Mystery Writers of America Presents Ice Cold: Tales of Intrigue From the Cold War

HIS MOTHER’S SON BY J. A. JANCE

It was decades ago, a bright Saturday morning in August of 1978 when my then teenaged granddaughter, Alyse, dropped the bomb that would forever change our lives.

“Nana,” she said, absently dunking the marshmallows that topped her freshly made cup of hot chocolate, “what would happen if Daddy turned out to be a spy, you know, the bad kind?”

Lloyd, my husband, was sitting in the kitchen with us, but he was mostly oblivious to the ongoing conversation between Alyse and me. Once he disappeared behind the pages of his copy of the New York Times, the world could have come to an end around him without his paying the slightest bit of attention. This time, however, Alyse’s offhand comment managed to penetrate his concentration on the day’s news. He had just taken a sip of coffee. He choked on it and had to get through a coughing fit before he could respond.

“Your father a spy?” he asked. “How utterly absurd! I can’t imagine how you came up with such a preposterous idea!” Then, dismissing the whole idea, he folded his newspaper, slapped it into the basket on his walker, and then stalked off into the living room, in search of peace and quiet.

I remember standing by the kitchen sink for a long moment, staring down into the depths of the cup of coffee I had just poured for myself. There were any number of issues at work in the kitchen that morning, not the least of which was the fact that Lloyd had answered a question that had been addressed to me. But after being married to Lloyd Anthony Creswell for more than forty years, I had learned to pick my battles. The real problem in the room that morning was that my husband had been entirely confident in dismissing Alyse’s stated concerns. Unfortunately, although Lloyd could allow himself the luxury of regarding her accusations as preposterous, I could not.

Yes, Alyse’s father, Gunnar Lloyd Creswell, was my son, my only son. And yes, as his mother, I should have been shoulder to shoulder with my husband in leaping to our son’s defense. And yet I couldn’t be, because something in Alyse’s innocently asked question spoke to me and touched a nerve I didn’t even know was there. My first instinct was to look that question in the face and say the whole idea was out of the question. The ugly truth of the matter is, not only did I not like my son, I didn’t think he was that bright either.

My husband’s people came from England, not on the Mayflower, but shortly enough afterward. Lloyd always told me that his family referred to those early female immigrants as GARs — Grandmothers of the Revolution — whose female descendants were fully entitled to membership in the DAR.

My forebears came from Denmark nearly two centuries later. My name, Isadora, comes from my great grandmother; Gunnar bears my father’s name. Lloyd’s family has always believed in the English tradition of “keeping a stiff upper lip.” Mine came with a full dose of Scandinavian-bred stoicism. Between us, neither one of us believed in being overly emotional.

So it was in keeping with family tradition that I picked up my cup and saucer from the counter and returned to the kitchen table without spilling so much as a drop of coffee along the way. Another child might have had her feelings hurt by Lloyd’s curt dismissal, but Alyse has spent enough time with us the last few years, especially during the summers, that she’s learned to shrug off her grandfather’s occasional grumpiness the same way I do.

I sat down next to her. “Calling your father a traitor is a rather serious allegation,” I said quietly. “What would cause you to come to that kind of conclusion?”

“I saw him,” she said quietly. “I saw him in the park with a woman when he was supposed to be at work. She was very beautiful, and she must have been rich. She was wearing a fur coat.”

Lloyd Creswell is true blue and always has been. When we got married in 1936, he swore to love, honor, and cherish, and I have no doubt — not a single one — that he kept those vows. Even when he was overseas during World War II or afterward, when he found his calling in the world of banking and we came back to Altoona to live, I’m sure he never strayed. Not once. I wish I could say the same for me. Or for Lloyd’s son, for that matter. Maybe that’s part of why Gunnar bugs me so much. Looking at him is too much like seeing myself in the mirror.

But the idea of Gunn having a woman on the side? That made perfect sense to me, because he always had a woman on the side. That was certainly true when he was married to his first wife, Alice — Alyse’s mother, and I saw no reason why it wouldn’t be true now with his second wife, the eminently regrettable Isabelle.

Alyse takes after her mother — in looks, brains, and temperament. Alice was a lovely girl. Why is it that nice girls always feel obliged to tie themselves to bad boys? Is it some ingrained need to fix the scalawag and make him into something better? Good luck with that. All I know is that Alice Goodwin was a beautiful bride. As she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, she was nothing short of radiant, smiling at Gunn who was grinning back at her from his place next to the altar. And what was I thinking when I saw that shit-eating grin? Was I happy for him and for her? No, there was a part of me that was thinking, What a lovely girl. Please don’t break her heart, Gunn. Please.

Which he did, of course, in short order. Alice came to me in tears only a month or so after Alyse was born. Someone at work had sent her an anonymous note saying that Gunn been carrying on a passionate affair with someone at the office most of the time she was pregnant. What did I think she should do?

My advice would have been to throw the bum out, but Alice wasn’t one to make hasty decisions. She would want to have all the facts at hand, but the real problem was this: Alice didn’t want a divorce. She wanted her husband back. She wanted Gunn to grow up, shape up, and be a decent husband, father, and human being. That left it up to me to do the only thing that seemed reasonable to do at the time. I ran up the flag to Lloyd. I told him what Alice had told me and turned him loose to have a fatherly chat with his son. According to Lloyd, he gave Gunn a stern talking to — not that it did a bit of good.

Two months later, in the middle of an ice storm in upstate New York, a semi jackknifed in front of the vehicle Alice was driving and slammed into the driver’s side of her car, killing her instantly. Alyse, swathed in a cocoon of blankets and lying in the back seat, was left unscathed. Within months, Isabelle — the girlfriend from work, a gorgeous babe who had once been Miss Indiana, was the new Mrs. Gunnar Creswell and Alyse’s stepmother besides. I believe it’s safe to say that I hated the woman on sight, and I’m pretty sure the feeling was mutual.

I didn’t tell Alyse any of this. It wasn’t my place, but the idea of her father Tom-catting it around with someone from work made more sense to me than anything else. But my first thought was that if he was, it would serve Isabelle right.

“When was this?” I asked casually.

“Last winter,” Alyse said. “I was with one of my girlfriends. We were taking a short cut through Book Hill Park when we saw them. Since I wasn’t supposed to be there, I made sure Dad didn’t see me, but I got a good look at her. She was very beautiful.”

“Your friends saw them, too?”

“I was with Crystal. I ducked back out of sight behind a tree. She’s the one who saw the briefcases.”

“What briefcases?”

“They had matching briefcases, brown ones. Dad always carries one like it back and forth to work. Crystal said that when the woman got up to leave, she took Dad’s suitcase instead of the one she brought. You know, an old switcheroo like they do in the movies.”

“That’s not much to go on, now is it,” I said kindly. “It might have just been a mistake.”

“I guess,” Alyse said. She bit her lip and shrugged. “I was just thinking if he got in trouble or something, maybe I could come live with you and Grandpa all the time instead of just for a few weeks during the summer.”

Alyse said the words with such heartfelt earnestness and innocence that it broke my heart. Long before Alyse’s little brother, Jimmy, was born, Isabelle treated her like so much excess baggage. As soon as Isabelle appeared on the scene, baby Alyse was shuffled off into the care of a series of mostly non-English-speaking nannies. Later on, she was packed off to various daycare facilities for long hours every day even though Isabelle had by then given up all pretense of holding a paying job.

Over the years it was clear that as far as Isabelle was concerned, Alyse was tolerated rather than loved. Once Isabelle and Gunnar’s child came along, it got worse. Jimmy is an obnoxious kid, your basic spoiled brat, and Alyse is expected to spend her weekends, afternoons, and evenings serving as an unpaid babysitter for the little demon while her mother goes off to do whatever it is she does with all that spare time.

Because Lloyd and I were fairly well to do, Isabelle assumed that meant Gunnar was, too. Supposedly, Isabelle comes from an impoverished background, but once she and Gunn tied the knot, she started making up for lost time. She wanted to live in the best neighborhoods, drive the best cars, wear the best clothes. And if Gunn’s paycheck didn’t pay the freight, she figured they could come to us with their hands out to get whatever was needed to make up the difference. Isabelle was willing to be chummy with us as long as the money kept flowing. When Lloyd finally put his foot down a few years ago and turned off the money spigot, Isabelle stopped making any effort to be pals, and so did I. We’ve tried to stay in touch with the grandkids. That’s been easy to do with Alyse but not so easy with Jimmy.

I finished my coffee. “Let’s not give this another moment’s thought,” I said. “I told you we were going to go shopping for school clothes for you today, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

We were parked outside the Logan Valley Mall by the time the first stores opened at 10 a.m. I stayed on the sidelines while Alyse tried on clothing. Just because we were no longer talking about her father’s outside interest didn’t mean I was no longer thinking about it.

It was the fur coat that Alyse had mentioned, the one the woman in the park had been wearing, that piqued my interest and ate away at me. For one thing, I knew far better than Alyse that Gunn and Isabelle were still deeply mired in money troubles, enough so that only a few months earlier, Gunn had once again come crawling to Lloyd, begging for a loan to keep from losing the house. Lloyd claims to be a tough guy, but he knuckled under one more time — more out of concern for keeping a roof over the grandkids’ heads than to help Gunn or his money-grubbing wife.

And now there might be a new woman in Gunn’s life, one presumably that Isabelle knew nothing about. If that wasn’t just deserts, I didn’t know what was. And since the woman was wearing a fur coat, that made me wonder if it was possible that my two-timing son had found himself the female equivalent of a sugar daddy.

At the time I set out to find out who that woman was and what she was about, I told myself I was doing it for Alyse’s sake. If some kind of marital scandal was about to tear that poor child’s world apart, I wanted to know about it before it happened rather than after the fact. But the truth is, it was for Alyse’s mother’s sake, too. There was nothing that would make me happier than being able to rub Isabelle’s nose in the same kind of mess she had made for her predecessor.

That was why, the following week, when I drove her back to D.C. in time for school to start, I made an unscheduled stop in my present that took me back to my own, less-than-exemplary past.

Even now I won’t put the man’s real name to paper because it is one too many people would recognize. Yes, it’s more than thirty years in the past, and the brief affair I had with him — a man I’ll call Alf — happened twenty years before that, while Lloyd was off fighting for God and country. At the time, I was a young, attractive woman with a husband who was far away, a young child to care for on my own, and an aching need to have some fun in my life. Back then Alf, an aide to a longtime senator, had a wife back home in Dixie and more money than sense. From my point of view, he was perfect. That had been true in the forties, and he was still perfect for what I needed now — now that Alf was a senator in his own right with the same wife who was a mover and shaker in the city’s inner social circles. I had watched the couple’s rise to power from the sidelines without ever thinking I might want to contact Alf again, but now I did.

I played the “old family friend” card when I gave my name to the receptionist out front, and it worked. Within minutes I was ushered past a roomful of waiting lobbyists into Alf’s private office. He came around to greet me, hand outstretched, as though I were some kind of visiting constituent from back home. He leaned over and kissed me hello, but I could see he was worried about what I was doing there.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, leading me over to a pair of comfortable leather armchairs.

“I’m here about my son,” I said.

Alf frowned. “Forgive me,” he said. “I remember he was a cute little kid, but what was his name again?”

“Gunn,” I answered. “Short for Gunnar. He’s a military analyst who works for the Pentagon.”

A shadow seemed to fall across Alf’s face. “You need to know that I have very little influence over what goes on inside those walls,” he said. “Promotions, pay-raises, that kind of thing are totally outside my realm of influence these days.”

“What if Gunn were a spy?” I asked. I didn’t really believe that at the time. The words were only a means to an end — bait meant to get Alf to bite and do what I wanted him to do.

Alf’s jaw dropped. “You’re saying you suspect your own son of being a traitor to his country?”

“It’s a possibility,” I said with a dismissive shrug. “Gunn and his second wife, Isabelle, have lived beyond their means for years. I also have reason to believe that he’s become involved with some other woman. There are children involved, of course, and I was hoping you might be able to put him under some kind of surveillance to let me know exactly what kind of scandal our family is about to be up against.”

“You want me to investigate your son?”

“Yes, if it’s just another case of skirt-chasing, so be it.”

“And if it turns out to be something worse?”

Gunn was a womanizer and had always been a womanizer. It didn’t seem possible that it might be something worse. Besides, in this battle, Isabelle was my main target. Whatever happened to Gunn as a result would be collateral damage, but it wouldn’t be undeserved.

“Then he gets what’s coming to him,” I said. “My husband didn’t put on a uniform and go to war so his son could grow up to be a traitor to his country.”

“What about Lloyd?” Alf asked. “Does he know anything about this?”

I was surprised that Alf remembered my husband’s name, but I don’t suppose I should have been. After all, Alf is the consummate politician. For politicians, knowing people’s names means money.

“No,” I said. “There’s no reason for him to, or for anyone else to know about it, either.”

I was thinking of Alf’s very pretty wife, whose surgically maintained good looks kept thirty years or so off her face. Alf must have been operating on the same wavelength. Up to that moment, he must have been worried that I had turned up at this late date intent on making trouble for him over our long-ago indiscretion. My last words caused a visible look of relief washed across his face.

“So we understand one another?” he asked.

“Completely,” I said, gathering my things and standing up. “It’s good to see you again, Alf, but I don’t expect we’ll stay in touch. Once I know who the woman is, we’re done.”

Was it blackmail? More or less. I made my way back to where I’d parked the car, thinking about how Alf was one of the most powerful men in the country and how I was now the power behind the throne. It was oddly exhilarating. On the long drive back to Altoona, I wondered how long it would take for me to hear from Alf again. I never did.

In fact, I hardly gave the matter another thought. For one thing, two weeks later, Lloyd landed in the hospital for triple bypass surgery. The surgery was followed by postsurgical complications that kept him in intensive care for the better part of three weeks and hospitalized for another two weeks after. He was released to a rehab facility for a month after that before he finally came home.

In all that time, Gunn drove up exactly twice to visit. Alyse came along. Thankfully, Isabelle and Jimmy stayed home. The first time he came, Lloyd was still so out of it, I doubt he knew they were there at all. The second time, he was in rehab. After Gunn left, Lloyd wanted to know if he’d asked for money.

“Nope,” I said. “And I wouldn’t have given it to him if he had.”

Lloyd gave me a wan smile. “That’s my girl,” he said, then he added, “So they must be doing better.”

While Lloyd was in the hospital and rehab, it took all my energy to keep the house running, the bills paid, and get back and forth to visit him each day. I thought my life would get easier once he was home, but it didn’t. After someone has been a patient for that long, after he’s been used to having nurses at his beck and call at all hours of the day and night, it was a big shock to both our systems to have him come home with only me to take care of him. Neighbors pitched in and so did people from church. That was the time I could have used Gunn to show up and help out — to rake leaves and put up storm windows or even answer the damned telephone, but true to form, he didn’t, and I was too busy to worry about what my useless son was or wasn’t doing.

What I remember most about that winter was the snow. It came in early November and it never went away. If it hadn’t been for the guy next door who used a snowblower to keep my driveway clean, I have no idea how we would have made it out to doctors’ appointments or to buy groceries.

By the time we were approaching the end of March, I was more than tired of snow and tired of being locked up in the house with an often disagreeable and impatient patient. With another snowstorm predicted, I had made a quick trip out for groceries. I was in the kitchen putting them away, while Lloyd snoozed in front of Walter Cronkite and the CBS Evening News. When the phone rang, I answered it in the kitchen.

“Grandma,” Alyse said breathlessly. “It’s true.”

“What’s true?”

“Dad’s a spy. The FBI was just here. They arrested him, put him in handcuffs, and took him away.”

I didn’t have to pretend to be surprised. I was surprised. I had a hard time catching my breath. I staggered over to the table and dropped heavily onto one of the kitchen chairs.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Is it possible there’s some mistake?”

“There’s no mistake,” Alyse said quietly. In the background, I could hear Jimmy wailing as though his heart was broken.

“Where’s Isabelle?” I asked.

Between us Alyse and I never referred to Isabelle as Alyse’s mother because she wasn’t.

“She went out,” Alyse replied. “She said she was going to talk to a lawyer.”

“Have her call me when she gets back,” I said. “I need to go talk to your grandfather.”

As I walked into the living room, I realized what I had done. I had been aiming for Isabelle, but the person I had hit — the one who deserved it least — was my husband, Lloyd. I walked over to the TV set and switched it off.

“Wait,” Lloyd said. “It’s just a commercial. The news isn’t over yet.”

“It’s over for now,” I said, and then I told him.

Lloyd heard me out, listening stone-faced as I repeated what Alyse had told me. When I finished, he wanted details I didn’t have.

“Spying for whom?” Lloyd demanded, his face contorted with grief. “And what kind of information could Gunn possibly have that would be of use to anyone?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I have no idea. But try not to get so upset, Lloyd. It’s bad for your heart.”

“Not knowing is bad for my heart. I want to talk to Isabelle, and I want to talk to her now. Where the hell is she?”

“According to Alyse she went out to talk to an attorney.”

Lloyd leaned back in his chair. I could see he was making an effort to get himself under control, and while he fought with his emotions — looking for his stiff upper lip — I battled my own, because I knew without a doubt — without a single doubt — that I was the one who had put this train in motion.

For the next half hour, we sat there in silent misery, waiting for the phone to ring. “If it’s Isabelle,” Lloyd said when it rang, “put her on speaker.”

It was, and I did.

“It’s Gunn,” she said breathlessly. “He’s been arrested by the FBI. I don’t know what it’s about. We have a friend who’s an attorney — a criminal defense attorney. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to see him. He says he’ll take the case, but he needs a $50,000 retainer.”

“No,” Lloyd said.

“What do you mean, ‘No’?” Isabelle wailed. “This is your son. Are you saying you won’t help him?”

“I’ve helped him before,” Lloyd said, “but not this time. This time he’s on his own, and so are you.”

“Hang up the phone, Isa,” Lloyd said, shortening Isadora to the pet name he hadn’t used in a very long time. “You’ve already talked to Alyse?”

I nodded.

“Then take it off the hook. If anyone else calls tonight, we don’t want to hear from them.”

I didn’t sleep that night. Neither did Lloyd. Maybe women are more realistic than men. I had understood my son’s shortcomings all his life. Lloyd had not, and now the idea that his son had betrayed his country had broken my husband’s heart. By the next morning the story was headline news on the local television stations and on the national networks as well. When Lloyd went into the bathroom to shower, I tried calling Alyse. Naturally, Isabelle was the one who answered.

“What kind of parents are you?” she screamed at me. “You’re just going to let your son rot in jail? You’re not going to lift a hand to help him?”

Lloyd came out of the bathroom. “Who is it?” he asked.

“Isabelle.”

“Let me talk to her.”

I handed him the phone. He listened to her in silence for the better part of a minute. I could hear her voice screeching into the earpiece, but I couldn’t make out any of the words. When he was finally able to get a word in edgewise, he said in a tone I had never heard from him before, “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

Then he ended the call and handed the phone back to me.

“What did she say?”

“If we don’t help, she’ll see to it that we never see our grandchildren again. That she’ll take them back home to her folks’ place in Indiana.”

I was aghast. I didn’t care that much about Jimmy one way or the other because I didn’t know him that well. But Alyse?

“Can she do that?”

“Of course she can,” Lloyd replied. “She’s the mother.”

By the middle of the day, friends and neighbors were showing up with covered dishes, almost like it was a funeral. I’m not sure why they do that when no one can stand the thought of eating, but they do and they did, and I tried my best to be grateful. Lloyd had been one of the premier bankers in town. Gunnar had been one of the best-known graduates from the high school, one people had pointed to with a certain pride of ownership. People didn’t talk about that very much as they sat quietly in our living room, commiserating with us. They talked about the weather. They talked about our health.

And then came Sunday morning and the worst call of all, and it wasn’t Isabelle who broke the news. It was Alyse. “He’s dead,” she sobbed into the phone. “Daddy’s dead.”

We were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking our coffee. I had put the phone on speaker so we heard the news together.

“How is that possible?” Lloyd asked.

“They found him in his cell,” Alyse answered brokenly. “They say he committed suicide.”

I heard Isabelle’s voice, shouting from somewhere in the background. “Are you talking to them? Damn it! I told you not to. Get off the phone right now!” The line went dead as she disconnected.

Lloyd put down the phone. “He was guilty,” he said quietly. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken his own life. And someone wanted to spare the country the ordeal of taking him to trial. That’s why they left him the means to do it.”

It was amazing for me to see that in the face of this disaster, Lloyd was the one who was dead calm while I was falling apart.

“I still have some friends in high places in D.C.,” he said. “Let me see what I can find out.”

I had friends in high places, too, but I wasn’t about to call on Alf. Not now. Not ever.

While Lloyd worked the phone, I emptied the refrigerator of casseroles, dumping out the food I knew we would never eat, and arranging the clean dishes, marked on the bottoms with their owners’ names, on the dining room table to await pickup.

It was hours later when Lloyd finally put down the phone. “It was the Russians,” he told me. “Gunn was working for the Russians. He evidently provided them with plans for a new top secret spread-spectrum military communications system. The woman he was working with has already been spirited out of the country. They’re trying to establish her identity.”

“That must have been the woman Alyse saw. Remember? She told us about seeing them together. In the park.”

Lloyd gave me a long look. “If Alyse is in a position to identify a Russian spy, then we have a major problem on our hands. Does anyone else know that?”

“I certainly never told anyone.”

“Neither did I,” Lloyd said. “But if security people from both sides of the Iron Curtain are looking into this matter, then Alyse could be in real danger, especially if she can identify someone the Russians don’t want identified.”

The next few days were a nightmare that had to be lived through. The sun came out and the snow turned to mud and muck. We sat glued to the TV set, hoping for snippets of news. No one called to let us know when Gunn’s services would be. No one invited us to attend, but we heard about it from a local news reporter. The funeral would be held at their Georgetown church on Wednesday afternoon.

“Are you going?” I asked Lloyd.

“No,” he said. “I won’t go where I’m not welcome.”

“I want to see Alyse,” I said. “I want to talk to her and Jimmy at least one more time before Isabelle spirits them off to God-knows-where in Indiana.”

Early Friday morning, I set off on my own, driving Lloyd’s lumbering Lincoln. As the heartbroken widow, Isabelle was the star of the show, and she was making the most of it. I sat near the back in the crowded church and spoke to no one. When the service was over, I went back to the house and let myself into the reception where I hoped to find a chance to speak to Alyse alone.

The house was crowded with people I didn’t know. We weren’t part of Gunn and Isabelle’s circle of friends, so there was no danger of my being recognized. At least I didn’t think so. I stayed in the background, and made sure that when Isabelle moved from one room to another, I stayed one room away.

Jimmy was up to his usual tricks. I saw him sneak a sip from someone’s abandoned glass of wine. Then when his mother approached, he knocked it over and blamed Alyse, who was halfway across the room when it happened.

“You stupid girl!” Isabelle yelled at her. “Didn’t I tell you to watch him? This is all your fault!”

I’m sure Isabelle meant that the spilled wine was all her fault, but I saw the look on Alyse’s face, and I knew how she was taking this — that her father’s death was all her fault. And of all the people in the room, I was the only one who knew for sure that was true.

When Alyse fled upstairs, I followed her and found her sobbing into the pillows piled on her bed. Standing there looking at her, listening to her, I knew exactly how her life was going to turn out with an impish half-brother and a stepmother who was prepared to blame her for every little thing. And in that moment, I made up my mind. It didn’t matter if I was going to be guilty of kidnapping or custodial interference or whatever, I was going to get her out of there, no matter what.

“Alyse,” I said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Tell me something. Do you want to go to Indiana?”

She stopped sobbing. She didn’t look at me, but she shook her head.

“I know you know your father was a spy,” I said softly. “You told me so last summer.”

She nodded again, into the pillows, without raising her head.

“And you know who his partner was,” I added. “The woman in the park. You can identify her.”

“I guess,” Alyse mumbled.

“That means people are going to be looking for you. Bad people.”

“Russians you mean?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “And maybe some of our people, too. I don’t know — the CIA maybe or the FBI. But if the good guys can find you, that means the bad ones can, too.”

“Will they hurt me? Am I in danger?”

“Grandpa thinks so,” I said. “And so do I.”

“So what should I do?”

“Write your mother a note,” I said. “Tell her you’re running away. Grandpa’s car is down the street. The doors are unlocked. It’s almost dark now. No one will see you if you slip out now and hide in the back of the car.”

“Isabelle will kill me if she finds out,” Alyse said sitting up. “And if I’m gone, who’ll look after Jimmy?”

“That’s his mother’s problem,” I told her. “It’s not yours.”

“But I’m just a kid, Grandma. Where will I live? How will I find food to eat? What will happen to me?”

“First we have to find a safe place for you to stay,” I told her. “As to how you’ll live? Let Grandpa and me worry about that. We’ll take care of you, Alyse. I promise. Will you do it?”

Alyse squared her shoulders. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I will.”

I went back downstairs. I was through the dining room and halfway through the living room on my way to the front door when a voice behind me inquired, “Mrs. Creswell?”

I froze, thinking Isabelle must have realized I was there and sent someone to eject me. When I turned around, however, a man in a suit was holding up an FBI badge for my scrutiny. “I’m Agent Holloway,” he said. “I believe you’re Gunnar’s mother, correct?”

It made sense that the FBI would be a presence there. If there were a conspiracy, they would be looking at all of Gunn’s connections to see who else might be involved. Still it spooked me that a complete stranger had successfully spotted me in a crowd when I had been making such an effort to remain invisible.

I nodded as cordially as I could manage. “I’m Isadora,” I said. “And yes, I’m Gunnar’s mother.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.” Agent Holloway said mechanically. At the same time, however, I caught him surveying the room behind me. “Is Mr. Creswell here by any chance?”

“Our family has some estrangement issues,” I said, making a show of dabbing at my eyes. “Under the circumstances, Lloyd thought it best to stay away. I only came in hopes of seeing the children. In fact, I was just looking for Alyse. You haven’t happened to see her anywhere, have you?”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t.”

“I need to find her,” I said, “because I’m going to be heading home in a few minutes. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I bustled off and spent the next little while making an obvious effort of searching for someone while continuing to stay out of Isabelle’s way.

When it seemed reasonable to do so, I made my exit. By the time I reached the car, Alyse was already huddled invisibly on the floorboard of the backseat. We left D.C. and drove for hours. Only after I had stowed Alyse safely with a friend who ran a parochial school in upstate New York, did I go home to face the music. I thought Lloyd would be furious. He wasn’t. In fact, he was the one who came up with the idea of creating an entirely new identity for her. I never asked him how he did it. Maybe he had a friend of his own in high places, one I knew nothing about. Then again, maybe he didn’t.

Strangely enough, Isabelle never questioned the idea that Lloyd and I might have had something to do with Alyse’s disappearance. As far as she was concerned, her stepdaughter was nothing but an ungrateful teenager who had run off in her family’s hour of need and good riddance to her besides. Within weeks of Gunn’s funeral, Isabelle and Jimmy moved back to Indiana. For a while I tried to stay in touch with my grandson, but eventually I gave up on that. My letters and gifts were all sent back marked RETURN TO SENDER.

Once Alyse became Debra Highsmith and left for Albuquerque, we never saw her again. By then I suppose I had convinced myself that what I had told her in her upstairs bedroom was true — that the Russians would never stop searching for her. I was wrong about that, of course. I know that now.

Lloyd died two years later. I know the loss of Gunnar and the humiliation surrounding our son’s death contributed to and hastened my husband’s death. I’ve accepted my responsibility for that. If I hadn’t sent someone chasing after Gunnar, maybe he would have gotten away with it. Maybe he could have been more like me and never been caught. Maybe things could have been different. Maybe my life could have been different.

But I doubt it.

For more about Isadora Creswell and her granddaughter, Alyse, read J. A. Jance’s Judgment Call.