My new home, he thought again.
Except for the laptop on the desk and the pictures of the kids beside it — last year’s school photos, still in their warping cardboard frames — there was nothing of home here. The stains on the carpet weren’t apple juice Alexander had spilled as a boy. Harleigh hadn’t painted the picture of the harlequin. The refrigerator wasn’t stocked with rows of plastic containers filled with that wretched kiwi-strawberry-yogurt juice that Sharon liked. The television had never shown home videotapes of birthday parties, pool parties, and anniversaries, of relatives and coworkers who were gone. Hood had never watched the sun rise or set from this window. He had never had the flu or felt his unborn child kick in this bed. If he called out to the kids, they wouldn’t come.
Tears pressed against the backs of his eyes. He turned to look at the clock, anything to break the steady succession of thoughts and pictures. He would have to get ready soon. Time — and government — stopped for no man. He still had professional obligations. But lord God, Hood thought, he didn’t feel like going. Talking, putting on a happy face the way he did with his son, wondering who knew and who didn’t in the instant message machine known as the Washington grapevine.
He looked up at the ceiling. Part of him had wanted this to happen. Hood wanted the freedom to do his job. He wanted an end to being judged and criticized by Sharon. He also wanted to stop constantly disappointing his wife.
But another part of him, by far the largest part, was bitterly sad that it had come to this. There would be no more shared experiences, and the children were going to suffer for their parents’ shortcomings.
As the finality of the divorce hit him, hit him hard, Hood allowed the tears to flow.
THREE
Sixty-one-year-old First Lady Megan Catherine Lawrence paused before the late-seventeenth-century gilded pier mirror over a matching commode. She gave her short, straight, silver hair and ivory satin gown one last check before picking up her white gloves and leaving her third-floor salon. Satisfied, the tall, slender, elegant woman crossed the South American rug collected by President Herbert Hoover and entered the private presidential bedroom. The president’s private dressing room was directly across from her. As she stepped out, she looked out at the lamp-lit white walls and light-blue Kennedy curtains, the bed that was first used by Grover and Frances Cleveland, the rocking chair where delicate, devoted Eliza Johnson awaited word of her husband Andrew’s impeachment trial in 1868, and the bedside table where each night the seventh president, Andrew Jack-son, would remove a miniature portrait of his dead wife from its place beside his heart, set it on the table next to her well-read Bible, and made certain that her face was the first thing he saw each morning.
As she looked out at the room, Megan smiled. When they first moved into the White House, friends and acquaintances would say to her, “It must be amazing having access to all the secret information about President Kennedy’s missing brain and the Roswell aliens.” She told them the secret was that there was no secret information. The only amazing thing was that, after nearly seven years of living in the White House, Megan still felt a thrill to be here among the ghosts, the greatness, the art, and the history.
Her husband, former Governor Michael Lawrence, had been president of the United States for one term when a series of stock market tumbles helped the moderate conservative lose a close election to Washington outsiders Ronald Bozer and Jack Jordan. Pundits said it was as much the family lumber fortune of the Oregon redwood that had made the president a target, since he was largely unaffected by the downturn. Michael Lawrence didn’t agree, and he was not a quitter. Rather than become a token partner in some law firm or join the board of directors of his family corporation, the former president stayed in Washington, set up a nonpartisan think tank, American Sense, and was a hands-on manager. He used the next eight years to find ways to fix or fine-tune what he perceived had been wrong with his first term, from the economy to foreign policy to social programs. His think tank members did the Sunday morning talk show circuit, wrote op-ed pieces, published books, and gave speeches. With a weak incumbent vice president to run against, and a new vice president on his own ticket — New York Senator Charles Gotten — Mi chael Lawrence decisively won reelection. His popularity rating remained in the 60 percent region, and reelection was considered a fait accompli.
Megan crossed the room to the president’s dressing room. The door was shut, which was the only way to keep the bathroom warm, since draftiness came with the old walls and history. That meant her husband was probably still in the shower, which was surprising. Selected guests would be arriving at the second-floor study for a small, private half-hour cocktail reception at seven. Her husband usually liked to be ready fifteen minutes before that to sit with his thick personnel folder and review the likes, dislikes, hobbies, and family data of foreign guests. Tonight, he had the newly appointed acting ambassadors from Sweden and Italy coming up before a state dinner for key United Nations delegates. Their predecessors had been assassinated during the recent siege, and the replacements had been named quickly to show the world that terrorism could not stop the pursuits of peace and diplomacy. The president wanted a chance to meet the two men privately. After that, they’d go down to the Blue Room for a formal predinner reception with other influential United Nations delegates. Then it was on to the dinner itself, which was designed to show unity and support after the attack the previous week.
The president had come up shortly before six o’clock, which should have given him plenty of time to shower and shave. Megan couldn’t understand what was keeping him. Perhaps he was on the phone. His staff tried to keep calls to the private residence to a minimum, but he’d been getting more and more calls over the past few days, sometimes in the small hours of the morning. She did not want to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms, but she wasn’t a youngster anymore. Years ago, when they first started campaigning for public office, she used to be able to get by on two or three hours of sleep. No more. It had to be even worse on her husband. He was looking more tired than usual and desperately needed rest. The crisis at the United Nations had forced them to cancel a planned vacation in the northwest, and they had not been able to reschedule it.
The First Lady stopped by the six-panel door and listened. The shower was not running. Neither was the water in the sink. And it didn’t sound as if he was on the phone.
“Michael?”
Her husband did not answer. She turned the bright brass handle and opened the door.
There was a narrow anteroom before the bathroom. In an alcove to the right was a stand-alone cherry wood wardrobe where the president’s valet left his clothes for the day. In an alcove to the left was a matching cherry wood dressing table with a large, brightly lit wall mirror above it. The president was dressed in a royal blue bathrobe. He was standing there, breathing heavily, a look of rage in his narrow blue eyes. His fists were white-knuckle tight at his sides.
“Michael, are you all right?”
He glared at her. She had never seen him look so angry and — disoriented was the word that came to mind. It frightened her deeply.
“Michael, what is it?”
He looked back at the mirror. His eyes softened and his hands relaxed. His breathing came more easily. Then he slowly lowered himself into a walnut side chair in front of the dressing table.