Page 22 of The Night Of
“It’syourhome, as of yesterday. We’re going to have to move you in eventually.”
He glared, but then turned and faced the wall. “She can stay as long as she needs. I’m not throwing a widow in the well of her grief out of the last home she shared with her husband.” Jonathan grabbed the stair rail. We were alone, save for the oil paintings of dead presidents that watched us. “We both lost the most important person in our lives. Her grief is insurmountable. Mine is….” His voice, for a moment, wobbled. “All-consuming,” he whispered. “I’m not ready to see her, as a friend or as the president. Definitely not as the president.”
I wanted to reach for him. I wanted to touch him, lay my hand on his shoulder, run it down his arm. I wanted to step up behind him, slide my fingers around his hip, hold him in my arms. I wanted to nuzzle the back of his neck with my lips, whisper that it would be okay, that we would get through this. That I would be there for him.
He’d deck me before I got close enough to feel his skin. Send me down the stairs, nose bleeding, missing teeth. And I’d deserve it.
“Do you want me to pass along anything from you?” I asked, leaning against the opposite railing and staying as far away from him as I could. “A message, or…” What the fuck was this, first grade?
He shook his head and didn’t look at me as he trudged back down the stairs. There were three Secret Service agents in the Cross Hall, and another two, plus the marine guard at the Oval Office doors, keeping an eye on him as he made his way back to the Oval. I waited, listening for the radio callouts, the teams announcing Jonathan’s movements out to the West Colonnade, and then into the Oval.
Only then did I exhale.
I made my way up the last set of stairs and entered the home of the First Widow of the United States.
The White House Residence was a living museum as much as it was a home. History and reverence soaked the place. Kennedy, Eisenhower, both Roosevelts, and Lincoln all walked the same hallways. History suffused the air I breathed, the wallpaper my fingers skimmed, the floorboards that creaked beneath my feet. The place was usually electric, thrumming with the power of the past… and the present.
Usually.
Gloom encircled me, entrapped me, as I made my way down the Center Hall. A choking horror filled the silent Residence. The hallway grew dark, like I was tunneling into the center of the earth and entering a lair of death and grief incarnate. The curtains in all the rooms had been drawn, the heavy fabric shutting out the world and leaving the Residence as still and cloistered as a tomb.
Felicity Baker was immobile on the couch in the West Sitting Hall, staring out the curtained half-moon window. The only light came bleeding through the linen curtains, and the gray haze made her look ill, pallid. Washed her out like she was a Renaissance study of loss. Raindrops made hollow thumps against the leaden panes.
Grief suffused her entire being. Sorrow and horror had taken hold of her from the inside. Regret turned the air around her sour, her brackish tears poisoning the seclusion of her mourning. I waited, hesitant to breach the suffering that surrounded her.
Now I knew why Jonathan couldn’t face her. His grief was just as potent, just as powerful, but it was, for the most part, hidden. I could see his misery bleeding out around the edges, the ways he was barely hanging on to his iron-clad control. What would happen to him if he came face to face with Felicity’s mourning? The sorrow would overcome him, bring him to his knees.
She turned to me slowly. Even in the depths of her despair, she was radiant. Felicity Baker was a gorgeous woman, and nothing could change that. Not the way her tears ran over, staining her face with lines of salt, or how her eyes were red and raw. Her nose, too, was crimson, and the soaked wrists of her sweater were pulled down over her fists. She sat with her feet tucked under her, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. A blanket covered her lap.
A grandfather clock down the hall counted out seconds, thetick-tockreverberating inside of me. Felicity sniffed, a tiny, wounded-animal whimper escaping before she held out her hand and beckoned me to join her on the couch. “Sean,” she said weakly. She tried to smile.
“Ma’am,” I said, sitting and waving off whatever hospitality she was trying to cobble together. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Her eyes overflowed again, and she bowed her head. One hand rose, a tissue hidden in the folds of her sweater, and she dabbed at her nose and eyes. She reached for me, her cold hand sliding into my own and squeezing. Her hands were bare, save for the gold of her plain wedding band. “Sean.” Her voice was hoarse, torn apart from sobbing. “It’s good to see you again. We missed you, both Steven and I.” She frowned, peering at me. “I thought… I thought we’d be seeing so much more of you. Jonathan…” Her voice trailed off.
Fuck me. How much did she know? Clearly not everything. She couldn’t know what happened that night, what I’d done. If she did, she wouldn’t be holding my hand or saying she’d missed me. She’d have thrown me out as soon as she saw me, cursed me in Jonathan’s name, defended her friend. She wouldn’t be looking at me like she was wondering why he and I were no longer on the edge of something, something she’d helped put together.
I wanted to slither away and die, or fall to the floor and curl up until I was as small and ugly and horrible on the outside as I felt on the inside. What the fuck could I possibly say?
She shook her head, squeezed my hand, and tilted her head away, her eyes slowly drifting to the linen-covered window. “Nothing lasts forever, does it?”
I heard the slight slur of her words, saw the fuzziness in her gaze. Dr. Fernandez must have prescribed her sedatives. Hell, if I were in her shoes, I’d want to numb out the world, too.
“Why would he do this?” she whispered. “I don’t understand…”
“Ma’am, I’m looking into your husband’s passing. I’m trying to find answers for you.” And for the country. But mostly for Jonathan. “May I ask you some questions?”
“The FBI wants to ask me questions, too,” she said. Hers’s were slurring more than the rest of her letters. “I can’t, I just can’t—” She gestured from the window to the hall before her hand fell to her lap. “I don’t have any answers,” she said. Her voice trembled. “I don’t know why he killed himself.” She gasped, drawing in a gulping sob as her eyes squeezed shut and she curled forward.
I squeezed the hand she’d laced through mine. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I whispered.
“You can call me Felicity,” she said, sniffing through her tears. “I thought that’s the way things were going, anyway. That you’d become part of the family.”
Icy fingers grabbed my heart. I nearly vomited, right into the First Lady’s lap. I forced the bile and coffee—coffee Jonathan made me—back down. She was watching me, her eyes searching, asking why I’d disappeared so suddenly. Why I went from her husband’s detail lead, someone she spoke to every single day, to an echo.
I cleared my throat. Averted my gaze. “Ma’am.”
Her nails dug into the skin of my palm. “If answering your questions will help you find out why Steven did this, then… Go ahead, Sean.”
