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“This is all your fault, you know.”
Leon glanced over at his wife, an electric thrill shooting through him as he watched her pick up their grinning baby girl. Rory (even though Ada stubbornly insisted on calling her Aurora, the mischievous imp was clearly more of a Rory and the nickname had stuck) waved her fat fists about, proudly showing the pieces of a disassembled box to her father.
He could watch them for a million years, and never grow sick of it. His two beautiful girls lit in the golden glow of the morning sun, Ada sprawled out on the floor next to their daughter, exhibiting an infinite patience she never had with anyone else as she put the puzzle box together again – and again – and again – and again.
“No,” she finally said, gently prying the pieces out of Rory’s fists. “That’s enough. Don’t you want to do something else? Literally anything else?”
Rory looked at her solemnly, a hint of drool hanging out of the corner of her mouth. She arched one eyebrow, the exact same way Ada did when she was Thoroughly Unimpressed by the world, and held one hand out daintily. The message was unmistakable: return it, please. Leon nearly choked on his own laughter.
Ada glowered at him. “This is all your fault. She got it from you,” she repeated. “You and all those stupid puzzles you love so much. You know your missions would be over twice as fast if you just, I don’t know, ignored the things?”
“I can take over for a bit if it’s bothering you so much,” Leon sighed, wiping a few tears from the corner of his eye.
“And who will finish the pancakes?” She gestured towards Leon’s frilly apron, the sizzling pan, the stack of perfectly golden, diner-worthy discs already arranged onto three plates. “You know the second I walk over there they’ll start burning. It’s Murphy’s law.”
“Puzzles and pancakes,” Leon murmured, shaking his head as he shook the pan around. “Who would have thought those were the great Ada Wong’s weaknesses?”
Ada sniffed and gave Rory back the pieces. One thing Ada and Leon had in common: neither of them were very good at telling Rory no. It was something they were trying to work on, especially since Rory had inherited her mother’s intelligence and knew exactly how to wrap them around her tiny little finger. “I’ll have you know I’m quite good at puzzles. I just don’t drag it out like you do.” She sighed as Rory once again started assembling the box, carefully adjusting the walls until they clicked into place with a satisfying snap. “Oh no. Oh, she’s doing it again.”
“Sue me for having a little fun on the job,” he said as he dropped the finished pancakes off at the table, pausing to kiss Ada, reveling in the little spark that still lit him up from the inside when she turned automatically to receive it.
Years. Years together, and he still couldn’t quite believe that this enigmatic, exquisite woman had chosen him, still continued to choose him every day. But over time, the shock of it had worn off, replaced by something even better – a deep, all-encompassing devotion. A bedrock sort of love, the type you build a life on. Brick by brick, the two of them had built a home on it, a family.
Some days, Leon woke up and the worst thing to happen was his favorite coffee shop running out of their streusel muffin. Other days, zombies took over a city and the government nuked the hell out of it. Life was unpredictable like that. But he no longer feared the walls tumbling down, the floor caving in and B.O.W.s streaming from the holes – because so long as they had each other, they could always build it anew.
Rory screeched, waggling her fingers at her father. Like her mother, she always seemed to know when he was drifting away from them, into the past. Or maybe she just liked the attention.
He leaned down and yanked his precious little girl off the floor, tossing her into the air before rubbing his face into her neck. She shrieked, grabbing tufts of his hair with the strength of a full grown man. He groaned, but did nothing at all other than squeeze her tighter. If she wanted his hair, she could have it. Have it all. He’d gladly go bald just to hear her squeal with joy one more time.
A love so powerful he thought his heart might crack from carrying it crashed through him as he pressed against her. A soft touch lit on the small of his back, and he turned blindly towards it, his right side warm with his wife and his left warmed by his daughter, the smell of sugar in the air and Vivaldi’s Spring flowing from their record player, and thought, I am so glad to be alive.
“Leon, did you lock the door?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
A pause. It was ominous, to say the least. Leon turned, halfway in the middle of unbuckling his holster from his belt. “Why do you ask?”
“Because it’s open now.”
“What?”
Out of habit, Leon ran to his daughter’s room, taking the steps two at a time. The room was empty, nothing but beheaded dolls and crumpled old pieces of art littering the floor, stick figures of their happy family—Mommy, Daddy, Rory—drawn all over the walls. Kermit the frog grinned at him from where he’d been skewered to the wall.
But no Rory.
Leon swore, using words that would have made Wesker blush, taking the stairs three at a time as he rushed back to the door. Ada was waiting, looking entirely too calm for his liking.
“How did she get out?”
“With this, I’m assuming,” she said, twirling a bobby pin in her hand. It was bent halfway to hell and a child’s clumsy fingers had nearly twisted it clean off. There was a note of definite pride in her voice. “My, my. I didn’t pick my first door until I was seven. I told you My First Spy Kit was more of a middle school activity."
Leon gaped. “This is a door, Ada, it’s not a game!”
She shrugged. “Transferable skills.”
“I—” He stopped himself before he said something he would regret, shaking his head as he pushed past her. “We can have this discussion later. Where the hell could she have gone?”
Ada rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. When I was her age, I knew how to shoot a bottle off a log from a hundred feet away. She can handle crossing a few streets by herself.”
But Leon was already halfway down the block, yelling over his shoulder: “Not all of us were raised by Russian assassins!”
Mrs. Patakis, their kindly next-door neighbor who lived with four cats and seemed to own an endless collection of the same shapeless cardigan, stopped abruptly in front of her mailbox. She peered at Mrs. Wong-Kennedy, who was always polite and never failed to apologize for her and her husband’s coming-and-goings at all hours of the night, but that didn’t stop an unexplainable dread from gathering in the pit of her stomach whenever their paths crossed. Maybe it was the way the woman moved, like a panther that had caught sight of its prey. Maybe it was her unreadable eyes, or her unsettling smirk: I know everything there is to know about you. More than a few times, she had wondered about the pair – Mr. Wong-Kennedy, who fit into the suburbs as if he’d been made for it, who mowed her lawn for her and came over to fix her appliances when they failed without thinking about it, as if thinking of others first was wired into his DNA. Then there was his wife, who walked around the neighborhood with the loping gait of a wolf pretending to be a dog.
But sometimes she would see them together, or with their daughter. One big happy family. She had never seen a man so smitten. The only times he ever took his eyes off of her was for his daughter, and even then his gaze inevitably wandered back, a compass hand swinging to the North Pole. And Mrs. Wong-Kennedy… she looked at him as if he were the only person left in the world.
It was sweet.
It still didn’t make them good neighbors. Especially since their daughter had a penchant not just for breaking out – but also for breaking in.
Specifically, breaking into Mrs. Patakis’s house. To play with her fluffy kitties. Poor Snuffles had never been the same.
With a chuckle that didn’t sound at all convincing, Mrs. Patakis raised her hand. “Never a dull moment for you three, eh? Russian assassins, what a unique twist!”
Mrs. Wong-Kennedy cocked her head, somehow making the movement graceful. “Twist?”
“On the saying?” Mrs. Pataki faltered. “Like raised by wolves?”
The woman burst out into laughter. It was the first time Mrs. Pataki had ever seen her laugh. “Right, yes,” the woman in scarlet said when she’d calmed down some. “Just a saying.”
“Do you think I should sign her up for the DSO now or later?” Leon asked as he gingerly picked at a nearly invisible trip wire criss-crossing their front porch.
“I think she has more of a future in straight villainry, don’t you?” Ada drawled, her fingers a blur as she defused the trap waiting at the front door. Rory had rigged it so the second they passed the welcome mat, a bucket of honey and chicken feathers would drop onto their heads. “I think the Connections might be interested in her talents.”
“She Home Alone’d us,” Leon muttered disbelievingly. “Our own daughter has Home Alone’d us and now we have to un-booby trap the house.”
“Not quite.” Ada shouted from the kitchen. When Leon went to join her, she shoved a piece of paper to his chest. A childish hand had drawn, in gleeful pink and purple crayon, a set of symbols in order from left to right. Next to the symbols was a crude depiction of a giant key.
“She didn’t Home Alone us,” Ada whistled. She pressed the paper against her chest, unable to hide the broad smile spreading across her face. “This is Saw. She’s Saw-ing us.”
A mysterious giggle crackled from the baby monitor Rory had cleverly left underneath the kitchen table. Leon’s brows rocketed up until they disappeared underneath his hairline.
“She gets this from you,” he moaned. “I would have never tried to Saw my parents.”
“The attention to detail, maybe,” Ada conceded as she set off towards the room marked by a symbol that could have been a cat – but could also have been a tractor. “But the puzzles? I’m afraid that’s all you, my love.”
“I am never touching another puzzle again,” Leon grit out as he chased after his wife, the disembodied giggle of their daughter haunting them through the house.