"Jesus, Frank!"
Cal couldn't help the burning flush from his cheeks.
"Asking a girl out on a date, huh?" said Frank. "That's great!"
"Okay, Frank," and Cal wanted to be anywhere else except in that room alone with Frank, but he was trapped. "It's not a big deal." Except it was. He knew it and Frank knew it, but goddamn it was hard to hear. The last woman he'd asked out to dinner was Molly–what, thirty-five years ago? And when he'd asked her to marry him a few years later, she was supposed to be the last woman he'd ever ask out to dinner for the rest of his life. In the decades they shared after that first dinner, Cal suddenly regretted not asking her out to dinner more often, and not for the first time. Now there was another woman in the picture and–
"It's a big deal, Cal, even if you'll be crossing the iron curtain and sleeping with the enemy."
Not this again. Cal squeezed past him in the hall and stalked into the kitchen. He needed to clear his head and maybe a drink. Frank followed down the hall with his hands raised in surrender.
"Hey–I'm just fucking with you, pal."
A beer would have been great, but all they had was shitty, sour wine. He grabbed a bottle of red from the latticework wine rack and opened it with a squeeze and a twist. They'd gone through the good wine and were down to the cheap stuff.
"You don't really believe what Niles was saying, do you?" Cal said, pouring a little red into a glass, and then pouring a little more. "That old man is obviously stuck in the past and, honestly, this spy stuff is wearing thin."
Frank looked hurt.
"What do you mean? Do you mean what we've been up to his last week? The Garden Gang?"
"Do we have to call it that?"
Frank ignored him and plowed on. "Cal! I thought you were having fun with this stuff! Sneaking around Nice. Keeping tabs on bad actors. Look at us! We uncovered a crime ring of international smugglers! That's pretty damned good for your first op!"
"It's not that," said Cal. "I'm finally involved in your world. Decades of us talking without talking and beating around the bush, I'm finally living a day in the life of a spy."
"Spook."
"You know what I mean! It's been great and now there's a big payoff at the end."
"But?" Frank filled a wineglass of his own.
"Are we really messing around with a Russian crime boss? We're supposed to be soaking up the sun on the French Riviera, living out the best years of our lives! Not ending up dead in a ditch somewhere."
"Or pushed out a window."
"Exactly!"
Frank took a deep, patient breath. "I get it. Things are getting real now and it's scary."
"I'm not scared!" Cal protested. "I'm... worried."
"Hey, buddy, don't worry!" said Frank. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you!"
"It's not that," Cal said and put the wineglass down before he drained the rest of it and got sick. "I'm worried for you."
"Me?!"
Cal took a deep breath.
"Remember when I told you Lilith had messaged me to see how I was doing with this big move and all? You kind of freaked out that she did..."
"I didn't freak out–"
"–You did. And you wanted to know if she asked about you. Well, of course she did, but it was more than that."
"How so?" Frank asked.
"She warned me. She told me that you had a habit of getting yourself in trouble and–yes, you can handle yourself and always have–but she said the real trouble is that you can't walk away. You can't turn it off. Lil was afraid you'd find something random to latch on to, something to obsess over, and that you'd push too far and end up flat on the ground. Or worse."
Frank considered this by silently draining the rest of Cal's glass.
"And she doesn't want you to get pulled down with me," he said flatly.
"No, you idiot. She asked me to pull you back up."
\
Cal let that sink in and left Frank in the kitchen. A few minutes later he was on the phone with someone who wouldn't raise his blood pressure or shake the ground he was standing on. After three rings, MJ's face appeared on his screen.
"So, Daddy, Frank tells me that you're seeing someone?"
People always told Cal that she was her father's daughter, that she had his blue eyes and a hint of his nose, but he only ever saw his wife in her face. The wavy red hair was obvious, like that of her comic book namesake, but also in her lips and cheeks and the way she smiled or frowned. She was just past thirty years old, now, and an adult professional with a marriage and child of her own, but along with the face of his wife, he would always look at her and see the little girl he once held in his arms.
What was this look on her face now, as she asked about another woman? Was it concern that scrunched her brow just a little bit or was that a smile at the corners of her mouth? The video on his phone was in high definition, but it was hard to see past his own emotions.
Cal took a deep breath.
"Yes, I have seen someone here. A woman. But I'm not seeing her. We're just friends. We had dinner the other night, which might be something, but–honey? I'm taking things slow."
"Uncle Frank says–"
"Oh, don't listen to Frank. He's always trying to be clever and stir things up for a gag. Since when are you and Frank pen pals, anyway?"
"Since I grew up and moved to Maryland. You know that. How he helped me find that first job out here. It's all a connected bureaucracy out here and it extends to health systems. The federal government is our biggest contract."
"That was ten years ago, sweetie."
"And he's checked on me every so often ever since. He always calls after the holidays, like he suddenly remembers, too late, that it was Christmas."
Cal grunted a chuckle at this.
"He and Aunt Lil always sent you some crazy present from some distant land, and they always arrived a week too late."
"You can blame international shipping," she said, "and they were amazing gifts. A cashmere scarf from actual Kashmir? I still wear it!"
"You always did like Zeppelin," Cal said.
"Hammer of the Gods, Daddy," MJ laughed.
"And your aunt and uncle were travelers of both time and space," Cal said. "Do you ever talk to Lilith?"
"Some," MJ said and her face said she wanted to say more. "But back to this woman you're not seeing. Why didn't you tell me?"
"You know why. And there's nothing to tell."
Now there was definitely a look on MJ's face.
"Because of Mom? I mean," and her image on the screen looked away, just for a second, but long enough to make Cal's heart jump. "Daddy. You have to move on eventually, right?"
"I'm not moving on."
"Well, you should. Maybe. When you're ready."
"I'm not ready."
"It will be five years soon, you know?"
"I know."
They fell into an awkward silence, both watching each other's image on their respective screens, a split second of lag causing MJ's face to freeze and jump.
"Ryder is finishing his winter ball camp this week," MJ said. "You know he's moving from T-ball to little league in the spring."
"Already? God, he's growing fast. I need to fly home and catch some games. Cheer him on, you know?"
"He'd love that! We're so glad you spent Christmas with us. He keeps asking when you're coming back to visit. I remind him that you always come during summer when you're off work, but he's young and doesn't remember those details. He always forgets that you're a teacher. All he remembers is Coach."
"It's funny," Cal said. "I haven't been called coach a single time over here. It's weird, MJ, starting over with a blank slate in a new place."
"A new country, even. Do you miss it?"
"Miss what?"
MJ rolled her eyes, which got stuck halfway around their revolution before jumping back into place. "Coaching!" she said. "Home. Florida. The states. Any of it."
"I miss you. And Ryder. I'm not working and I'm not coaching anymore so I suppose I could come visit whenever, now."
"Daddy, you just got there! Come see us during the summer like you planned. There's no need to rush back."
Call watched his daughter then and his heart was heavy. Her red hair had darkened as she had gotten older, just like her mother's had. People asked if they named her Maryjane after the Spider-Man girl or the Tom Petty song and he always answered both. Cal had liked comic books and Molly had liked music. She sounded like her mom. Everyone had always told Cal that MJ had his face and his smile, but Cal never saw it. Always in his eyes, from the very first day they met at the hospital, weighing in at just under eight pounds, MJ had been her mother's daughter, in image and in spirit. Sometimes Cal's heart ached so badly that it was hard to look at her.
But he wouldn't let himself look away. Enough with the spook-shit, enough with Russian gangsters. Looking at MJ, he owed it to her to reclaim the joy in life. Maybe that meant dating Eeva. Maybe that meant just enjoying retirement with Frank, drinking his wine and exploring Europe together, two best friends experiencing history and laughing at memories of their own, and–yeah, he'd have to settle things with Art and that lingering trouble in Florida–anything to get back to MJ and Ryder that summer and wrap his arms around them both: Molly's legacy of family. He owed it to himself, and he owed it to her.
He took a breath.
"I love you dearly, Maryjane. Tell Ryder that I'll see him play some big-boy baseball this summer like we planned."
"I will. And Daddy? I'm going to tell you something that you told me when I moved off to Tallahassee, all on my own for the first time."
"What's that?"
"Have fun, make memories, but Daddy?"
Cal finished it for her.
"Yeah, I hear you, hun: watch my back."