The Blacklist (sequel to The Reluctant Spy)

Making New Friends

"I've eaten. Does your salad recipe call for cigarette ash?" she said sarcastically.

"One step at a time, darling, it's a process." Marilyn chose to ignore her daughter's snarky remark.

Marilyn took the cigarette between her fingers and took a quick puff before removing it from her mouth. She turned her head slightly and blew a silver cloud of smoke away from the food. She turned back toward her daughter and waited for her to ask her question.

"Mom.....I need that car of Dad's." She was a bit hesitant to say it.

When it came out of her mouth, it sounded like a question. Marilyn's eyes lit up with delight, and her face slowly formed a smile. Nyssa thought it was rather funny the things that made her mother happy. Judging from the look on her face, Nyssa could have told her that she and Lucas were getting married. Marilyn slowly walked around the counter toward Nyssa like she wanted to hug her.

"Nyssa, my darling, I'm so happy that you asked me for your father's car. He would have wanted you to have something to remember him by."

"Oh, I have enough memories of that man. I don't need the car to help me with that," Nyssa said as she cringed at thinking of her father. Marilyn missed the gesture as she moved toward her china cabinet. She opened the top drawer and pulled out a single key on a key chain. She closed the drawer and handed the key to Nyssa. The smile never left her face.

"I remember when you and your father worked on that car years ago."

"Yeah, I remember. I also remember him forcing me to fake a seizure at the auto parts store, so he could steal spark plugs. Half the parts in that car were stolen."

"You might find a few changes made to the car. You know how your grandfather loved American cars."

Nyssa's face fell like the air had been taken out of her. Yes, she knew how much her grandfather loved American cars. The man always prided himself as an expert on American classic vehicles. The problem was that he did not know where the engine was located in any vehicle half the time. To discover that he had been tampering with the Mustang all those years made Nyssa feel a little ill. Just what kind of 'changes' would she have to work out just to get the car running again?

For the next hour, Nyssa had inspected the Mustang in her mother's garage. There was a lot of work to do just to clean it up. After Nyssa's grandfather died, the car sat untouched under a tarp in the garage for years. It needed the hoses flushed out, a new battery, an oil change, new filters, and that was just the beginning.

The biggest problem was the ignition system. Nyssa found a check list made out by her grandfather on the dashboard of the car. The last thing on the list that was not crossed out was spark plugs. Nyssa smiled.

How ironic, and I was just talking about that.

Nyssa checked the system and found that the 'changes' her mother spoke of were many, but the main one was the ignition. Her grandfather modified the system, so average spark plugs did not work. She would have to rebuild the system before she even thought about buying new spark plugs.

Nyssa decided to spend the time working on the easy stuff first. She found an old grey button work shirt and changed her top. She pulled her hair up into a messy pony tail and rummaged through the tools to begin. She was halfway through changing one of the filters when she heard Marilyn calling her from the back door.

"Nyssa, you have a visitor. A nice girl named Jo."

Nyssa looked up from the car to see Jo walking out of the back door toward the garage. She was wearing a black jacket with a pink top, blue jeans and black shoes. The way she carried herself told Nyssa that her visit was not any type of emergency. Nyssa turned back to the car and resumed her work.