Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

1962:Cuban Missile Crisis (October); USSR agrees to withdraw missiles if U.S. agrees not to invade Cuba (again); United Fruit creates small blue Chiquita sticker to promote its bananas.

1967:Che Guevara killed in Bolivia, backed by U.S. Special Forces and CIA.

1972:FBI director J. Edgar Hoover dies in Washington, D.C.; his secret files are removed from FBI headquarters, and some destroyed, by his longtime assistant and confidante, Helen Gandy; Miss Gandy immediately retires from FBI.

1974:FBI finally closes posthumous file on Hemingway.

1988:Former FBI employee Helen Gandy dies, and her knowledge of Hoover’s secret files dies with her; the Washington Post reports that Miss Gandy’s “favorite passion” was trout fishing.

1996:Guatemala civil war ends after thirty-six years; the conflict has resulted in 200,000+ persons missing or killed—“disappeared”—in what is later called genocide against the indigenous Mayans and rural peasants.

2013:In Guatemala, genocide trials have just begun against the military, former government officials, and powerful landholders; it is unclear whether the recently elected president of Guatemala will support their continuation, or what the official U.S. stance will prove to be.

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.