The Housewife Assassin's Relationship Survival Guide (18 page)

I could never love you with the passion with which you loved me.

For me, passion is dark and illicit. It is a cruel master who takes everything and regrets nothing.

It was inevitable that Carl was my passion. 

Please forgive me, Jack. I know the truth hurts. Now that I am free from the pain of my desire, I can set you free, too.

If you have not yet deduced Carl’s plan, it is to remake the Quorum with investors of his own choosing. 

To impress them, he has planned an extravagant exhibition of terror. You already know it is to take place on Donna’s birthday. I leave you with this key, which you know well. It leads you to the one last bit of intelligence you seek: where to find the devil who has plagued us all, before he completes his mission for world annihilation.

It is my very late attempt at redemption, dear Jack.

I wish I had more to give you. In truth, I wish I could give you back all the love wasted on me. I was never worthy of it, whereas she has more than proven that she is the one you were meant to love.

Don’t waste a lifetime figuring this out. My final prayer is that, unlike me, you’ll have nothing to regret. 

Valentina

So, there will be a new Quorum. One molded by Carl. One rebuilt in his image.

Talk about trading one hell for another.

Jack waits until I drop the letter in my lap before reaching for my hand. He doesn’t speak until the last of my tears has fallen. “Donna, she’s wrong about two things.” He looks me right in the eye. “I figured out a long time ago that she never loved me. But I was worried that you would never believe me if I told you I had accepted this and had moved on.” 

“You’re right. I thought you hadn’t gotten over her. I guess that’s why I asked you if the child she was carrying was yours.” I sigh. “I’m glad you didn’t hit me. At the same time, you had every right to be angry. Once again I doubted you.”

 “That’s only because Carl is a master at head games. For once, though, Valentina outplayed him.” He pats my hand. “Donna, I also know you chose me over Carl, even before you thought he had killed me.”

“Jack, when I thought I’d lost you… and then you came back to me… all I could think of is how you’d say goodbye again if she wanted to come back to you…” Can he make out my words through my sobs?

 “Donna, I swear to you! I would have told her what I’m telling you now: that yes, I had loved her once, a lifetime ago. And yes, I grieved her loss for a very long time.” He pauses. “But I would have told her I’d finally found the love of my life. That I’d found my family.” 

Now I’m bawling like a baby.

He’s crying, too. Or maybe he’s laughing. I can’t tell, because his face is blurred by my tears, which just won’t stop. 

"Donna, when I met you, I saw my pain mirrored in everything you did, and said. In how you channeled your grief in our profession. And how you protected your precious family. I wanted to protect you.  I...I fell in love with you.” He stops to clear his throat. “But I had to wait until you no longer doubted my feelings for you. Until you realized that I love you. Always and forever.”

My kiss takes him by surprise. Why is that? Can’t he guess I’ve waited much too long to hear him say this? 

Valentina was a fool to love Carl. I was that foolish, too, once long ago. 

Jack forgave us both. 

Without forgiveness, there is no love. 

Finally, our lips part. My hand reaches for his and the key falls into my lap. 

Can it save all of us from Carl?

I hold it up. “This is too small for a door lock, but too large for a safety deposit box. Do you know what it opens?”

“Yes. A very special keepsake box that once belonged to Valentina’s father.”  He pulls me into his arms. “And I also know where I’ll find it. Time to pack up again.”

“Where to, this time?”

“Paris,” he says sadly. “While we’re there, we’ll lay her to rest there.”

I lean back onto him. Through his tee-shirt I can feel his heart pounding steadily, like a metronome meting out all the reasons why he will always be worthy of my love.

Trust. Devotion. Passion. Honor. Courage.

His heartbeat also reminds me that if we’re to stop Carl, time is of the essence.

My birthday is less than a week away.

Chapter 15

Planning Your First Weekend Getaway

Squeeeee! He wants to take you away for the weekend! 

So that this is the first of many fantasy getaways with the new man in your life, take these items with you. They’ll ensure you take off as much as you carry on:

Item #1: A bathing suit. Stay away from the one your mother bought you. Instead take something with tiny straps that break easily, especially when you’re being hit by a ten-foot wave. Nothing says “I’m available” like a naked woman on the beach!

Item #2: A sun hat. The bigger, the better. However, to avoid helmet hair, don’t wear a hat that is (a) wool, (b) leather, (c) baseball (d) a helmet, or (e) ten gallon.

Item #3: A paddle. Yes, you can use it to play Ping-Pong in the hotel’s rumpus room. But it is more than likely he’ll be using it on your sunburned rump, after you’ve expressed your fantasy to “be his little girl.” Be careful what you ask for!

Item #4: A taser gun! Consider this an emergency only item. For example, you can use it in case he (a) books you in a roach-infested hellhole inhabited by a lot of lowlifes, (b) makes you carry both his bag and yours, up several flights of stairs, or (c) he somehow forgets your safety word. With one shock, he’s sure to remember it the next time.

The flight to Charles De Gaulle puts us in Paris just after dusk. It takes an hour by car to get into the city proper. Billowing blankets of rain, caught in the streetlamps, shimmer around us in a blustery wind. 

Our first stop is the Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise, where we will bury Valentina. 

She’ll be in good company. Besides Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Chopin and Gertrude Stein, Valentina’s father was also laid to rest in one of the graves among Pere-Lachaise’s tree-lined cobblestoned streets of the dead. He was a Romanian professor whose anti-government discourses made him an enemy of the state and put him in a notorious hard labor camp. 

It also put Valentina, a teen gymnast at the time, on the path to espionage. She was a reluctant spy for the SIE—Romania’s Foreign Intelligence—before Jack turned her into an Acme asset. 

When her cover was blown, he married her to give her diplomatic immunity.

Along the way, he fell in love with her.

We arrive right at dusk. I stand beside him as her coffin is lowered into a freshly dug hole in the center of this one-hundred-and-ten-acre garden of stone angels. Like Jack’s, their anguish is etched in every pore of their faces. 

He crouches down and scoops up a handful of the freshly churned dirt, only to let it filter through his fingers. Each clod and pebble hits her coffin, a timpani of regrets.

When she was alive, I could not stop him from having feelings for her.

Now that she is dead, I cannot stop him from mourning for her.

To love him, I must accept this. 

As we walk away, we pass a man in a wheelchair. He wends his way carefully down the old cobblestone paths, steering clear of the gnarled roots of the oak trees that shade this sad city of the dead.

In the mere second his eyes meet mine, I am touched by the sadness I see there.

I know in my heart that my own reflect something very different: the hope that Jack can now love me fully, and with an open heart.

We reach Avenue de New York in time to see the light show on the Eiffel Tower, which splashes and sparks to the delight of the crowds at its base. 

If only Jack and I could be among them, enjoying the sights and sounds of the most famous city of love.

Despite our dire circumstances, Jack is actually smiling.  “I know a little place we can grab a quick bite to eat. It’s right around the corner from my old place.”

He takes me into the neighborhood known as Le Marais. The bistro is in a narrow alley. Inside, it is packed with locals. As we wait for our fish entrees to arrive, the hum of lively conversation hits us on all sides. Anyone watching us would think he only has eyes for me, but I know better. Like any good spy, his ears are perked and his eyes are focused on the hubbub around us. Before Acme assigned him the role of my husband in order to smoke out the real Carl Stone, he was running Acme’s European operations. 

A blithe conversation between the svelte, fashionably attired middle-aged couple at the next table puts a smile on his lips. He nods in the woman’s direction. “Her lover just walked in. Her husband insists she invite him over.”

Now I am laughing, too. “You miss it here, don’t you?”

He shrugs. “Maybe someday, when the children are older, we’ll have an opportunity to spend more time here.”

“That would be interesting.” I mean that on many levels. I wonder if  he means we should request a joint transfer. Or does he plan on us resigning from Acme?

But that’s the problem: assassins don’t retire. We’ll always be looking over our shoulder, if not for Carl and the Quorum, then for the next Carl, and the next Quorum. 

Sadly, Paris is not the sort of place one can hide in plain sight.

And then there is the issue of his past with Valentina. Even if she wasn’t buried here, Jack is more likely to feel her presence in this town, where he loved her so passionately, and where she left him so callously.

At this point in our relationship, Jack knows me well enough to guess my thoughts. “I’d go to the end of the earth with you, Donna, you know that. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re together. Forever.” 

This is my wish, too.

Unfortunately, so would Carl, I think. That’s why we have to put him away, once and for all.

When our meal comes, we eat in silence. 

As we get up to leave, I notice that the woman and her lover hold hands under the table while her husband rubs her neck. When the husband gives me a wink, the wife frowns petulantly.

Passion is simple, whereas love is complicated. 

I am happy to get out of there. Now that the rain has stopped, the air smells fresh and clean and new.

Jack and I have a chance at a new beginning.

I won’t let Carl ruin it for us.

“We’re here,” Jack says.

I look around us. We’re now about three miles down and across the river from the Musée d'Orsay, driving onto a stone bridge called Pont Marie. It takes us onto a small island known as Ile St. Louis, which sits in the middle of the river. On the far side of the island is Notre Dame.

Jack drives around the island until we are facing the Seine’s left bank. Finally he pulls into a narrow alley and turns off the engine. “We’re here.” He points up to a top floor window in one of the many centuries-old buildings which jut out over the river.

“Is it some sort of safe house?”

“No. It’s the home of a dear friend.” His smile fades. “The man who lives there, Anton Gregorescu, was a friend of Valentina’s. He brought home three medals for the Romanian Men’s gymnastics team. He was very much in love with her.”