Page 105 of Jackie

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The next morning, stepping out of my stateroom into the hot scattered sunlight on the deck. I’m aware of him suddenly. Onassis. Standing a few yards away.

…

When I arrive home on October 17, I’ve been gone for almost three weeks. As I start down the steps of the plane, Caroline rushes up, a flash of white dress and ankle socks, John behind her, climbing one stair at a time. I wait for them at the top of the stairs. Caroline flies into my arms. I hold her tightly, the warm beating realness of her cheek against mine. John wraps himself around my leg. Then Jack is there.

“You’re back,” he says.

—

We’re together for only a night. He’s leaving for Cambridge to visit a site for the new library.

“I have a favor,” he says at breakfast. “While you were gone, Governor Connally was here.”

“I don’t like that man.”

“He reminded me I promised to visit Texas.”

“Not now, though—when they hate the test-ban treaty and the civil-rights bill.”

“He’s asked if you’d come.”

I feel something in me pause. “Texas?”

“I’m only asking you to think it over.”

“This isn’t for what’s on the table, is it? This is for the next campaign.”

“Just give it some thought, Jackie. Please.”

—

The last weekend in October, he comes to Wexford. I can feel he is restless the moment he walks through the door—some bright, sharp current running under the skin.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m here.”

“You seem like you’d rather be somewhere else.”

He looks at me. “I’m here.”

Vietnam, I realize over the next several hours. I start to piece it together. What’s already happened, what might happen next.

When we have a few moments alone, I ask him about it.

“It’s all going down,” he says. “That memo I agreed to in August, indicating the United States might support a coup. But I was clear there were conditions—”

The phone rings. It’s rung, it seems, every half hour since he came. Someone picks up. He leaves the room. A door slams. I hear him swear, then, “How can this house have no closets?”

When news comes from Saigon that a coup to overthrow Diem is imminent, the South Vietnamese military commanders refuse to give Jack the forty-eight hours’ notice he asks for.

“Won’t? Or can’t?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I’ve told them I need forty-eight hours to find another way.”

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