Editor’s note: This column is part of a fictional weekly serial.
Edgar shut the kitchen door, watching the ceiling intently as if he could see Alicia walking the floor above. Cecilia watched, bemused, from the table.
“We only have a moment, but there’s something I must tell you. I’ve told your mother I’m dying, but that’s not why you’re here.” Cecilia started forward in her seat, but he waved it aside. “I am dying, though that’s neither here nor there. With your mother here this will be a bit more difficult. In different circumstances I would almost be grateful she’s come, though I might have wished otherwise...”
Seeming to remember himself, Edgar pushed up the sagging sleeves of his overly large knitted sweater. “Cecilia, I need your help. Whatever you’ve been told, whatever you think you know about your own family history, you must set it aside and suspend your disbelief in the service of something vital.”
Cecilia just looked at him. If he weren’t her ailing grandfather whom she’d just met, she would have immediately called him out on how pompous he sounded. As it were...
Edgar slid conspiratorially into the seat beside Cecilia. “I need you to know that it has not been by choice that I have not been in your life. It is on the orders of the British government and Her Majesty herself that I returned from America to live this life of anonymity. You see, I... am a spy.”
Sometime while they had been talking, Alicia had come down the stairs and opened the door without them noticing. She stood on the bottom step, shaking her head at Cecilia over Edgar’s shoulder.
This man, Cecilia thought, has lost it.
Edgar was watching Cecilia, expectant and ever so slightly vulnerable. “A spy,” she said evenly.
“I suppose for official purposes I’m retired, but that’s a technicality.” Edgar leaned forward and took her hand. “I was entrusted with a dark, dangerous secret a long time ago, and it was the only way to keep everyone safe, to come here. But now, with my own departure from this world so close at hand, I need your help. I need you to believe me, whatever they’ve said about me, whatever your mother is saying to you over my shoulder.”
Cecilia gaped at him. Alicia hadn’t heard his last words, but she had indeed been mouthing at Cecilia for the last two minutes.
“We’ll talk later,” Edgar whispered, patting Cecilia on the shoulder as he stood. “Have dinner ready in two hours, won’t you, dear?” he called to Alicia as he strolled out towards the garden.
“When do you think I learned to cook?” She glanced at Cecilia, who was still frozen in her seat. “I should have warned you but I thought for sure he’d have gotten past that.”
“So he’s not a spy?” Cecilia felt foolish just asking it.
Alicia hesitated. “The details are a little unclear. I just know that when he left the US it was not at all on the British government’s dime.”
“He’s a spy,” Cecilia whispered to herself, looking out the window. “He’s a freaking—”
“You shouldn’t believe anything he says. It wasn’t that simple,” Alicia cautioned, but her words fell on deaf ears.
After Years: Chapter Four
