Page 24 of The Takeaway

Mine welled with emotion as well. I stood beside them, watching her sweat-dampened hair as it stuck to the pillow beside her. She looked at our baby with eyes filled with love. I wanted more than anything for this little being to have my name: Julien Boucher Hudson, or even just Julien Hudson, but I knew this was a non-negotiable for Etienne. If she was to raise our baby primarily on her own, he would have her name. In addition to which, there needed to be no trace of our connection.

I looked at the doctor and the nurses as they bustled around, and from behind the surgical mask I wore, I wondered how many of them had put together that a United States senator sat there, holding the hand of his mistress while they cut her open and pulled their secret child from her belly. Maybe a few? Maybe none? After all, we're in France and such things just happen. People barely bat an eye. Is that right or is that wrong? I don't think it's for me to decide other people's morals, but as I've said to myself--and in this book--at least a thousand times this year alone, I never thought I'd be this person. I never imagined that I'd be the kind of man who lives a second life. It stuns me sometimes, how wholly I've committed to being this other person, because I have. I am one man when I'm at home, and another when I'm here. I sometimes wonder how no one else notices.

Etienne has to spend a few days in the hospital now post-surgery, and here I am, sitting in her apartment alone, thinking of my new baby boy sleeping in a glass bassinet in a hospital just a few miles away. I'll sleep tonight and then wake up early to go back to them. All I want now is to be near them. To hold--

Ruby stops reading, closes the book, sets it on the coffee table, and stands up with purpose. "I'm sorry, Dexter," she says, tugging on the bottom of her shirt to straighten it as she strides through the house. "I need a moment."

Dexter is still sitting there, eyeing the journal on the table as she opens the door in the kitchen that leads outside and closes it firmly behind her.

Ruby

It's irrational, and she knows she shouldn't, but Ruby crosses the sandy patch of grass that separates her main house from the guest house where Banks lives, taking long strides as she steps up to the front door and knocks insistently.

"Banks!" she shouts, knocking again. "Banks, it's Ruby!"

In the time she's been living on Shipwreck Key, Ruby's Secret Service agent, Henry Banks, has begun dating her best friend, and Ruby and Banks have also settled into their new, less restrictive relationship. He'd come to the island with her as her live-in security--a bodyguard, of sorts--but she'd quickly come to realize that Shipwreck Key isn't the kind of place where an agent in dark sunglasses and a military haircut following her around would endear her to the locals.

Not to mention the fact that, with almost no exceptions, she's felt completely safe on the island.

"Banks, are you home?" Ruby steps back and tries to peer into the window of the small guest house. He's still officially living there, but she knows that many nights he stays with Sunday, texting Ruby to let her know where he is and what the protocol is if something should come up. But it never does.

"Hey," a voice comes from behind Ruby and she turns to see Banks and Sunday crossing the sand together, fingers intertwined. He lets go of Sunday's hand and rushes to the front door. "Everything okay?"

Ruby's nostrils are flaring now and her adrenaline is pumping. The crash of the waves in the distance feels as aggressive as her heart pounding in her chest.

"How did you do it, Banks?" Ruby asks, keeping her distance so that she won't approach Banks and thump him on the chest with her fists the way she wants to. "How did you keep it all to yourself and look me in the eye every day?"

"Rubes?" Sunday jogs the last few paces and approaches them, looking back and forth between her best friend and her boyfriend with utter confusion. "What's going on?"

Ruby ignores her. "I need to know how everyone let this happen," she says to Banks, sounding as hysterical she feels. The August air is thick with humidity and an early evening storm is brewing out over the Gulf. "How did you travel with Jack and watch him live his other life, then come home to me and pretend that none of it had ever happened?"

"Ma'am?" Banks says, slipping back into the formality that Ruby has been so sure they've left behind.

While in France, they'd shared conversations and taken some steps in their relationship that she felt had permanently altered the way they would interact with one another, and for the most part it had, but every so often, Banks would slide back into the role of government agent and he would treat Ruby as his superior.

Right now, that's not what she wants. "I need you to explain to me--as a human being, Banks--how you could work so closely with my husband, travel with him to France and watch him interacting with Etienne and Julien, and then come homeand greet me and my daughters and act like none of it had happened."

"Ruby..." Sunday takes another step towards her and holds out one hand as if to lay it on Ruby's arm, but Ruby shakes her off.

"Tell me, Banks: did it bother you at all to know what my husband was doing? Once you knew what kind of a man he truly was, did you actually vote for him to be the leader of our country? Did you?" Her eyes narrow as she spits these words, and because she's so focused on her own impassioned line of questioning, she doesn't even notice that Dexter has stepped out of the kitchen and is standing there on the deck, watching and listening.

Banks clears his throat. "Ruby," he says, clearly weighing his thoughts before letting them escape his lips. "It was my job to serve and protect, not my job to judge morality."

"But what did youthinkof him? As a man?" Ruby's eyes search Banks's face, and on it, she can see exactly how he felt. Now that she knows Banks as a person and not just as an employee, she is more than aware of what kind of man he is, and he's both upstanding and honest, two characteristics he must have found lacking in Jack Hudson.

Banks holds in a breath and then lets it out. "I thought he was like almost every other politician I'd ever met in Washington, Ruby: self-serving. I admired some of his social beliefs and stances, but I disliked the fact that he so callously carried on with a woman in another country. To me, I didn't observe a lot of guilt, and that bothered me, but it bothered me quietly. As an agent, there is no room for moral superiority, there is only room for doing your job."

Ruby nods, taking this in. "Right, right. So secretly, you thought he was a douchebag. But on the record, you only saw him as the president, a man you had sworn to risk your life toprotect. So, essentially, you were willing to die for a man you didn't respect."

"Well," Banks says, leaning against the front post of the guest house with one meaty forearm as he looks out at the ocean. "When you put it that way, yeah. That's what you get hired to do: compartmentalize your personal feelings, guard whoever gets put in front of you, and prepare yourself mentally to take a bullet if necessary."

"But did you vote for him?" Ruby is still watching Banks, hoping that he'll redeem himself in some way, which will allow her to step back from the ledge.

Sunday laughs in disbelief. "Ruby, come on," she says.

"No, it's okay." Banks pushes himself away from the post and locks his eyes on Ruby's. "I can be honest." He waited a beat. "No, if you want the truth, I didn't. I voted for the other guy."

Ruby nods and folds her arms across her chest as she feels her racing heart begin to slow. She knows she's being irrational, that she's lashing out at the wrong person, and that nothing Banks says now will actually make her feel better, but reading all of Jack's words are stirring up so much unwanted emotion that she needs to open a vent and let some of the steam out.

---