choice to sink or swim as partners in and out of the office he was sent on an assignment in Europe. He was gone for six weeks. When he got back was when I found out that I was pregnant with your sister. After he met everyone, I have to say I didn't always make the best choices while I was carrying you. I kept him guessing at every turn. Poor Lee didn't know what to do with me if I wasn't eating I was trying to attack him at every turn. He even asked early on if I wanted Mother at least to know the true nature of our jobs and I told him I didn't want her to know until at least after the baby was born, she would have just worried too much and all I was doing was paper work in the office. I mean I wasn't even allowed to go pick up lunch orders without special permission. That was until the day after telling Lee that I didn't want mother to know, my pregnancy brain kicked in and I blurted it out to her anyway and she tore into Lee. He was blindsided. I wanted to tell him before she got a hold of him but that didn't happen and we had this huge fight because he called me stupid."
"What? I never heard Daddy say a mean thing to you!" Victoria about dropped her coffee cup at hearing about her father's treatment of her mother.
"Oh, Victoria, your father had a short fuse at times, especially where the Agency and I were connected. He understood that I was his partner but at the same time his need to protect me and ensure my safety sometimes would make him frustrated. As we worked more together and I started getting the training I needed things became better. We married on Valentines after you young lady made your early Christmas entrance. After we were married things at work improved. Things here improved. Things just got better. We were happy, yes we still would disagree on how to work the cases but we learned how to work together. That alone made our partnership at work and at home stronger."
"Why did he go to New York?" Victoria asked the question no one had asked in over ten years.
"He was there on Agency business. He was getting ready to retire and he had some New York cases that needed reviewed to be declassified. He said before he left that he didn't want to go because that would make his retirement all too real. It made him feel obsolete."
"Why? I thought Lee was excited to retire?" Phillip asked as he sat back down from getting some tea from the kitchen.
"A person like Lee never really wants to retire. I mean what does one do when over half your life you spend it saving the world so to speak."
"You avoid New York in the fall." The pain in Victoria's voice brought the subject Amanda was avoiding most to light.
"No one knew what that day was going to be like. Yes, all the agencies in DC and the world had rumors flying about. Rumors that this time panned out, but your father wasn't apart of those talks and operations, he was just there to declassify things. He came home from New York two days early, I never understood that, but it didn't matter in the end that he was here and not in New York. We were all shocked to find out that he was one of the victims at the Pentagon that day. He died that doing what he did any other day of the week, he saved lives before he died." Amanda tried to stop the tears but she couldn't.
Her husband had been at the Pentagon the morning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He had helped many of the military personal as they found and guided victims out of the building. According to the Marine that was with Lee, he said he thought he heard someone else and went back in. He never came out and was found later in the building. He died of smoke inhalation. He died a hero like so many others that day. The four adults sat at the table in their backyard in silence each lost in their own thoughts and emotions of that day. Jamie was the first to break the tension and the silence. "Is that why you never sold the house?"
Smiling she laughed, "That is part of the reason I never sold the house. I tried living here after Lee died; all I saw was him everywhere, in the backyard with you kids, in the kitchen making dinner or Lee attempting to fix things that broke. After about three years of that, I couldn't do it any longer. I transferred the title into the names of you three and boxed up the life Lee and I had at the Agency. I only took certain souvenirs with me when I moved into the new place. The box you found upstairs holds a lot of our life together."
"I found a book that his mother wrote to him in." Victoria said.
"You should read it. Your father and I had been married a little over a year when we investigated into his parents deaths and cleared their names of treason."
"What was the deal with the football?" Jamie asked.
Smiling as she remembered that was the first time Lee had kissed her, albeit for a cover, but he kissed her. "That Jamie was a cover that Lee played. He was undercover as a football player named Sandy Newcombe and I was the reporter that was sent in to interview him. In reality he was gathering information and I was getting it back to the Agency. After it was over he stopped by the house one night and gave me the sign football."
"Okay, what about that goofy looking duck?" Phillip asked shaking his head.
"That duck was used to brainwash your dad into wanting to kill Billy. It didn't work obviously."
"Mom you have some very interesting pamphlets and button collection in that box too." Victoria pointed out.
"I do, don't I?" Amanda patted her daughter's hand before continuing. "I have brochures from the different hotels and cases we worked if possible. I have some from the Fox Run Hotel in DC where we were brother and sister looking to buy a Marvelous Marvin's, The Cumberland where we spent a lovely weekend as newlyweds, and I even think I have a post card from a cruise we took not long after we were married. The boxes up there belong to you three, they are marked as to whom they belong to, and it is up to you what you do with them."
"Mom what are we to do about the house?" Jamie asked.
"That my darlings are completely up to you three. It belongs to all of you, now I understand if one wants it more than the others or if none of you want it and sell it. That is like I said, up to you three. I wanted you to know that Lee loved all of you and you gave him the one thing he never thought he would have in this world and that was a family. He was proud of each and every one of you. Each of you has your own memories and moments with him. He is not here in the physical form, but he won't be forgotten if you all remember and know it is okay to talk about him. It is okay to be mad that he is gone. It is okay to miss him. Not one of you can ever miss him more than I do, but I have to let that go."
Amanda stood and said her goodbyes leaving her children to think and reflect about what she had told them. She didn't tell them the whole story, but she knew their curiosity would get the better of them and they would look more through the box from the Agency years and they know now that they can ask about it. She also took solace in the fact that after they were done exploring, she would finally be able to bring those memories home with her.