End of Series Spoiler

"Broken Vow"

Tell me her name
I want to know
The way she looks
And where you go
I need to see her face
I need to understand
Why you and I came to an end

Tell me again
I want to hear
Who broke my faith in all these years
Who lays with you at night
When I'm here all alone
Remembering when I was your own

Chorus: I'll let you go
I'll let you fly
Why do I keep asking why
I'll let you go
Now that I found
A way to keep somehow
More than a broken vow

Tell me the words I never said
Show me the tears you never shed
Give me the touch
That one you promised to be mine
Or has it vanished for all time

I'll let you go
I'll let you fly
Why do I keep asking why
I'll let you go
Now that I found
A way to keep somehow
More than a broken vow

I close my eyes
And dream of you and I
And then I realize
There's more to life than only bitterness and lies
I close my eyes
I'd give away my soul
To hold you once again
And never let this promise end

I'll let you go
I'll let you fly
Now that I know I'm asking why
I'll let you go
Now that I found
A way to keep somehow
More than a broken vow

- Lara Fabian, self-titled album

***

I stand at the fringes, my usual place in this world...a world of reality and normalcy that is not my own and never has been. I stand quietly at the edge and watch the one last connection that ties me to this world un-knot and slip away. Today is Sunday. Today I watch father and son complete a weekly ritual for probably the last time, as the boy becomes a man and as father and son become true friends. Today is the day after Adam's high school graduation; the day I have always expected my life to change.

Michael and Adam sit side-by-side on a grassy patch by the small lake within the Palace of Fine Arts. Underneath a glorious golden sun and a bright blue, cloudless sky a soft breeze swirls about, creating the perfect atmosphere for a lazy Sunday afternoon. For this one perfect moment the true nature of San Francisco's weather...the rolling fog, the misty, cool air and the indecisiveness of a climate that never quite decides whether to rain until the storm actually begins is held at bay. Even Mother Nature has better sense than to damper the simple, yet charming ritual of a father and son as they toss pieces of stale bread from a local bakery to the various ducks and seagulls, which have adopted this small habitat as their own. This last trip to feed the ducks is a personal request of Adam's, a ritual begun as a last ditch effort by a desperate father to cheer-up his seven-year-old son overwhelmed by too many changes in his short life. No surveillance equipment or shadow operative needed to confirm my knowledge of who made the request. My certainty is born from years of observation and mothering-by-proxy...the details of Adam's life are as familiar to me as if I had spent every day with him, raising him. From the moment I saw him in his father's arms that fateful first and wholly unexpected time Adam became a part of me...flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. He is the only child I too will ever have. Michael and Adam are the legacy I leave behind.

Today was supposed to be the first day of my new life. For the past twelve years, during secret stolen moments, I allowed myself the guilty pleasure of fantasizing what it would be like to be in Michael's arms once again. To taste the sweetness of his kiss. To inhale his musky scent. To have the freedom to be together. I created hundreds upon hundreds of scenarios for our reunion, anticipating that reality would eventually far exceed fantasy. While we have had no contact during our separation, I have been fully cognizant of the life he and Adam have led. In the first two years of Michael's release from Section, he and Adam moved numerous times...changing cities and countries as often and as frequently as a military family. Old habits diehard and this time Michael had more than his own life at stake. I understood his need to be mobile. I couldn't fault him for it either. Then something changed. Or maybe it was just Michael because for the past ten years, just prior to Adam entering the second grade, they have lived in San Francisco on a permanent basis. In all honesty I breathed a sigh of relief when he found them a permanent place to live because keeping watch over them became that much easier for me. It allowed me to become a part of their lives.

I watched Adam grow up in photographs and on videotapes. I cried the day he earned his Black Belt in Karate and laughed until I had tears in my eyes as his fourth grade class performed a play about English grammar in which Adam held a staring role as a proper noun. I read report after report on the success of Michael's various business ventures. Never content to merely bask in his own successes while in Section, the same trait held true in his new life. As soon as one business was up and running successfully, he was already scoping out new possibilities. However, that was not the report that made me the happiest. No the report I found the greatest joy in told not of his financial success, but of a personal one. He started playing the cello again. No sound was ever more beautiful and moving to me than Michael at the cello. He always played the cello as an extension of his soul. When we were together he played only a few times, but during those times it was as if he was speaking to me through the music and for that moment in time I could forget who I was. His return to the cello gave me heart; a sign that life was going to be all right for Michael and Adam. So that was how I remained a part of their lives. While part of me strategized, interrogated, and sacrificed, the rest of me attended PTA meetings, read bedtime stories, gave driving lessons and taught a son to be a man and that man to be a decent human being. Section and subsequently Center may be my existence, but Michael and Adam are my essence.

That day in the train station, as Michael and I held each other in a painful embrace, confessions of love and promises for the future falling from our lips, I am not sure what I truly believed the future held for us. Did I honestly believe that there would be a time when Adam would not need him? Did I think that there would be a time when Section, Center, the organization at large could take second-place in my life? I can't really answer those questions with any degree of certainty. The one declaration I can make with one hundred percent assurance is that I never expected Michael to give up on us. But he did. Three years ago.

Her name is Victoria. Victoria Donatello y Sanchez. She is forty-four years old, a photojournalist of great acclaim and notoriety, a well-bred woman from a prominent Argentine family and the woman with whom Michael is going to spend the rest of his life.

They met three years ago, at the symphony, which somehow seems very fitting. The details aren't important. Not here. He loves her. He...loves...her. He is not in love with her, that I know for sure, but he does love her all the same. As I have seen him with all the women he has ever loved, I know the look of Michael 'in' love. I saw his deep abiding love for Simone as he held her tightly in that cold cell after years of believing her dead; I watched with a pained heart the tender, cherishing manner in which he embraced Elena after the failed meeting with her father in the park; but most of all I beheld the fiery passion and fierce love for me emblazoned in his ever-changing eyes throughout our years in Section together. He loved us all and in her I think he sought a piece of all of us. Her golden skin tone, light brown hair and chocolate eyes resemble Elena's own coloring in many ways, but even more than that she has Elena's warm smile and calming manner. My trait is rather obvious - her strong independent streak. I had to laugh at that one. I can only assume her sense of humor reminds him of Simone. Over the years Walter has regaled me with numerous stories of Simone and her wonderful sense of humor. I am glad that he sought out such a trait. I have always wished Michael had more laughter in his life. However, there is one roll that she can never fill, that none of the others could either. Only I can.

I am his soul mate.

Victoria offers him comfort and contentment. I complete him. She supports him, encourages him, and admires him. I am him. She knows only a serious, tender man whose past is filled with secrets. I know the lover and killer; the warrior and father; the strategist and solider. She sees pieces. I see the whole.

I never blamed him for finding her. I raged and cried and destroyed at the knowledge that he moved on, found someone new, but I never blamed him directly. How could I? He did not ask to find her or love her or even leave me all those years ago. It simply happened. A part of me is even happy for him. Glad that he has found someone to share the loneliness with, someone to share the burden and joy of raising Adam. I just...I just wanted that someone to be me. I never knew how much until the day Walter told me about her.

From day one Walter was in charge of monitoring Michael and Adam. I trusted no other. So it was he who carried the burden of speaking her name that inevitable day.

I had actually been in my personal quarters in the Tower, enjoying a rare moment of peace and relaxation. Walter was supposed to be joining me that evening for a friendly dinner, but when he arrived early I instinctively knew...knew that he bore news about Michael. The information didn't register immediately. Somehow, in my mind, the idea of Michael with another woman was inconceivable. I couldn't grasp the concept. So I didn't. I ignored the information Walter had presented and preceded to serve us dinner. Just as I finished serving dessert, the damn burst. Rivers and rivers of tears poured from me as Walter rocked me in his supportive arms and murmured soft words of reassurance.

Afterwards, tears dried and a belly full of ice cream, I learned that Walter had actually been keeping the knowledge of this relationship from me for months. He hadn't wanted to cause me any unnecessary pain in case the relationship never developed beyond a few dates. But it did and he was finally forced to confess. What was I to do? Michael and Adam needed a woman in their lives and she filled the void physically and emotionally. I could only offer the emotional and that was uncertain at best.

I still continued to fantasize; pretend that Victoria was only a temporary situation. That once Adam finished high school and moved on to college, Michael would end things with her. Return to me. But it was just wishful thinking on my part. Coming to San Francisco has proven just how foolish I was to think otherwise.

A few soft, wispy white clouds have now floated in with the evening breeze off the bay. The sun is a little less golden as its lengthy rays disseminate in the waning hour. Michael and Adam have risen from their resting spot. Their attention pulled away from birds, bread and father-son talks to an elegant woman waiting patiently at the edge of the Palace. A lilting smile graces her youthful face and a few tendrils of hair that escaped from her ponytail dance in the late afternoon wind. I watch as father and son cross the distance to the woman in waiting, expressions of joy on both older and younger man's face. Words are exchanged as the threesome regroup, but I am too far away to hear anything being said. But something pleases Michael because he quickly leans in and places a chaste, but loving kiss on her lips.

And my heartbreaks once again.

Then they are walking away. Her hand latched at Adam's elbow as he regales her with the excited, uncontrollable chatter of a newly freed graduate. Michael follows, only a few steps behind, pride and happiness evident in his purposeful strides. Then the moment happens. The one I have been waiting for. The one for which I attended Adam's graduation yesterday and stand here at the Palace of Fine Arts today. Michael stops for a moment and turns around. Even at this distance I can still read the expression in his lush, green eyes. He piercing gaze is unerringly accurate as he narrows in on the area where I hide. For a moment he looks poised to move, his eyes flutter with indecision and then resolve in utter certainty. A small, knowing smile graces his lips as he tilts his head slightly to the right, an acknowledgement of my presence. For a moment I close my eyes. Overwhelmed by how quickly our connection is reestablished, the energy between us pulsating with life. When I open my eyes he is gone.

I gently wipe the tears coursing down my face, the ones I don't even feel. The pain is so overwhelming, so wholly consuming that I am numb. He chose. Not between her and me, but between me and life. And I love him more than I thought possible for that choice even as a piece of my heart and soul, long buried, dies. He chooses to embrace the freedom granted to him twelve years ago; a freedom handled with great respect and reverence. I can understand because I would have made the same choice.

We were but a moment in time that existed in a fiery breath of passion, love, sorrow, and pain. Our time has passed and we must move on. Michael knows where to find me if he needs me, but just as he is allowing Adam to find his own path in life, so must I permit Michael to do so. Center and all its obligations demand my return and so with a heavy, yet understanding heart I return to the life I was born for.

Send suggestions and comments to Kathleen click HERE.