“What…what letters and gifts?”
“The boxes you sent back every Christmas and every June, which I assume must be your birthday. You didn’t know what was in them?”
Her birthday was June ninth. A sinking feeling hit her square in the gut. “I never saw any boxes.”
His sharp glance seemed to assess her honesty. “I know you answered the letters. I never saw what was in them, but they had your name on the return address.”
She shook her head, which only increased her dazed, light-headed feeling. “I didn’t…I don’t know anything about the replies he got. I never got any letters.”
But they both knew who had to have sent them. She stared out the window, refusing to say anything bad about her mother, but determined to have a long talk with her if Mom was ever again coherent on the subject of her father.
Donovan’s look was part skepticism, part pity. “The point is, he wanted to see you, but your mother wouldn’t let him.”
“She told me he refused to come to Houston.” She said it with sullen resignation, knowing he would refute it.
“Then she’s the one who lied. He missed you and talked about you frequently. Losing his family was a hurt he never got over.”
She wanted to doubt him, but it was becoming harder. Quietly, she gave him the only defense she could come up with. “There are two sides to every story, Donovan.” And it was her own fault that she’d never realized how slanted her mother’s side was. She should have. Instead, she’d used her mother’s claims of her father’s indifference to support her own hurt feelings, heaping blame onto him for not caring. Blame it appeared he hadn’t deserved.
“Yeah, speaking of two sides…there was more to that story of the hostages than you heard. There was a fourth hostage you never knew about.”
“What? No there wasn’t.” This part she was sure of, because she’d been with her mother for the whole thing.
“He was an undercover CIA operative who’d been posing as an archeologist.”
“Sure he was. And there’s an alien space ship at Area 51, and a secret sound stage in Hollywood where they faked the moon landing.”
He smiled, as if amused by her cynicism. “Didn’t you ever wonder how two history professors escaped from a heavily armed group of political terrorists?”
“No, because they didn’t. The State Department negotiated their release.”
“The State Department didn’t even know who had them. The group that took them made no demands. Their goal was strictly to terrorize. After the first hostage was killed, it was obvious they meant to kill them all, one by one. The CIA was working from the outside, and the captured operative was able to prepare your dad and Evan for what to expect and watch for. Because of him, they were able to take advantage of the distraction when it came. They took their guards by surprise and escaped.”
She nearly rolled her eyes. “I think my father would have mentioned that kind of heroics. Plus every major media outlet covered it, and no one said anything about a fourth hostage.”
“And goodness, we all know the government has never kept information from the press.”
She frowned in annoyance. His stupid story shouldn’t bother her, but as Dr. Epstein often reminded her, part of her was stuck at the age of twelve, unwilling to accept that her father had changed. Daddy’s girl still mourned his loss. But to think that he’d lied to them from the moment he’d come home from Iran? “I don’t believe you.” She’d meant to say it with more conviction, but was having a hard time finding any. “But even if I did, what’s your point?”
“That you don’t know everything you think you do about your father.”
“Big deal.” Sarcasm, on the other hand, came easily. “I didn’t even see him for the last fifteen years of his life, so of course I don’t know him.” And whether he’d loved her or not, whether he wanted to see her or not, her father had obviously begun keeping secrets after his time as a hostage. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here right now. Possibly many secrets. Donovan, a complete stranger, knew them, and she didn’t. It was like being rejected by her father all over again.
“Being held hostage, and escaping the way they did, with no help from the State Department, changed him,” Donovan said. “Changed his priorities.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder, and it tore our family apart.”
“Actually, it didn’t. Forming the Omega Group is what tore your family apart.”