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Anya loved her new home.

It was the opposite of the lab in every way. It had wide, tall windows that let in lots of sunlight every morning, and long swishy curtains that she could wrap herself in so she could twirl like a princess. It had a big living room where she could run around and climb the furniture and build pillow forts. It had a nice cozy bedroom all for Anya, with a warm soft bed and a large chest of toys and a shelf full of comic books and posters of her favorite cartoons. It had a kitchen where she could stand on a stepstool and watch as Papa sliced and diced vegetables and fruit, and kneaded dough for cinnamon swirl bread and peanut butter cookies, and flipped pancakes and stirred yummy soups and seared Hamburg steak.

Papa was what Anya loved the most about her new home. He was the one who had rescued her from the lab and hugged her and let her cry against his shoulder as he ran and dodged bullets and fought the bad guys who were trying to get her back. He didn’t let her go even when a bullet hit his leg and he fell to the ground. He shielded her as his spy friend took care of the rest of the bad guys.

Papa had almost given her to his boss lady, who would have sent her to another country where they thought she could have a ‘better life.’ But she clung to him and cried even more, not stopping no matter how much he tried to shush her. She begged Papa over and over not to throw her away. And eventually, the boss lady changed her mind.

“That knee is going to be a lifelong handicap,” she had said to Papa. “It might make sense for you to take on a permanent cover. It would actually be easy to work into your next assignment.”

Papa had spluttered as he looked wide-eyed down at Anya. He tried to tell the boss lady that the idea was pre-poss-truss, spies couldn’t have kids, it was too dangerous, he was the least kwa-lee-fied person to be a father, couldn’t they find someone else who could take her—

“Papa is the best!” Anya had shouted. “Anya only wants Papa!”

And eventually, Papa had agreed. His ears turned pink and he wouldn’t stop grumbling under his breath to the boss lady, who had started laughing at him.

But under all of Papa’s embarrassment and fear, Anya read something else in his mind. Relief. Sort of like the relief Anya had felt when Papa had shown up in the lab and she had seen through his scientist disguise, knowing all of a sudden that this strange man was here to save her. 

Relief, and a bit of happiness. Like a burst of color over the gray gloom that filled Papa’s mind all the time in the few days Anya had known him.

Anya looked back up at Papa and smiled the biggest smile she could ever remember smiling. And for the first time since the scientists had taken her mama away, she laughed.

Lots of stuff changed after that day. They moved out of the bunker-like dark room into a nice apartment on a street called Park Avenue. Papa made Anya memorize their address just in case she ever got lost. He also made her memorize her new last name: Forger.

Papa instructed her never to tell anyone about how he had found her or that he could shoot a gun or fight bad guys. Anya nodded earnestly. “Anya has always been Papa’s daughter!”

Papa started dressing differently and doing his hair differently, no longer wearing his dark spy clothes and black cap. He wore a lot of brown and green and checkered patterns and suits and ties and leather shoes. He went to work at a hospital as a spy-chiatrist, a feelings doctor. Anya went to kindergarten while Papa was at work, and though she was nervous at first to be around so many people every day, she quickly made friends and had lots of fun playing outside and drawing.

Papa bought Anya a closet full of clothes and tons of toys and books, and he cooked yummy food for her every day, though she wished he wouldn’t give her so many vegetables. He also made her practice handwriting and numbers every night after dinner, which she didn’t like. But then she got to watch cartoons and cuddle up next to Papa on the couch, and he would carry her to bed when she was tired and read her a fairytale story. On weekends they explored the city, went to parks, the library, the zoo, all sorts of places Anya had never been to.  

Papa almost always smiled and spoke calmly to Anya, even when he felt annoyed or frustrated inside. The few times he snapped and got impatient, he immediately felt bad and his thoughts went in a funny circle. He thought he was a bad father, it was a mistake to bring Anya home, he was stupid for caving in to her demands since she was only a kid and didn’t know what was good for her, he was also a piece of trash for using her for his cover. 

Anya stopped Papa’s spinning circle of thoughts the only way she knew how. She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his sweater. 

And Papa’s thoughts would shift from himself to her. He would remember that she had grown up in a lab where she must have been treated horribly. He didn’t know if anyone had ever treated her with kindness. He didn’t know if she still remembered her real parents. 

And he would remind himself that this was his mission now, for the rest of his life. To take care of Anya and raise her like his own child. He still felt afraid, and much more tired than before. But, that bit of happiness in his gloomy heart grew bigger, too.

One time after the circle stopped, Anya heard a strange thought flicker in Papa’s mind just before it disappeared.

I wonder if this is how Yor felt, when she suddenly had to raise her brother on her own.

On nights when Papa was busy with work—his doctor work or his secret spy work—a short, curly-haired man named Uncle Franky babysat Anya. She called him Scruffy. Everything about him was super fun. He complained to Papa a lot about how he wasn’t a babysitter, but Anya was confused about how that could be true. He always brought a huge bag of toys and spy inventions, and came up with the wildest games that even her friends at school couldn’t match. One day they would play space vampires, the next they would play invisible heroes, then fire rescue, and on and on. 

Anya knew that Scruffy helped Papa with his spy work, and had even dressed up as an ugly lady once to help Papa on a mission. When they thought she was pre-ocka-pied by TV, they whispered about the next intel job Scruffy had to do for Papa. Other times, they would whisper about pretty ladies who Scruffy liked, but didn’t like him back. Or rather, Scruffy did all the whispering and Papa merely listened and rolled his eyes. Sometimes Scruffy got pretend-mad at Papa and complained it wasn’t fair that Papa got all the ladies and Scruffy was left with nothing.

That confused Anya. Anya hadn’t seen any ladies with Papa. He didn’t think about ladies the way Scruffy did either. Only sometimes she would catch brief flashes of a black-haired lady in his mind, but he quickly moved on each time. Papa’s mind always went very fast, and it often made Anya dizzy to try to understand everything that was passing through it.

But one night when she was watching TV, Scruffy asked Papa if he was happy taking care of Anya by himself. 

“You ever think of…you know, settling down? Must be hard raising her all on your own.”

It was one of the few times she had heard Scruffy whisper to Papa in a serious way, not joking or grumbling.

“This is still a cover. I can’t bring anyone else into it.”

“A cover that’ll last your whole life! Come on, you haven’t given it any thought?”

“The cover doesn’t require it. And I’m not going to rope someone into a permanent lie for selfish reasons.”

Scruffy made a ‘tsk’ sound and went quiet for a bit. Then, his thoughts turned to Anya. “What about the kid? She ever say she wants a mom?”

The question made Anya pause and think. At school, most of the kids had two parents, a papa and a mama. There were a couple of kids who only had a mama, or whose parents lived in different houses. No one was like her, with only a papa. And that was okay, because Papa was the best. 

She did miss her mama, but not as much as before. She didn’t cry anymore about how the bad scientists had taken her away. It was getting hard to remember what her mama looked like. 

“No. And I won’t bring it up. It could be a source of extreme trauma for her.”

Scruffy stopped asking questions about mamas after that. Papa shut off the TV once the episode was over, and did Anya’s bedtime routine same as always. They read another fairytale story, about a princess who bit into a poisoned apple and fell asleep. Like in most of the other fairytales, the bad guy was an evil stepmother. Anya wondered if that was another reason Papa didn’t want to find a mama. Maybe a lot of stepmamas were evil.

As Papa flipped the pages and let Anya look at the pictures, she noticed his mind slowed down for once near the end. He had flipped to a picture of the black-haired princess asleep in a glass coffin, and a handsome prince kneeling beside her.

“And with true love’s kiss, Snow White awakened.” 

As Papa read on about the dwarves celebrating and Snow White marrying the prince, an image of a different black-haired lady appeared in his mind. The lady Anya had glimpsed only a handful of times. This time Papa did not switch his thoughts to something else right away. 

Anya could see she was very pretty. Prettier than the princess in the book. Her hair was long and shiny, with a fancy gold clip in it, and she wore a black dress and tall boots. Her skin was pale and kind of glowy like a ghost, but her eyes were deep red like cranberries. The way she was smiling made Anya feel warm. It made her remember all of a sudden what her mama’s smile looked like, and for a moment Anya’s throat clenched. Tears filled her eyes.

“Anya?” Papa said, worried. He closed the book and scooted closer to her. “What’s the matter?”

Anya just shook her head and wrapped her arms around Papa. 

Was the story too scary? Shit…the apple…did she know the name of the lab? Or is it the coffin? Did she see people die? Or does it look too much like an operating table? Shit!

Anya could not tell Papa that she could read his mind. It wasn’t easy to talk while sniffling anyway, so she just pressed her face against his shirt and said nothing.

Calm down, Twilight. This will happen. She’s experienced unimaginable horrors, it’s a miracle she’s held herself together this long. I have to be more careful.

“It’s alright, Anya. I’m here,” he said, and held her until she fell asleep.

After that, even though Papa put away the fairytale books and started reading her factbooks about animals instead, the black-haired lady appeared more often in his mind. He would think about her when he took Anya to the park and they tossed breadcrumbs to the fish in the pond. And when he took Anya to the cinema for the first time. And when he was a shapp-er-own for her class trip to the art museum.

Anya heard the lady’s voice, too. In Papa’s memories, she laughed and made happy sounds of surprise when she did the exact same things Anya was doing with Papa in their adventures around the city. She sounded friendly and excited about everything, and she always smiled at Papa. 

But even though the lady was happy in his memories, Papa was not happy. The gloomy clouds in his mind grew heavier each time he thought about her. Anya wondered what had happened to the lady. Had she been taken away by bad people like the scientists had done to her mama? Or had she left Papa, like the mama of one of her classmates? 

Papa was very good at smiling and pretending to be happy when inside he felt the exact opposite. He didn’t tell anyone about his feelings, even though he was a feelings doctor. Whenever Anya tried to hug him to make him feel better, he always worried that Anya was upset instead and focused all his energy on comforting her. 

Anya just wanted Papa to be happy for real. She thought that the bit of happiness he’d felt when he’d first brought Anya home would keep growing and growing, but it had gotten stuck like a little plant trying to grow in a sidewalk crack. How could she get it unstuck? 

“Now aren’t you just the cutest little thing?” the lady at the dress store cooed as she wrapped a yellow tape with numbers around Anya’s shoulders. 

The winter concert at school was coming up soon, and Papa said Anya needed a new dress for it since she was growing so fast. So he brought her to the tailor shop, which was crowded today with other girls whose parents thought the same thing. Except all the other parents here were mamas, and Papa was the only papa.

“It’s lovely that you took the time to bring your daughter here, sir,” the lady went on. “Giving your wife a break this weekend?”

Papa shook his head with that polite smile he always wore around strangers. “Not quite.”

“Oh, is she watching the other little ones at home? Dividing up the labor!”

“Anya’s the only one, actually. I’m a widower.”

“Oh…I’m so sorry,” the lady said, the cheerfulness disappearing from her voice and her thoughts. “I didn’t mean to be so insensitive!”

“It’s alright, don’t worry about it at all,” Papa said, still smiling. “Quite a bit of time has passed.”

The lady stopped talking, feeling embarrassed at her mistake, and Papa pretended to look at some of the dresses hanging along the walls until Anya was done. He did that old trick in his mind where he switched his thoughts to his spy work, with lots of facts and numbers that made Anya dizzy. But as they left the store, his thoughts slowed down again, and Anya caught another glimpse of the smiling black-haired lady.

Muna and Monacca. That’s the same place Yor went to get her dress fixed, Papa thought.

An image of a notebook full of Papa’s tiny handwriting flashed across his mind. There were two hundred pages in the notebook, and Papa knew exactly which page he’d written the name of the tailor shop on. 

Papa’s thoughts began to grow heavy again, and Anya expected him to do a switch like he usually did. But instead, he lingered. 

Wonder if they still remember her. If they still have a record of her purchases.

Then his thoughts suddenly became prickly with anger.

Why would it matter? Is it not enough, all those facts and data points I wrote down? What do they all matter, when she’s gone?

No one knew her as well as you do. Be grateful for that, Twilight.

Anya shrank back from the force of his thoughts, and Papa noticed immediately. He looked down at Anya in concern and then glanced around them with narrowed eyes, scanning for danger. 

“Anya is tired,” she lied, and he relaxed.

“We had to wait a long time in line, didn’t we?” he said. “Maybe we should stop for some dessert before we go home. What do you say?”

“Scruffy, what’s a widdler?”

It was another late night where Papa was away for a mission. She and Scruffy had just built a miniature volcano in a box in their living room, kneading brown clay around a glass bottle and making it erupt when he poured a sour-smelling liquid inside. 

“Huh?” Scruffy said as he wiped his hands. “A widdler?”

Anya looked uncertain. Had she remembered the word wrong? “Yeah…I think…”

“Where did you hear it?”

“Um…” She could try to make up something about how she’d heard it on TV, but maybe it was okay to tell the truth. Papa trusted Scruffy like no one else. “Papa said that he was a widdler when a lady asked where Mama was.”

“Oh…you mean ‘widower.’” Scruffy looked a bit uncomfortable. “Well, it’s, uh, when a husband no longer has a wife because…she…wait. Has your dad ever said anything to you about that? About a mom?”

Anya shook her head. “Papa never talks about any mamas. Anya is just his daughter.”

Scruffy felt relieved. “Oh, okay. Well, given the way he found you and all…I think he just wants you two to appear like a normal family. So he made something up to tell people when they ask about ‘Mrs. Forger.’ It’s just easier to say that she’s, you know, dead. It makes people stop being nosy.”

Anya had suspected that was what ‘widower’ meant, but hearing Scruffy explain it somehow made her sadder, like Papa.

The smiley black-haired lady named Miss Yor had died. And when people died, they didn’t come back, no matter how hard you wished for it. Even grown-ups as strong and smart as Papa couldn’t make them come back.

So then, how was Papa ever going to be happy?

At night after Scruffy tucked her in, she quietly climbed out of bed and went to the window. She pushed aside the curtains and let them fall against her back as she pressed her face to the cold glass. She looked across the dark sky until she found the brightest star, and then she clasped her hands together and made a wish. 

Please let my papa be happy. 

“Hello, little miss. No need to be scared, he won’t bite.” 

Papa was meeting with his boss lady again, but today her hair was short and blonde, and they were outside in the park, not in a basement. She brought along a brown and black doggy with pointy ears, who jumped and ran here and there, tugging at his leash. Anya hid behind Papa when he tried to jump at her. 

“He’s just excited to see you. Don’t worry,” Boss Lady said. 

Anya peeked into the doggy’s mind, and laughed at all the excitement and happiness bottled up inside it. She stopped feeling scared and stepped out from behind Papa. The doggy yipped and licked her hand as soon as she reached toward his face. 

“Ew!” she exclaimed, but soon tried to pet him again. His nose was wet and soft, and he licked Anya’s hand all over.

“There you go,” Boss Lady said, and started talking to Papa in secret spy code where their mouths moved in funny shapes.

Usually Papa’s spy meetings were really cool and Anya tried to listen to everything that passed through his mind so she could know what kind of missions he would do next. But today all she could focus on was the pointy-eared doggy.

“What’s the doggy’s name?” she asked in the middle of their spy talk.

“Not now, Anya, we’re–” Papa tried to say.

“His name’s Aaron.” Boss Lady wasn’t bothered at all by Anya’s interruption. “Do you want to come closer and pet him some more? He likes it when you scratch behind his ears.”

“Yeah!”

Papa looked down at Anya with a bit of confusion mixed with relief. This is the happiest I’ve seen her in a while, he thought to himself.

Boss Lady showed Anya how to play fetch with Aaron while Papa watched. They continued their spy talk every time Aaron ran after the ball. Anya giggled and clapped when Boss Lady suggested having a contest. Boss Lady versus Papa! Who could throw the ball the farthest? Anya thought for sure that Papa would win, but Boss Lady surprised her with how strong she was for her age.

Anya was sad to say goodbye to Aaron when Boss Lady finished talking with Papa. Papa didn’t take Anya to many spy meetings because he thought it was too dangerous. 

Aaron was sad when fetch was over too. He nudged the ball toward Anya’s feet and sat back on his hind legs, waiting patiently for her to throw it, but Papa tugged her away and said it was time to go home.

“Let her have one last throw,” Boss Lady said with a smile. Her mind was usually serious and sharp, but now it was softer, without so many edges, as she watched Papa and Anya. “Your daughter gets along so well with Aaron, maybe you should consider getting a dog too.”

Anya’s eyes lit up. Boss Lady meant what she said. It wasn’t just a cover for spy code. She really thought Papa should buy Anya a doggy!

But Papa shook his head immediately and said it would be too much work, and that Anya had plenty of friends and toys to keep her entertained. Boss Lady tilted her head and said nothing, but as Papa turned away she gave Anya a little wink.

Anya skipped and hummed to herself as she headed home with Papa. He didn’t want a doggy, but Boss Lady wanted him to have one. And Papa always listened to Boss Lady in the end, even if he grumbled about it. And Boss Lady had winked at Anya. She was on her side!

“Papa, I want a doggy,” she said as he tucked her into bed. “Please can Anya have one?”

Papa sighed. He had known she would ask, and was secretly proud of her for waiting until bedtime instead of nagging him about it all afternoon.

“We’ll see,” he said reluctantly. He did not want to grant Anya’s request. But he had also started to argue with himself in his head. Spy-chiatrist words like ‘healthy emotional development’ and ‘responsibility.’ He didn’t know the other reason Anya wanted a doggy. 

If all doggies were super happy and made Anya happy, then maybe they would make Papa happy, too. 

“Anya will be ree-sponce-able!” she promised. “Anya will take super good care of the doggy just like Papa takes care of Anya!”

Papa stopped arguing with himself. He smiled a small smile, but it was a real one this time. “Alright, Anya. We’ll see.”

Papa took Anya to a pet store with lots of doggies. Except it wasn’t a real pet store. The two people in the store were his spy friends. And behind the window were doggies they had trained to sniff out bombs and chase bad guys. They were huger than Aaron and mean-looking with sharp teeth.

“Anya doesn’t want these doggies,” she told Papa. Behind the glass, a few of the doggies shrank back and whined. “…Sorry, doggies.”

Papa frowned and gave the other spies an annoyed look like her teacher did when a kid ignored her instructions. “Don’t you have any smaller dogs? Ones that might be more suitable for my daughter?”

“I apologize, sir.” One of the agents straightened up like he was about to salute Papa, but then remembered they were undercover. “I’m afraid we don’t…but we do have a few more in the back that haven’t finished their training yet. Would you like to take a look?”

Behind the back door was another glass where more big doggies sat. They didn’t pay as much attention to Anya and Papa, instead just pacing around or lying down to nap. Papa studied each of them with a frown, but Anya only focused on one doggy.

He was fluffy and white like a polar bear, and lay against the back wall with his head between his black-tipped paws. His ears perked up when he noticed Anya staring at him. 

Anya was staring at him because of what she saw in his mind. A sparkly, glowy picture of Anya and Papa at home, offering the doggy a bowl of food.

She gasped. How did the doggy know who they were? How did he know what their home looked like? 

Could this doggy…see the future? Did he have special powers like Anya?

“Again, I don’t think any of these are—” Papa began.

“Anya wants that one!” She pointed straight at the white doggy. He lifted his head and looked at Anya and Papa, and woofed happily when he recognized them. Except his woof sounded more like ‘borf.’

Papa looked confused. “That dog is larger than Aaron. And that breed sheds a lot. It’ll be hard to take care of—”

“Anya only wants that one!” she shouted and stomped her foot. Papa had to listen to her! That doggy was special! 

The agents behind them chuckled under their breath and thought, Twilight sure has his work cut out for him.

Papa thought, What’s gotten into her? She’s never this demanding about anything. Except when she begged me to adopt her.

Papa’s mind softened then. His frown went away and he sighed in that way where he pretended he was annoyed but he really wasn’t.

“Alright. We’ll take the Great Pyrenees. Would one of you watch my daughter while the other gets me up to speed on the dog’s training so far?”

Anya loved their new doggy very much. He was soft and gentle and let Anya ride on his back and take naps against his side. He stayed in Anya’s room at night, snoring on the rug. 

On the first day, she tied a black bowtie around his neck and named him Bond, after Bondman. He wasn’t fast and dangerous like a spy, and he didn’t have that much energy, but he was loyal and smart. The few times he thought Anya was in danger from loud yapping doggies at the park, he planted himself in front of her and growled until the other doggies backed off. He learned quickly from Papa’s training, though Anya felt a little bad that Scruffy had to wear the thick puffy sleeve and let himself get bitten.

It was exciting to read Bond’s mind, like waiting for a surprise treat. Every few days Bond’s mind would sparkle and show Anya something in the future. Sometimes it was normal stuff like what Papa would cook for dinner or who they would see in the park. Other times it was cool spy stuff like a secret message Papa would pick up from his next ‘dead drop’ or what he would find inside a locked safe in his next sneaking-around mission. 

But what Anya really wanted to know from Bond was whether Papa would be happier. She jumped and clapped whenever he showed her a vision of Papa smiling. She hoped that one day she could see Papa laugh. 

Little by little, Anya’s wish started to come true. Papa liked Bond a lot too. Before, he had exercised on his own and saw it as a chore like washing dishes. But now he took walks with Bond in the morning and evening, and didn’t see it as a chore. He bought Bond the best kind of dog food, and fed him scraps from his dinner plate when Bond had been especially good. The only thing he grumbled about was giving Bond baths and cleaning up all the fur he shed on the furniture. But even then, when Bond came out of the bathroom with his fur soft and clean and fluffy, Papa smiled and sighed in his pretend-annoyed way.

Papa liked Bond even more after Bond helped him on a mission. Anya didn’t know exactly how it happened. But she saw memories in Papa’s mind of Papa and Bond fighting bad guys together and escaping into an alley. And in that alley, Papa talked to Bond for the first time about his spy job.

You were a great help today, but I didn’t intend for you to get involved in my work. Don’t endanger yourself for my sake, alright? There’s someone at home who would be heartbroken if you got hurt.

Papa started talking to Bond about all sorts of things. Anya saw some of what he said in Bond’s visions and in Papa’s memories. He complained about getting too many missions from Boss Lady. He worried about Anya’s grades in school and how she was struggling to catch up with her classmates. He even explained how to make a mask step by step as Bond watched him at his desk.

But Anya never saw Papa talk to Bond about the black-haired lady. He thought about her less these days as well. If thinking about her made him sad, maybe it was good that he forgot about her.

One day, Bond had a strange vision. In it, they were in the living room watching TV when suddenly the lights went out and it was all dark. Then, Anya, Papa, and Bond huddled together on Papa’s bed. The only light in the room came from a candle on his nightstand. Next to the candle was a small radio.

Anya would get to stay in Papa’s room and listen to secret spy messages over the radio! She couldn’t wait!

Sure enough, Bond’s vision came true later that night. One moment they were watching Spy Wars, with Papa reading the evening newspaper while Anya sat on the floor between his feet. And the next moment the apartment went dark. All the lampposts on the street went dark too. Papa jumped to his feet, jostling Anya. His thoughts immediately went to the worst possy-bill-iddies. Had a bad guy found out where he lived? Were they about to bust down the door? 

Anya wanted to tell him that it was all okay, but held back. She went to her room and hid with Bond as Papa instructed until he had checked the hallway and the windows and made sure no bad guys were coming. A lot of their neighbors had gone out into the hall to complain about the power oo-tage. 

Papa finally came back with a big flashlight, looking tired and frazzled. “Well Anya, the power company’s going to try to fix this, but things might not be normal until the morning. We’ll just have to go to bed early.”

He expected Anya to be disappointed about not getting to finish the Spy Wars episode. But all Anya was looking forward to was a spy adventure in Papa’s room. 

It was fun and a little spooky to brush her teeth in the dark with only Papa’s flashlight shining behind her. And to hunt for her pajamas among all the toys and clothes scattered on the floor of her bedroom, like a jungle adventurer cutting through vines. Papa was puzzled at how Anya was having so much fun when all he could think about was the inn-con-veen-yents of it all. He would have to throw out most of the food in the refrigerator and go grocery shopping first thing in the morning. And it would get cold overnight, so he would need to put extra blankets on Anya’s bed.

“Anya wants to stay with Papa!” she chirped as soon as that thought passed through his mind. “Anya’s scared of the dark!”

He raised an eyebrow, and she realized her lie was not very conn-vinsing. 

“Anya is scared to be alone and cold in the dark!” she clarified. 

Papa was about to say no, but Bond whined and rubbed against his legs like he was agreeing with Anya. Papa sighed and gave in. It was getting easier and easier to change his mind.

“Alright, just this one night.”

It took three trips back and forth between Anya’s room and Papa’s room to move her pillow, blanket, and stuffies from her small bed onto Papa’s big bed. After Papa moved Agent Penguinmann, he said that was enough and refused to get any more stuffies.

Anya had seen the inside of Papa’s room before, but only a few times. She knew this was where Papa did all the boring stuff that spies had to do when they weren’t on missions—mostly writing and reading. Papa had also warned her many times never to come in here because she could get hurt. He kept all his guns and grenades and spy tools in here too.

“Please stop kicking me, Anya,” Papa said when he had turned off the flashlight and lay down next to her. 

Anya wasn’t ready to go to bed. They still had to play and tell stories and listen to the radio! 

“Tell me a story, Papa!” she whispered from under the covers.

“It’s time to sleep. And why are you whispering?”

“‘Cause we’re hiding! We’re explorers trapped in a cave in the North Pole and we have to whisper so the polar bears don’t hear us!”

“Uh…okay. Is Bond a polar bear?”

“No, Bond is a friendly Arr-tick wolf!”

“Borf!”

Papa laughed softly. It was the first time Anya had ever heard Papa laugh. She threw her arms around him and snuggled against his chest. Papa felt surprised for a second, but put one arm around her lightly. 

“Alright, so how did we get trapped here?” he asked. It was the first time he had ever played a pretend game with her, too.

“Our ship crashed and we had to hike all the way across the ice and there was a storm, and Bond found us and helped us escape a big polar bear! And now we’re in a cave waiting for rescue,” she said. It was easy to make up adventure stories after playing with Scruffy so often. 

“Do we have any food?”

“We have one bag of peanuts! We have to be real careful to only eat one a day and conserve our ratch-uns.”

“Do we have the means to light a fire? The North Pole is really dark this time of year.”

“Uh…we have Papa’s flashlight!”

“So I’m still Papa in this scenario?”

“Turn on the flashlight, Papa!” 

He flicked on the flashlight and drew the covers over both their heads, so it felt like they were in a cozy cave. Anya got even more excited as Papa thought about his spy training from years ago, when Boss Lady had made him and other young spies camp out in the wilderness to learn survival skills. Papa had naturally become the leader of that ex-pee-dishun because he already had a lot of survival skills from the army.

Anya started asking Papa questions then, about what they should do to stay warm in the icy cold, how they could make a fire without melting the walls of their cave, if they could hunt or fish to get more food than just peanuts, and how they could make contact with their rescuers. Papa had an answer to everything, and even though his stories weren’t as crazy and magical as Scruffy’s, they were very detailed and real. Anya knew that if they ever did get lost in the North Pole, Papa would be able to get them out safely. 

At some point the flashlight ran out of batteries and went dark. Anya was disappointed at first, thinking Papa would tell her it was time to sleep again. But instead he got out of bed, found a candle and matches in a drawer, and lit the candle on the nightstand.

“So would we make a big fire for the rescue plane to see?” Anya asked as she watched the little flame flicker back and forth.

“It’s hard to make a really big fire in such a cold place. We would try to radio for help instead. If we didn’t have a radio, we would try to build one from scratch.”

Anya’s eyes lit up. Was the radio from Bond’s vision something Papa had built himself? “Ohh! Can Papa do that now?”

Papa laughed again. “Maybe another time. For now, I think we can wrap up our adventure and go to sleep.”

“But Anya’s not tired yet!” she protested. 

“But look, Bond’s already fallen asleep,” he said. It was true. Bond had dozed off beside Papa in the middle of his story.

Anya wouldn’t give up. “Then…sing me a bedtime song, Papa!”

Papa made a face. “I am not going to sing.”

“Please!”

Papa thought about it for a little. “Wait here.”

He got up again and went to his closet. Anya could see in his mind that he was looking for a small box in the back of it. Inside the box were a radio, the notebook about Miss Yor, and a long golden knife. 

Papa paused before he took the radio out and closed the lid gently. His feelings grew heavier and grayer as they always did when he thought about Miss Yor. Memories of Miss Yor sitting on a couch listening to the radio passed through his mind. It was the first time Anya saw the lady look sad, like she had been crying.

Had Anya made a mistake? She hadn’t known that the radio belonged to Miss Yor!

But Papa didn’t put the radio back. He set it on the nightstand and turned it on. At first there was only fuzzy static, but Papa found a station that played nice soothing music. A lady’s warm voice was singing a lullaby about flowers. 

“There,” Papa said softly. “Better to listen to this than my terrible singing.”

Anya cuddled up under Papa’s arm and hugged him tight. And eventually, she drifted off to the sound of lullabies and the thump-thump of Papa’s heartbeat under her cheek. 

The grayness in Papa’s heart changed after that. It became less muddy and dark, and more like a light mist. 

Instead of putting the radio back in the box, he set it on a shelf in the living room and turned it on whenever Anya was bored and wanted to listen to fun music. He watched her dance and twirl around the living room, and clapped when she curtsied at the end of a song. At night, Anya sometimes heard the low voices of a grown-up talk show through the bedroom wall as Papa continued his spy work at the dining table.

A few days after that, Papa cooked a tasty red stew with eggs and sour cream on top. Anya gobbled it up almost as fast as she would a bag of peanuts and asked for more. As he refilled her bowl, he thought about Miss Yor’s bright smile as she stood beside him at the stove, watching him make the recipe she had given him. She smiled even brighter when he sat down to eat it and told her it was delicious.

The next time Anya had a nightmare about the lab, Papa carried her into his bedroom and let her sleep next to him. On his nightstand was the notebook, and it was open.

Anya could not fall asleep, even though she had calmed down and Papa had wiped her tears. He tried lots of things to help her fall asleep, like brushing her hair with a soft brush, and playing lullabies on the radio, and even carrying her around the room on his shoulder like a baby.

“Can you tell me a story, Papa?” she murmured into his neck. Her drowsy eyes kept going back to the notebook next to the bed as he walked a slow path around the room.

“Alright,” he said, and thought carefully about which fairytales wouldn’t scare her. “Once upon a time, there was a prince who was trying to find a princess to marry. But he could never trust whether the princesses he met were actually of royal blood or just pretending in order to gain his favor. So his mother, the queen, came up with a test. Any woman who wanted to marry the prince had to first sleep on a really tall bed, twenty mattresses high. At the very bottom, under the last mattress, was a tiny, hard, uncooked pea. The queen believed that only a true princess would be delicate enough to feel the pea under all those mattresses.

“Sure enough, every so-called princess who wanted to marry the prince failed the test when they slept soundly and thanked the queen the next morning for a wonderful night’s sleep. Until one dark and stormy night, a mysterious young woman showed up at the castle seeking shelter. The queen made her take the test too, even though all the woman wanted was a warm dry place to spend the night. She tossed and turned all night and felt very uncomfortable, and told the queen so in the morning. The prince was very surprised and glad to find a true princess at last, and the two married and lived happily ever after.”

Anya was quiet for a while. The story was shorter than most of the fairytales he had read to her before. It wasn’t scary, but it also wasn’t very exciting. And was sleeping on a super tall bed really the best way to tell if someone was a princess?

“Papa,” she mumbled. “Can you tell me a real story?”

Papa made another turn around the room. “Real stories usually aren’t as nice as fairytales. It’s hard to think of one with a happy ending.”

Anya hugged Papa’s shoulders tighter. “But Papa rescued Anya, and now Anya is happy. That’s a real story.”

Papa’s steps faltered, and he stood still with Anya in his arms. When he spoke again, his voice was thick. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

“But is Papa happy?” Anya felt brave enough to ask. She had been wishing on the star every night there was a clear sky. 

A tremble went through Papa’s strong chest. He opened his mouth to answer, but choked up. His mind was working so fast, Anya couldn’t keep track of everything. She could only catch little snippets of Papa’s life. Papa as a little boy, hugging his own mama. Papa as a soldier, seeing his friends pass by as he chopped an onion. Papa on mission after mission, saving people and stopping bombs from exploding and running out of the lab with Anya. Papa dancing at a big fancy wedding with Miss Yor, even though no one else around them could see her.

“Yes,” he answered at last. Then, after a pause, “I think I have a real story for you.”

“There was once a princess who could not sleep, no matter how tired she was. One dark and dreary night, she showed up at the prince’s castle, looking for someone who could help her.”

Anya did not stop Papa this time. Even though he was talking about a princess, his mind was filled with the clearest images of Miss Yor she had seen so far. She stood in front of him, crying and upset. It made Papa’s heart hurt to think of her like this, but he didn’t turn his mind away from the memory. He looked at her straight-on. He wanted to remember her.

“The prince agreed to help her. First he showed her different beds she could try. Soft mattresses and hard ones. Thick ones and thin ones. Tall ones twenty mattresses high, and a threadbare mat on the floor. Nothing worked.

“Then the prince thought, maybe if she felt more tired, she would be able to sleep. So he took her out into his kingdom where he had a lot of work to do every day. The prince was a busy man. Sometimes he had to help people build houses. Other times he had to fight in battle against the kingdom’s enemies. And other times he simply had to meet lots of townspeople and talk to them so they felt heard. The princess followed him everywhere he went and tried to help him as best she could.”

Papa had brought Miss Yor along on many missions. She warned him when bad guys were closing in, and snooped around places Papa couldn’t safely go. She read top secret files and memorized them for Papa while he talked to his targets in disguise. She ran just as fast as Papa when it was time to escape. Maybe even faster. She could jump and do flips and cling onto the sides of buildings just like a super spy. And one time as Papa drove fast and crazy in a car, trying to shake off the bad guys who were shooting at them, Miss Yor was right there beside him. Both of them laughed as they finally made it to safety. 

“No matter how much work she did, however, she still couldn’t sleep. So then the prince thought, maybe the princess was worried about something, and that worry was keeping her awake. He asked the princess about it, and she told him she had a little brother she hadn’t visited in a while. So the prince brought her to see him, and she was able to stop worrying about him.”

Miss Yor had a brother in real life. He looked a lot like her, but with messier hair and a frowning face. His eyes were puffy from crying. Papa watched Miss Yor race into a building after her brother, while he stayed outside and waited for her to say goodbye. Miss Yor was crying when she came back out, but she was calmer than before.

“At this point, the prince ran out of ideas. So he said, ‘let’s just have fun as long as you’re awake.’ He took a vacation from his work and brought the princess to the best places in his kingdom. They climbed the tallest tower and looked at all the tiny houses for miles around. He gave her a tour of the royal gardens and let her pick all the flowers she wanted into a giant bouquet. He got the royal chef to cook tasty dishes from foreign lands for her to try. They visited beautiful lakes and hiked through forests. They attended famous plays in the opera house and puppet shows on the street. They snuck into a wedding and danced late into the night, not telling anyone that they were a prince and princess.”

Anya saw all the places that Papa had taken Miss Yor in Berlint, including some that he had brought Anya to since she had become his daughter. A glass tower way above all the other buildings in the city. The huge high-ceilinged art museum where Anya had gone for a school trip. The beautiful royal gardens where they fed the fish in the pond. The dark theater where the sounds of the movie boomed all around them. The street carts where they bought kebabs and candied apples. The wedding where Papa and Miss Yor had danced without a care for any of the wedding guests around them, until they were the last two people in the humongous ballroom.

“And through it all they talked about their lives, where they had grown up, what their families were like. All the good times and the bad. They got to know each other until they were the best of friends.”

Papa paused there, and for a moment Anya thought that would be the end of the story. All the fairytales he had told her had happy endings, no matter how scary or sad the middle was. 

But then he continued, his voice growing hoarse.

“At last, the princess’ eyelids began to droop, and she became very sleepy. The prince took her to the last place she hadn’t been to yet. The long, sandy shore, where the ocean waves swept against the edges of his kingdom. Together, they lay down on the sand. And the prince held her until she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.”

Anya saw Papa sit with Miss Yor on the sand as the dark night sky began to lighten on the horizon. He told her he loved her, and she said it back. They held each other as they lay down, and Miss Yor closed her eyes. Then she slowly faded away into thin air, while Papa continued to lie there, alone. He brought his arm up to his eyes.

Anya flinched as something wet trickled onto her neck. Papa was crying. She drew back, alarmed. She had never seen Papa cry. He was so brave and strong that even when he felt very sad, he never let it show on his face. 

But even though he was crying, he was smiling, too. He looked at Anya and didn’t try to wipe away his tears.

“Will the princess ever wake up again?” Anya asked.

Papa’s watery eyes flickered in the darkness. He wondered if Anya somehow knew everything about Miss Yor and what she meant to him, even though he hadn’t said her name once. But just as quickly, the thought vanished.

“No, peanut. She deserves her rest after working so hard her entire life.”

The tightness in Papa’s chest loosened, and his shoulders relaxed under her hands. He breathed out quietly, and shifted Anya in his hold. 

“And now you need your rest too. I think it’s time we went to bed, don’t you?”

Anya nodded sleepily, and closed her eyes as Papa lay down with her in his arms. With the little energy she had left, she reached into his mind to see if her wish really had come true.

In Papa’s memory, he got up from the sand and looked one last time at the horizon where the sun’s rays chased away the gloom of night. The lingering mist lifted from his heart as he turned and walked back to his car. 

“‘Night, Papa. Love you,” Anya whispered, and finally drifted off to sleep.