Page 118 of 28 Summers
He hangs up the phone and sits down on the bed that he and Ursula are supposed to be sleeping in, although sleep these days is done mostly on airplanes and in the car. He feels like he’s falling. He’s been pushed off a building. He’s a coin flipped carelessly into a bottomless well. There’s air rushing in his ears. Vertigo. He deals daily with the loss of Mallory, but he reminds himself that it’s only temporary. They may see each other as soon as next September if Ursula loses.
Ursula, he knows, isn’t going to lose.
But now, suddenly, that has no bearing on his life—win, lose, elected, reelected; it doesn’t matter. The melanoma came back, metastasized to her brain. Link has called hospice. Mallory is dying.
Jake tries to remember how she looked when he saw her the summer before.
Beautiful. She looked beautiful. She looked like Mallory.
Her eyes had been blue.
Jake enters the suite’s sitting room, St. Louis command central, where Ursula is meeting with her young staffers—one of whom is Avery Silver, Hank Silver’s oldest daughter, the squash champion—and the UDG campaign manager, Kasie Smith. Ursula met Kasie at a charity event sponsored byWestern Michigan Womanmagazine and hired her on the spot.
We do well together,Ursula said.She gets me.Jake remembers that these were the exact phrases Ursula used to describe her relationship with Anders; it’s her highest praise. Jake likes Kasie very much. She’s smart and focused like Ursula, direct and poised like Ursula—and warm and empathetic, qualities that she’s trying to teach Ursula. Kasie is now the most important person in Ursula’s life, in all of their lives.
Around Kasie and the staff, Jake works hard to come across as the consummate supportive spouse, but now, his voice is sharp. “Ursula, I need to talk to you.”
Ursula is reading something. She doesn’t look up.
“Ursula,” Jake says.
“Ursula,” Kasie prompts, and Ursula puts a finger down to mark her place. Kasie’s voice is the only one that can penetrate Ursula’s concentration these days.
“What is it?” Ursula asks.
Jake nods toward the bedroom.
The bubble over her head says,This had better be important.She follows Jake into the other room. He closes the door.
“I got a phone call just now,” he says. “From Mallory Blessing’s son. Mallory has cancer, it’s metastasized to her brain, and they’ve called hospice.”
“Oh no,” Ursula says. “Jake, I’m so—”
“I’m going to Nantucket tomorrow.”
“You can’t leave tomorrow.”
“St. Louis isn’t going anywhere.”
“We have three events plus the health-care symposium thatyou’remoderating. It’s a can’t-miss thing.”
“Nothing is a can’t-miss thing,” he says. “Get some perspective, Ursula.”
“Jake.”
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll go Saturday.”
Later that afternoon, Jake goes into his hotel room and puts theDO NOT DISTURBsign up. He sits at the desk and tries to work on talking points for the symposium, but he has a difficult time concentrating. There’s a tentative knock at the door. Jake is sure it’s Avery Silver. He’s assigned her a top-secret task.
But the person Jake finds is his daughter, Bess. She’s wearing a dress, heels, pearls, looking so much like a younger version of Ursula, it’s spooky. Bess is working on the campaign this summer, reaching out to Generation Z voters. “Hi, honey,” Jake says.
“Please take me with you to Nantucket,” Bess says.
Jake flinches. “What? Did your mom—”
“She told me you’re going to say goodbye to a sick friend.”
Jake closes his eyes. Ursula can’t keep her fingerprints off anything he does. She justhasto be in control.
