Chapter 41—Opening Up
“An agent? For real?” Wren was more thrilled by the potential prospect of Lydia becoming an agent than Lydia herself. Wren grabbed her friend’s arms and swung them out wildly. “That would be so cool! I got asked to join, but I didn’t know if I wanted to. It’s a really big decision, you know? Being an agent and all. Can you imagine? But you’re going to say yes, so of course you can imagine what it means! You did say you’d say yes, right?”
Lydia nodded. Wren squealed in delight. The girls were in the game room. Behind them, Jando was perched on the top of the sofa. He flipped through the paper, reading the article about the gas station. “We should’ve stayed for the photos,” he said. He tapped Lydia’s shoulder and posed, lowering his eyelids seductively. “You agree? My face would draw in the readers.”
“Of horror stories,” Lydia finished. Wren laughed and he tossed the paper aside.
Wren picked the paper up and reread the section pertaining to her friends. “I still can’t believe you took on those guys. Or those people at the bank. They all had guns! Weren’t you scared?”
Jando interjected for Lydia. “Nah. We had everything under control.” Lydia gave him a skeptical expression and he looked away, whistling.
The game room was shockingly empty for a weekday. The midterm exams were fast approaching. Nearly all of the students had retreated to their rooms, wanting to avoid cramming the night before the tests. After she finished reading the story, Wren decided to do the same, claiming that she was doing rather poorly in one subject. Once she’d left, Jando climbed down and plopped onto the sofa next to Lydia.
“ ‘Had everything under control’, huh?” Lydia asked.
“For the most part,” he said. “There may have been a point where I had to play things by ear.”
“Was that before or after that guy’s gun went off?”
He clucked his tongue. “A minor hiccup.”
“I thought it was a scream, myself,” she said with a grin.
“Is there some insult quota that has to be filled even when Aidan isn’t here?” he asked.
“Not that I’m aware of. This is more for my own amusement.” She leaned back. “I’m just messing with you. You did well. Happy now?”
“Almost,” he said. His hand slipped around her neck, playing with strands of her hair. “I could be happier.”
“No.” She lifted his hand and gave it back to him.
He shrugged. “Someday. Anyway, yeah I’m doing alright. Kind of a little sore from that fight with your friend.”
“Mark?” Lydia asked. “He should’ve been a pushover for you two.”
“Tell him that,” Jando said, stretching his back. “Guy’s like a machine. He doesn’t stop and can take a beating.”
Lydia looked at him quizzically. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same Mark?” However, she recalled the day she’d punched Mark, knocking him into the lockers. He had been unhurt—physically anyway. Maybe there was something she didn’t know, some effect that the spill had had on him.
“Yeah. I’ll be okay though.” He studied her eyes. “What about you? How you holding up?”
Lydia puffed her bangs away. “I don’t know. Okay, I guess. Still hard to believe, you know?” He listened intently. “It’s just really, I don’t know, different? I mean, my dad’s not with us. It’s like I woke up in another life, with a new family and all.” She sighed. “How did you get through your dad no longer being around?” When Jando’s eyes flashed, she appended her question. “If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“Not easily,” he said. “It was hardest on my mom. She had to work harder for all of us. But I think all it takes is time.”
“What about you?” Lydia asked.
“It was easier for me,” Jando said. “I hated him.”
“Why?”
He bit back his words and shook his head. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Lydia relented and sat there in silence, picking at her fingernails. She didn’t believe time could heal every wound. Years down the line, she assumed that thinking about her father would infallibly bring on depression, especially when the anniversary of his death would roll around. The fifteenth of November, a day she would brand into her mind like her own birthday.
“Look, if it’ll help, I’ll tell you,” Jando said slowly, grabbing her attention, “I’ve pretty much told you everything already. But I want you to promise you won’t tell anyone else what I’m about to say. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said.
He appeared unconvinced, yet struggled to tell her. “I hated him because he left us.”
“For another woman?”
“No, but he may as well have. Would’ve been about the same.”
“But he was embezzling, wasn’t he?” Lydia asked.
“Yes,” Jando said, chewing on his inner cheek.
“I don’t see the connection.”
Jando gnawed his cheek some more. “At first, he was embezzling to help pay the bills. He worked for an insurance company and discovered a way to skim some money off the top. Enough so we could get by. He knew it was wrong, but there didn’t seem to be any other way.” Lydia waited patiently as he moved on to chewing his lip. “Soon, he stopped doing it for us. He became greedier and took the money for himself. Bought us a nicer place, a really cool car, and lots of other stuff. He threw the money around, living the good life, sometimes without us. He told us that he’d gotten a raise, so that was good enough for me. I was nine, so I couldn’t know what was really going on.”
“Yeah,” Lydia said.
“But eventually, his boss caught on. My dad’s best friend was in on the scheme. He had to bring in someone he trusted to help, and his friend was on hard times, too. Yet when his friend got wind that management was looking closer at the income and following the trail of missing money, he got spooked. He turned in my dad and supposedly fled to the Philippines. He got away with a load of cash and my dad faced years in prison.”
“Sorry.”
He shook his head. “It’s fine. He was only thinking of himself in the end. I don’t want anything to do with him. Neither does my mom. So, we moved here shortly after that happened. She wanted to forget and didn’t want us to end up like him. We do visit him in jail now and again.”
That certainly explained his hatred for his father. She patted his hand. “Thanks for telling me.” He nodded. “And for trusting me with it.”
“You’re welcome. So yeah, I have a difficult time trusting others.”
“You can trust me,” she said.
He grimaced. “Maybe. I don’t know. You’ve been alright so far, but I learned to only trust family. Not my dad, but my mom, my brother, and my sister. After what happened, it’s the only lesson worth anything that I learned from him.” He bounced his fist off the sofa. “Although for you, I’ll try to open up.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Now take your hand away.” He had surreptitiously slid his fingers around her side.
“Don’t you trust me?” he asked teasingly.
“Sure I do,” she said. “But I also trust you can imagine what a broken hand feels like.” He pulled back.
“You know, I was asked to be an agent, too,” Jando said.
“No kidding. Did you accept?”
“Nope, but if you’re going to join, then the idea is suddenly incredibly attractive,” he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
Lydia rolled her eyes. “You do realize that it might not prove to be your ideal dream of what a glamorous spy is, right? And I thought you wanted to get back home to your family as soon as possible.”
“I do,” Jando said. “But if I can get this job, my mom could quit one of hers. Maybe both. She deserves a break like that.”
Lydia stared at him, unsure of what to say. She finally settled on, “That’s kind of you.”
He smiled. “And the spy fantasy is one of my favorites, too.” She shook her head in amusement. There was the re
al Jando. “Travel, fame, gorgeous coworkers—”
“Except that whether agents or not, the BEP Division wants us to be discreet with our abilities, remember?” Lydia said. “I don’t think you should expect fame to come along with the job.”
He frowned. “Well, we earned recognition last time. Who’s to say it may not happen now and again? Can’t always be private with our abilities.”
“You’ll have to fight, too,” she said, noting his pained expression as he rubbed his side.
Jando jutted out his lip playfully. “Let me have my fantasy. Why are you trying to ruin it? They’ll train us to fight,” he said. “I think I did pretty well last time though. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. There will also be women all over to wine and dine.”
“I think you mean they’ll ‘whine and deny’ you there, Bond,” Lydia said. She enjoyed a hearty laugh at his faux hurt expression.
“I have studying I could be doing instead of listening to this abuse,” he said, walking away with his nose in the air. She joined him, needing to study for her exams as well.
* * *