Page 7 of The Night Of
Now I wanted to scream.
I shook my head. The shaking grew until my whole body was shuddering. My spine curled as I stared at the carpet. “I’m sorry,” I choked out. My chest was caving in and I couldn’t breathe through the flood of shame, the image of Baker’s blood soaking my hands, my arms, my knees. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Was I talking about his best friend, or was I talking about last year?
A piece of paper appeared in front of my eyes. It was folded, but it was obviously White House stationery, the thick, heavy linen stock all the bigwigs used. Smudges covered the back. It had been folded and unfolded a few dozen times. What was this, note passing in math class?
I took the paper and Jonathan walked around me, behind me. I couldn’t help it. My eyes followed him. He went to his conference table and leaned forward, both palms pressed against the dark cherrywood as if he needed the support to stay on his feet. “Read it,” he said softly.
Oh.
Fuck, I didn’t want to.
I unfolded it, though. Handwriting scrawled on a diagonal across the page.
Jonathan,
If you’re reading this, come on in and ask me what the fuck. If you can’t barge into my office, if something’s happened, call Carl. It all goes back to Belgium. It has to. You’ve always had my back, Lover. I need you again.
Steven
Okay, what the absolute actual fuck?
I always knew how to focus on the most important things. “Lover?” I asked. My voice was high, almost as high as my eyebrows. They were about to crawl off my forehead.
Jonathan shook his head. “Definitely not what you’re imagining. Steven and I were never intimate. That was his private nickname for me. It was a joke, a play on me being in the army and being a warrior, not—almost never, really—a lover.” He sighed. “I’ve never had an abundance of relationships, or partners.” His finger played over a water stain on the dark wood. “That was Steven’s way of telling me the letter was written by him. No one on earth knew about that nickname except for him. It was our private joke.”
I blinked. “You realize what the press will think if they see this?”
“Why do you think you’re reading it and not the American public?”
I was too many hours bereft of my adrenaline rush and too few cups of burned coffee in my stomach for twenty questions. I kept my mouth shut, though, for once.
“It was taped beneath my desk. I found it this morning. Steven hid it in my office—”
“When could he have done that?”
“Shortly before he left for Camp David, I’m sure.”
“What kind of suicide note is this?” I read over it again. “Does this Carl know why—”
Jonathan turned, and finally, our eyes met. Every molecule of oxygen fled from my lungs.
“That is not a suicide note,” Jonathan said.
The people who are closest never believe what’s happened.
This wasn’t my first suicide. It wasn’t the first bereaved loved one I’d faced who didn’t want to accept the truth of what had happened. The waves of guilt and rage crashing against one another. What had they missed? Had their loved one simply refused to reach out? Where did the blame lie when everyone affected died in some way? Those left behind were hollowed out from the inside, a part of them killed as well.
I’d stood before grieving, confused loved ones more than once, just like this. Listening as they insisted the person they loved wouldn’t do this, that they could never do this.
I saw the grief in Jonathan’s eyes, the anguish that went down into the depths of his soul. Twenty-five years he’d known Baker. He’d known the man longer than the First Lady had. They had been brothers. There was no daylight between them, that’s how close they were. I’d seen their friendship, had felt its eddies and currents, the immensity of what lay between them.
What the fuck did I know about grieving when faced with the sudden and insurmountable agony of what Baker had chosen? There was no one in the universe so lonely as a loved one left behind after a suicide.
I didn’t say a word.
I tried, instead, to flip what had happened around. To try to see the facts from another angle. A man in a locked room had a bullet in his head, the gun that fired that bullet still in his hands. It seemed like two and two were making four, to me.
