Lee and Jennie arrived at the house before Amanda did and as they did, they noticed how quiet the house seemed. "Hello?" Lee called.
"Kitchen," Dotty called back.
"Hey," Lee said as he entered the kitchen with his mother behind to find his mother-in-law and her boyfriend seated at the kitchen table, sipping coffee. "Is Amanda home yet? I didn't see my car in the driveway," He said looking a little alarmed as she'd left the agency before he had.
Dotty, instantly recognizing that panicked look on her son-in-law's face, laid a hand on his arm and said, "Relax, Lee. She's okay. She called and said she had a stop to make on the way home so she'd probably get home after you even though she left before you did. She wanted to make sure you wouldn't worry."
"Good," Lee said breathing a sigh of relief. "I was a little worried. There was an attack tonight."
Dotty nodded and said, "Amanda thought there might be. That's why she asked us to come over and look after the children."
"She was right," Lee said and then added with a smile, "That's my Amanda. She's smart. She's always figuring things out before I do. She even figured out that I loved her long before I was even ready to admit it to myself, let alone to her."
"Who was it? Or is that one of those things that are classified," Dotty inquired.
Lee ran a hand through his hair, sighed and said, "I wish I knew. The man who attacked my parents when I was a kid is dead. I took him down myself almost two years ago, so I just don't know."
"What I'm more concerned about is how it is they knew that the CIA had ended the security detail on the house," Jennie chimed in.
Lee glanced at his mother and said, "you think it was someone inside the CIA?"
"Don't tell me you didn't consider the possibility," Jennie said looking at her son in surprise.
"I guess I just hadn't thought about it. The attack happened so fast. One minute we were talking, the next minute, bullets were flying at us." He sighed again and said, "We can't do anything about it tonight and the way Francine tells it, we're probably not going to get anything out of those goons that attacked us. They may not know anything anyway. Probably just hired muscle."
"Possibly," Jennie said as she chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully.
"Are the boys still up?"Lee asked Dotty.
"Yeah, Phillip's in his room and I think Jamie's still down in the basement in his darkroom working on his yearbook project."
"Good, I was hoping to get them to help with unloading my mom's stuff from the van," Lee said.
"Oh, I see," Dotty said. It had been eight months since learning of her daughter and son-in-law's real occupation, but it sometimes still unnerved her how they were able to so easily shift from talking about being attacked to talking about routine things. "No one was hurt tonight, were they?"
"Only the guys who jumped us," Lee said.
"Oh," Dotty said, her eyes widening.
Sensing her discomfort, Curt wrapped his arm around her shoulder and said, "It's okay, Dotty. They're good at what they do, remember?"
"Yeah," Dotty said then abruptly changed the subject. "We should really be heading home. The twins should be okay for a while. Jennie just had a bottle about an hour ago and Matt about a half of one. It's amazing to me how much that little girl can eat. Just like Amanda was when she was that age." She smiled and said, "She's such a little Amanda, except for her eyes. She definitely had your eyes, Lee."
"That she is," Lee agreed. "I just hope she doesn't grow up to have Amanda's temper."
"I've only just met your bride today and I've already seen a glimpse of it," Jennie concurred.
"No, you haven't," Lee said. "You've seen her aggravated, yes, but you haven't seen truly angry. Trust me when I say you don't want to."
"Hey, I heard that,' Amanda said from the doorway of the kitchen a box in her arms. She entered the room and set the box down on the counter. gave her husband a quick kiss and said, "It's not like you don't have a good temper yourself or do I need to remind of you of the huge fight we had when I got caught up in that human trafficking deal."
"You mean, when those guys kidnapped you and planned to sell you to the highest bidder. Yeah, I remember. I was ready to kill those guys with my bare hands for talking about you like you were just a piece of property."
"You two have certainly been through a lot together, it seems," Jennie said.
"Yeah, we have," Lee said and then glanced at the box she'd brought in and said, "So, what's this?"
"Oh, I stopped by the storage place because I thought your mom might like to have some things from your old home."
Lee shook his head and said, "You amaze me. Speaking of which, I should go get the boys busy unloading the van."
"Okay," she said.
"You have things from our old home?" Jennie said in surprise.
"Yes, Bob had the furniture and things from your house in storage for years and when he found out that Lee and I were married and expecting, he turned them over to us. I know you felt a little awkward about staying her with us, so I thought it might help if you had some of your own things here to make you more comfortable."
"That's...that's really terribly sweet of you," Jennie said blinking back tears, deeply touched by her daughter-in-law's thoughtfulness. The more she got to know Amanda, the more she felt indescribable happiness that her son had chosen such a wonderful woman to share his life with, to be the mother of his children.
"Oh, it was nothing," Amanda said. "It was on the way home, so I thought I'd stop. Maybe some time soon, we can go there together and you can decide if you want anything else out of it."
"Amanda, Darling, Curt and I are going to go," Dotty interjected.
"Okay, Mother," Amanda replied giving her mother a quick kiss on the cheek. "Thank you so much for staying with the kids tonight."
"Oh, it was my pleasure. You know how much I love spending time with my grandchildren. Speaking of which, do you and Lee have any plans to give me any more?"
"Mother, really, I was just released from the doctor after giving birth to the twins."
"Oh, I'm well aware of that, Amanda, but what better time to start talking about it, now that you and your impossibly adorable husband and rekindled your...romance."
"Goodnight, Mother," Amanda said with a shake of her head.
"Goodnight, Love," Dotty said as she and Curt made their way to the front door.
Jennie shook her head and said, "Your mother is quite...exuberant."
"You should have seen her after my divorce. She was relentless in trying to get me married again," Amanda said with a soft chuckle. "Come on, let's get you settled.' She picked up the box she'd brought in and headed down the hall to the guest room next to the nursery.
"Perhaps she just wanted to see you happy again," Jennie said as she followed Amanda, continuing the conversation as they went. "You're a mother too. Surely, you can understand a mother's need to see her child happy."
"Oh, I understood exactly what she was doing," Amanda answered. "I just kept telling her that I wasn't ready and truthfully, I really wasn't, not until I met Lee. It's funny because when I met Lee, I was dating this wonderful man who loved me and loved Phillip and Jamie. He asked me to marry him several times and I kept telling him no. I thought at one point that I might say yes, but then...then I met Lee that day in the train station and it was all over for poor Dean. I knew if I could feel such an intense attraction for a man I'd just met; there was no way that I could ever be truly happy with Dean, even as good as he was to me and my boys." Amanda paused as she set the box down on the bed. "You know, I think a lot of my mother's insistence that I accept Dean's proposal had to do with the boys. It broke her heart to see them being raised without a father when she and my dad had thirty years together."
"I'm sorry, but didn't I just meet their father tonight? He seemed to be quite the loving father to them."
"Oh, he is. He loves them very much. There's not a doubt in my mind about that, but he was never around for them when they were little." Amanda filled Jennie in on Joe's work history and how it took him out of the country a lot. "Even before he took the job, when we were first married and I was expecting Phillip, he was so busy with law school that he wasn't around as much. Then by the time Jamie came along and he had just graduated, he was home more, but not long after Jamie was born, he took the job with the EAO and that's when our marriage began to really fall apart because we were never together. I began to feel like an outsider in my own marriage and he did too."
"That must have been incredibly lonely for you," Jennie said.
"It was," Amanda acknowledged as she began to unpack the box, unwrapping knick-knacks. "With Lee, it's just the opposite. We do just about everything together. With Joe, it was as if we were living two separate lives. He kept me out of a lot of his work life, but Lee and me...We're partners in everything. I'll never forget when I first met him and how he tried to shut me out too. He was...well...he was different than he is now. He was gruff, aloof and sometimes even a little rude, but being a mother to two little boys, I tried to look past all of that and when I did, I saw this lost little boy behind that hardened exterior and I got the feeling that he was searching for something he was missing. I knew without him even telling me that he'd had a rough childhood, long before I knew he was an orphan. Does that make any sense?"
"It makes perfect sense. It seems you've got a natural motherly instinct," Jennie said with a smile as she bent to pick up a ceramic figure that Amanda had just unwrapped. A pang of sadness crossed her face.
"That's what Lee always says," Amanda replied as she turned to her mother-in-law. At seeing the pained expression on her face, she said, "Are you okay?"
"Yes," Jennie said. "It's just this...this Venus statuette...It brings back memories. Matthew gave it to me for my twenty-ninth birthday. He said it was because I was his Venus, his...his goddess." Silent tears began to slip down her cheeks as she continued, "That was the day that I told him that I was expecting our son."
"Jennie, I'm sorry," Amanda said sincerely. "I didn't mean to cause you any pain. I only wanted to make you more comfortable."
"No, Amanda, don't apologize. It was a lovely gesture and I appreciate it more than you know. I just...I thought these things were long gone, that I'd lost every gift my husband had ever given me."
"Well, now that's not true," Amanda said. "You have your son and I think he's the greatest gift of all. At least he has been to me."
"Right you are," Jennie said smiling through her tears. She hastily wiped her tears away and said, "You're really, truly in love with my son, aren't you?"
Amanda smiled and answered, "Completely." As she heard Lee and the boys re-entering the house, she said, "Speak of the devil."
"I don't want him to see me like this," Jennie said.
"I'll head him off for you," Amanda said as she hurried out the door. "Hey, guys," she called as she approached her husband and sons. "Can you just set those down in the hall outside the door to the guest room? We don't want to overwhelm her."
The boys murmured their ascent, obeyed their mother's instructions while Lee looked at her quizzically and said, "Everything okay?"
"Fine, Sweetheart,' Amanda answered quickly."Your mom and I were just having a little girl talk. I'll just take this one." She took the box in his hands from him. "Can you make sure the boys have their homework done and get them into bed for me so I can help your mom?"
"You sure you don't want me to help too?"
"Mm-mm, now scoot," She planted a quick kiss to his lips, returned to the guest room and closed the door behind her.
"Thank you, Amanda," Jennie said gratefully. "I must admit, this has been harder than I thought it would be."
"Come on, now, you couldn't have imagined that it would be easy. You've been away from your family for more than thirty years. You had to know that it would be awkward seeing Lee again after so long."
"It's not just seeing Lee again. It's all the memories that it's bringing back," Jennie said as she busied herself unpacking the box that Amanda had brought in and pulled out a photo of Matthew in his army uniform. "Matthew and I had such plans..." she said wistfully as she lovingly touched her husband's face in the faded photo."We wanted more children and when this mess with Blackthorne happened, I'd just learned that we were expecting our second child. I never got a chance to tell him, before..." Her voice trailed off.
"Listen, I know this doesn't make it any easier, but we will find your daughter," Amanda said confidently. "There's a reason we're considered to be the best team in the business." She reached for her mother-in-law's hand, squeezed it firmly to reassure her. "We don't give up on anything and I promise you that we won't give up until we have your whole family back together."
"Thank you, Amanda," Jennie said as she squeezed Amanda's hand in return and then chuckled softly. "It seems that I'm saying that a lot today. You, you're such a wonder. My son is incredibly lucky to have you."
"And I'm incredibly lucky to have him," Amanda replied. She released Jennie's hand and said, "Come on, let's get you unpacked.
"I appreciate the offer, Amanda, but if you don't mind, I'd rather do the rest myself. I may start to break down again and as wonderful as you've been, if that happens, I'd rather do that in private."
Amanda nodded and said, "I understand. I should go check on my babies anyway. There are two more boxes in the hall when you're done with these two."
Jennie nodded, smiled warmly at Amanda and said once again, "Thank you," as Amanda left the room. Once the door had closed behind her, she sank to the bed with her husband's photo and dissolved into tears.