by Jess Bentley
“Mum. It’s morning here. Just after nine in the morning.”
“Friday or Saturday?”
Mick sighed. “Friday. Friday morning. I’m still eight hours behind you.”
“Well, that just doesn’t make any sense at all,” she argued.
“Take it up with the Queen,” Mick replied. “The next time you two have tea.”
One of the first things anybody who met Beverly Merryweather would learn about her was that she’d once received a letter from the Queen. Signed correspondence from Queen Elizabeth II herself.
The letter was kept under Bev’s bed, in a wooden box handmade by Mick’s great-great-grandfather.
The subject matter was unpleasant, but it made all the difference to a grieving mother to know that the nation stood with her in her time of need.
Frank, Mick’s younger brother, had been a football star. Football, as in soccer.
Whereas Mick had gravitated toward the rough and tumble aspects of rugby, Frank’s speed and grace with the ball made him a prototype winger.
At just seventeen, he’d been promoted to local club Sheffield United’s senior team, playing with and against grown men, earning more money in his first full professional season than his father ever had in an entire year.
United had a trio of young stars; Frank Merryweather, Graham Nevin, and Marcus Gentry, all three local lads who’d grown up playing together since the age of six— who all had genuine aspirations of one day representing the nation of England in a World Cup.
By eighteen, two of them were starting for Sheffield United and drawing interest from scouts at the biggest, and richest, clubs in the English Premier League and throughout Europe.
Frank turned nineteen and was considered among the brightest young stars in England. After a season in which he scored fourteen goals and assisted on nine others, he turned down a massive contract with Liverpool, one of the powerhouse clubs in European soccer. He looked set to become a megastar, but he wanted to do it on his own terms, in his hometown. He was a legend in Sheffield.
With the training starting for the new season, expectations and excitement in Sheffield were high. Mick was away, on assignment for MI6, but he followed along as well as he could from where he’d been stationed in West Africa.
Bev and Harry—Frank and Mick’s dad— were over the moon.
A drunk driver brought the Merryweather family, and all of Sheffield, crashing back to Earth.
The “Three Musketeers,” Frank, Graham, and Marcus, were driving together to practice one morning when they had a flat.
They pulled to the side of the road, as far as they were able, and all three got out to survey the damage and decide on a course of action.
Neither Graham nor Marcus had any experience changing tires, so Frank was elected. He pulled the spare from the “boot” of the car and squatted down next to the driver’s side rear to get to work on the flat. Graham phoned ahead to let the coaching staff know what had happened.
Just as Graham hung up the phone, and Frank wrestled the tire off, it happened.
Niles McCaughtrey had been arrested several times before that fateful night for drunk driving, but none of that stopped him from spending the evening drinking at every pub in Sheffield, talking up the prospects of their local team and its young stars with the promise of a new season on the horizon.
McCaughtrey took a turn too fast, lost control, and his car spun wildly, smashing into the three players before they knew what hit them.
The police investigation reported that Marcus Gentry and Frank Merryweather were killed instantly. For whatever solace it would provide the family, they were told that death was instant. There was no suffering. Graham Nevin survived the impact and lasted a week in hospital before he succumbed. The inebriated driver, Nile McCaughtrey, walked away from the incident and was arrested three blocks away, pressing a towel to a gash on his forehead and attempting to hail a cab.
The accident shocked the nation and rocked Sheffield to its foundation. Mick was recalled from Sierra Leone for the funeral. He and his father served as pallbearers alongside two of Frank’s best mates. Frank’s Sheffield United away jersey was draped across his casket during the service and buried with him.
Two days after the funeral, a letter arrived addressed to Beverly Merryweather. It bore the royal seal, and Mick’s mother opened it with trembling hands. It contained a hand-written note from Queen Elizabeth II. Brief and direct, it relayed the sympathy of the Crown for the great loss the Merryweather family had suffered. Bev marveled at the letter, and in the days that followed, he found his mother sitting at the kitchen table with the note in her hands, eyes going back and forth between it and a framed picture of a nine-year-old Frank, wearing a broad grin and holding a trophy in his hands.
When Mick returned to work, his superiors found that he had become aggressive and reckless, and they recommended “compassionate leave” so he could process his grief.
He was back in Sheffield when the new football season began, and he attended the first home match with his father. Bev was too distraught and declined the invitation.
A sculpture was unveiled outside the stadium in a pregame ceremony honoring the fallen three. The base of the piece was a replica of Bramall Lane, Sheffield United’s home stadium. A pair of hands rose from inside the stadium, open to the air. Suspended above the hands were three doves, each emblazoned with the uniform number of one of the lost players.
Mick wept bitterly at the unveiling of the statue, an outpouring of emotion, and tears, that he’d denied himself since first hearing the news.
He and his father cheered and sang through a wild come-from-behind victory for the home team.
Once he’d spent a few weeks at home, he returned to Africa, this time to Liberia. He was shot in the leg shortly thereafter; a victim of poor intelligence that put the arms smugglers he was tracking several miles away from where he stumbled upon them.
During his convalescence, Mick received two pieces of news from home. First, Niles McCaughtrey, the impaired driver who’d killed his brother, had been found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial.
The news never called the death a suicide, and he was only thirty-six, so natural causes seemed unlikely. It wasn’t until years later that Mick’s mother forwarded him a piece of mail she’d received at her home that was addressed to Mick. It was a plain white envelope, with no return address. He opened it in his Las Vegas condo and found just a scrap of paper inside:
“Plausible deniability precludes specifics, but just know that Frank’s death was avenged.”
That was it. Mick often wondered who was responsible; someone from the RAF? MI6? A Sheffield United fan? Whomever handled the hit, it was clean and, to Mick’s knowledge, never prosecuted. It helps to have friends in high places. Or dark places, as it were.
The second bit of news visited upon Mick while he was in recovery was that his father had collapsed in his kitchen and died, felled by a massive heart attack. Harry had been a healthy man, a carpenter who never seemed to feel the ups and downs of life too deeply. He didn’t smoke, drank lightly relative to his friends and neighbors, and was generally at very low-risk of heart trouble. The stress of Frank’s death, however, changed him, and eventually his figurative broken heart stopped his literal one.
Bev became cold and withdrawn, and she could often be found seated in a folding chair in front of Bramall Lane, gazing upon her son’s memorial sculpture while she held Harry’s favorite Sheffield United scarf in her hands.
Mick felt himself drowning in the sorrow that surrounded his mother and his hometown, and he needed to put both behind him. A winding road led him to Las Vegas, Nevada. But he always kept in close contact with his mum, who never took kindly to her letter from the Queen being mocked, even by her son.
“God bless that woman,” Bev responded in light of Mick’s notion that she’d share tea with a commoner. “But I’d certainly have a better chance of her dropping by to visit than my own son, more�
�s the pity.”
“I don’t suppose you’d want to come to the colonies for a visit?” Mick asked.
“Arizona or wherever you are, was never a colony, you bloody fool,” Bev corrected. It was a game they often played, to Mick’s delight and Bev’s chagrin.
“Stateside, then, if you prefer. I’ll fly you over on the Concorde.”
“Stop taking the piss, the Concorde’s in mothballs,” Bev’s agitated voice replied. “I suppose you’ll try to have me sail on the Titanic next.”
“There’s an idea,” Mick laughed.
“You know I don’t travel outside South Yorkshire,” Bev grumbled. “You’ll have to come here. Maybe this time put a little joy in an old woman’s heart and bring a young lady home with you. One that might provide me with some grandchildren before I die.”
“If and when I met somebody worth introducing to you, Mum, I promise you’ll be the first to know. But, I’m afraid you’ll be stuck with just me for the foreseeable future. Still want me to visit?”
“I saw more of you when you were working for The Circus,” Bev complained. MI6 had been nicknamed The Circus ever since during World War II when it’s offices occupied a building that had once been home to the directors of a popular British circus.
“Nice to hear you so cheery, Mum,” Mick replied. “I’ll pass along my itinerary when I have it. Love you.”
“Cheers, Mickey.”
Chapter 10
Ayla was driving to work early Friday morning, exhausted after a largely sleepless night, when her phone rang. Before she looked at it, she said a silent prayer that it would be her boss, Jeff, telling her they were overstaffed and offering her the opportunity to stay home. The calls didn’t come often, and she couldn’t really afford to miss work, but the excitement of seeing Preston’s dad— she’d decided that it just had to be him— made it impossible to get any proper sleep.
She looked down at her phone as she rolled to a red light, and saw the name “Tara” instead of “NPE – Jeff.”
“Hey, girl,” Ayla answered. Tara, Ayla’s best friend from high school, lived with her husband in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, where they ran a B&B he’d inherited from his grandparents.
Ayla hadn’t yet made good on her promise to visit, despite the fact that Tara said she and Preston could come and stay for free whenever they wanted to. They kept in touch mostly via social media.
“Ayla! Are you serious?” Tara was practically shouting into the phone.
“What?” Ayla replied, still more asleep than awake, driving to work on autopilot, waiting for her energy drink to kick in.
“The video you sent me! That’s totally the guy!”
Ayla sent a link to the news story about Watterson Gaming to Tara right before she went to bed the previous evening, which was actually less than three hours prior. Tara and Natalie were the only two people who’d seen the mystery man from Scald that night on the parking garage rooftop, and everybody had lost touch with Natalie.
“Thank you! I know I’m not crazy!” Ayla responded. “It’s him, right?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” said Tara. “And how freaking hot is he?”
Ayla pulled back into traffic. “Very. Nice signal, asshole! Sorry, not you, Tara.”
Tara laughed. “Duh, no worries. I have to ask. How wet did you get seeing him again?”
“Stop it. Do you ever think of anything besides sex?”
“Why would I want to?” Tara asked. “What’s better?”
“I barely remember,” Ayla confessed. “Ever since Preston, it’s been work, work, work, baby, baby, baby. Occasionally sleep. Sex hasn’t exactly been a priority.”
“Sucks to be you. Why don’t you grab Watterson Gaming guy and come to Pennsylvania? There’s nothing here but woods to explore, and our dogs love kids. You could have plenty of adult time. Just putting that out there.”
“Yeah, you make it sound so easy,” Ayla replied, pulling into the parking lot at National Parcel Express. “I can’t even figure out where to start with the guy. I can’t just barge into Watterson’s corporate office, Preston in tow, find him, and say ‘Here’s your kid!’”
“Yeah, that might not strike the right tone. But what do they say, ‘knowing is half the battle’? Hypnotize him with your ass, girl.”
“You’re impossible. I’m at work, I gotta go. But you’re sure it’s him, right?”
“Not a doubt in my mind,” Tara confirmed. “Although you, ah, got a bit better look at him than I did.”
“Love you, thanks.”
“Miss you, friend.”
Exhaustion be damned, Ayla bounced into work. She was energized and ignored Jeff’s nasty attitude and with the news that the last truck they were expecting from Fresno had been delayed, she got out of work a bit early.
The weekend was off to a good start.
Lupe had only been there for fifteen minutes when Ayla got home, and Preston greeted his mother at the door. “Buenos dias mami te amo como fue el tr-tr-trajabo?”
“Trabajo,” Lupe corrected Preston’s fledgling Spanish. “Work.”
“Oh yeah, trabajo. How was work?”
Ayla laughed. “Work was work. Yucky. But we got done early, so that’s cool, right? Want me to make pancakes? Lupe, would you like to stay for breakfast?”
Lupe agreed, and Ayla whipped up a batch of pancakes that the three of them ate while Lupe continued Preston’s crash course in Spanish.
Day three of learning Spanish had Preston excited about going to daycare to play with his “friends,” Gilberto and Luis, and Ayla’s morning at the call center was as close to “not terrible” as it ever got.
Her first break rolled around and she checked her phone on the way to the vending machine to grab a Mountain Dew for a caffeine burst.
She opened a text from Desiree, in all caps:
MICK MERRYWEATHER. HIS NAME IS MICK MERRYWEATHER. TEXT ME ASAP!
Ayla stopped in her tracks and stared at the phone. Her palm covered her mouth and her eyes struggled not to bug right out of her head.
Mick Merryweather. Preston Merryweather. Ayla Merryweather? She thought of the three names and then spoke them aloud.
Ayla slumped down against the wall in the hallway outside the breakroom, laughing and crying simultaneously. She replied to her roommate’s text.
“Tell me more!”
Moments later, Desiree replied.
“About time! I asked around and one of the managers here worked at Watterson. The guy is Winston Watterson’s bodyguard. Mick Merryweather. He’s British. That’s all I know, I’ll keep poking around.”
British? Ayla knew he had an accent of some sort, but it was slight. Maybe he’d lived in the United States for a long time?
“THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!”
Ayla sat and stared at the name until several co-workers went rushing by, anxious to avoid the wrath of Teri Palermo.
“Shit!” Ayla exclaimed, and she rushed back to her cubicle, sans caffeine. She didn’t need it. She was high on Mick Merryweather.
Teri glared at Ayla’s smile; nobody was supposed to be that happy on her watch.
Chapter 11
All Ayla wanted to do was stay put in Las Vegas and scheme up a way to cross paths with Mick, but she’d promised Preston a trip to California and a Dodgers game. Ayla knew that nothing short of Santa Claus could get between a six-year-old and a Dodger Dog, with a mini-batting helmet hot fudge sundae to wash it down.
As tricky as it would be to introduce herself, and the idea of Preston, to Mick, she hadn’t yet even begun to dissect how she’d bring a father into her son’s life.
A father and… grandparents?
Her own parents had made it clear from the moment Ayla knew she was pregnant that they wanted nothing to do with her “bastard child.”
Ayla had never had such a visceral reaction to spoken words in her life. When she’d mustered up the courage to tell her parents that she was expecting, her father gasped and looked li
ke he might faint. Her mother, on the other hand, seethed with rage and told her that there was “no place for a bastard grandchild in our lives.”
It felt like being hit with a sledgehammer, right in the gut. She knew they’d be disappointed, possibly upset, but she figured that the reality of a baby would soften them. But when that awful, horrible word crossed her mother’s lips, Ayla decided then and there that her parents deserved no place in the baby’s life, either.
Preston knew he had a mommy who loved him, and that Auntie Desiree was “family.”
He had his aunt, uncle, and cousins in California, and that was enough. Ayla’s little brother, Allan, had snuck in a few visits to meet Preston when he was a baby, but he’d left for the Air Force after high school, and he hadn’t been back since before his nephew turned three.
Preston had once asked why he didn’t have a grandma and grandpa like the kids he saw on TV, and Ayla explained that just like some kids have brothers, others sisters, some both, or, like him, neither, it was the same with grandmas and grandpas.
And daddies.
As brave as she was when she explained it to Preston’s evident five-year-old satisfaction, she cried and cried that night.
Mick, however, wasn’t just Mick, was he? Would his parents be any more receptive to having a grandson? Did he have brothers or sisters? Did Preston have cousins? Ayla’s mind raced as she cruised south on Interstate 15, bound for California. Preston noticed that Mommy was preoccupied, but he didn’t push the matter. He counted trucks and kept asking her to play something “cool” on the radio, until she relented and put in one of his Kidz Bop CDs.
Friday night traffic was awful both directions on the highway, and it took until nearly midnight to reach Amy’s house. Ayla was ready to collapse, but after putting Preston to bed, she had to read two articles Desiree had sent her.
It was from a decade earlier, in a newspaper called The Sheffield Telegraph. Prominent in the article was a picture that included a young Mick Merryweather, carrying a casket.
