about him, too. I'd study the board for several minutes before I moved, and he would have his piece taking mine off the board within a second." He thought back to those times. "We used to play a game every night before I went to bed. Other kids were having story time, I was playing chess. It was just me and my dad, too—my mother was never involved."
"She didn't play at all?"
"No." He raised his gaze to Maya's. "That's something that confuses me. He used to travel without her. She didn't always go with him. But that weekend she did. Why did she leave me behind? Why didn't she stay home that time? Why didn't she go with me to Carol's house?"
Maya's green gaze filled with compassion. "I don't know, Jax. I wish she had. Maybe she thought she could save your father."
"Or she was involved in whatever he was doing, and they both wanted to keep the danger away from me." He shook his head. "My mind is going down a lot of dark roads right now."
"Let's put some light on those roads. What are you thinking?"
"It's hard to say it out loud."
"You can tell me, Jax. I won't judge."
"All right. I wonder how long my dad was a spy, if he was sent to the US for that purpose. I wonder if my parents' marriage was real. Or was it part of their cover? Was I part of their cover? I think back to the fact that we never had any Russian things in the house. We were very Americanized. Aside from the food that my mom would make, everything else was US. All the pictures were of city scenes or sports teams. We didn't celebrate Russian holidays, but we had a big party on the Fourth of July."
"Maybe they just loved America."
"Maybe. They traveled a lot, my dad especially. Sometimes late at night, I would hear him on the phone. My mom also had this daily ritual where she would walk to the park and she would come back thirty minutes later. She never let me go with her. She said it was her time. I didn't think much about it, but now everything seems suspicious. Was she meeting someone? Was she handing off information? My dad had the best cover. With chess, he could travel all over the country. He met with celebrities and political leaders. He had access to so many people. And when he wasn't playing chess, he was teaching at a university where he met with students all the time, where he went to dinner with other faculty members." He ran a hand through his hair. "Do you know what 1985 was called?"
She shook her head.
"The Year of the Spy. Russian spies were everywhere." He paused. "Were my parents spies, Maya? Was I the son of two spies?"
"Maybe," she said with a helpless shrug. "And I might be the granddaughter of a Russian spy. I know it's different for you, because you were with your parents for seven years of your life and I never knew Natasha, but I do have some idea of the shock you're going through."
"I know you do. I shouldn't be ranting at you."
"It's good for you to talk it out. One thing you should remember, Jax. Your parents loved you. Whatever they did, whoever they were, they loved you enough to make sure you were safe and protected, even if they couldn't be there to do it. And there's something noble in that."
"Is there? Or were they just cowards? Did they just run away?"
"If they ran away, it was to protect you."
"And themselves."
"Possibly, yes. Do you think there's any chance they're alive? I know I asked you that before…"
"My answer is still no. Not that there isn't a part of me that wouldn't like some fairy-tale ending, some incredible reunion, but it's been twenty-six years." He shook his head, a grim resolve in his eyes. "They're not coming back, Maya, no matter how much I want them to." He felt that certainty down deep in his soul. "But I will find out what happened to them." He picked up the chess piece and moved it around. "It's funny. There was a sequence of moves my dad once taught me."
"Do you remember it?"
A memory gnawed at the back of his mind. The sequence hadn't been used in the game. It was for something else…
"Wait a second," he said. "It was a trick. There was a mystery compartment." He looked