Forever's a long time

Chapter 14

Hetty drove as Granger looked out of the window, his mind miles away, worried about what his son would do in his current state of mind.

He knew he had made mistakes. Many, many mistakes, some he could atone for he hoped, others would have to just be chalked up to experience.

Hetty let him sit with his thoughts for a while, trying to balance out the revelations in her own head that he was in fact, the father that Callen had been searching for all those years.

"Why didn't you tell Callen you were his father when you found him?" She asked.

Granger shook his head, "I couldn't... He hated me Henrietta, you saw that."

"He didn't know you, you had me 'prisoner' in the boat shed."

"What would I have said, Hey son, I know I'm holding your boss, but it's ok I'm your father?"

Hetty sighed, he was right that hadn't been the right time, but he could and should have said something.

"Why didn't you go looking for him when he was younger?" She asked.

Granger was silent. He didn't want to go there, but he knew he needed to tell someone.

"Clara was supposed to go alone to meet you on the beach that day. I was at the Dacha, packing the last of our things. Amy was being behaved and helping me. Grant was only four, he was having a temper tantrum. He had a nasty temper as a child, It reminded me of my mother. She would sit and stew on something bothering her for days until she blew, Grant was a lot like that." He paused as Hetty negotiated a hard stretch of road, thankful for the break.

"Grant screamed blue murder for hours until Clara gave in and took him with her to meet you. He didn't like staying with me even then. Grant has always been Clara's son more than mine." He said ruefully, Amy had been a daddy's girl, but Grant had been his mother's protector since he could walk. Always spending time with her rather than him.

"I waited for you to come back with them, we waited until it was dark. I stayed with Amy while Hans, who had come to help us out of the country searched for Clara and Grant." He trailed off again as the memory assailed him. "He found Grant an hour later on the beach beside Clara's body. He hadn't moved a muscle, he was frozen in fear. The Comescu's had cleared the beach and we knew that they were waiting for me to show up and take the boy so they could shoot me too. Hans picked Grant up and went on ahead, not meeting up with me, but heading straight to America, he was followed and left Grant on the doorstep of a nearby orphanage. We didn't know the shock had affected his memory. He couldn't remember his name. We thought that would be safer for him."

"Why Callen not Granger?" Hetty asked, breaking his musing.

"I never married Clara, She didn't know me as Owen Granger I didn't take this name till later, She knew me as Nikita Reznikov. I was born in Russia, I was with the KGB until Clara met me and got me to work for the CIA. I said to her that Americanized names would be better for the children as we were planning to go there. So Amy and Grant. By the time Amy and I made it to America I was told Hans had died. Grant had been put into the foster system but I lost touch with him for a while."

"Did you look?" Hetty asked.

An anguished look crossed Granger's face. "I went to work with the CIA, I was sent on assignment soon after. I had to put Amy into the system for a while, for her safety. When I went to get her I found out she had died. I couldn't find Grant. There was no record of a Grant Callen in the system."

"So you stopped looking?" Hetty's hands tightened imperceptibly on the steering wheel.

"For a while, it hurt too much having to bury Amy."