Chapter Eighty-Four

…paradox.

Henry

Friday, 21st December, 2018

12:14 PM

'White House. Now.'

The three words of Russell's text message pulsed through Henry like a frantic mantra and governed his stride as he stormed along the corridors of the White House, the fronts of his blazer flapping open with each thud of his heart and footfall. White House. Now. White House. Now. White House. Now. Pods of staffers clustered here and there: at the ends of mahogany console tables, the legs of which were wrapped in gold and silver tinsel; next to the steel column radiators, with their chipped white paint and blossoming heat, that lined every wall; in front of the windows where the occasional flake of snow wafted against the glass before melting a line towards the ledge below, whilst above the powder-dusted grasses outside, spirals of white confetti swooned. The tumbling rise and fall of the staffers' chatter piped through the halls as they sipped from their takeaway coffee cups and shared warm yet vague smiles, which said that although they were happy to be there, they'd be happier still when the day had ended and they'd returned to the cosy warmth that could only be found with their loved ones at home.

Henry couldn't share in those smiles nor their carefree laughs, though, not when his thoughts were locked on the text message—White House. Now.—and his loved one who wasn't at home.

"Adele." He strode into the outer part of Russell's office. "Russell sent a message—"

Adele looked up from the file that was splayed open on her desk, her fingers poised against the metal ruler she'd been using to guide her as she read the document line by line, and she peered up at Henry over the thick plastic rims of her glasses. "They're in the Oval Office. Russell said to send you straight through."

"Thank you." The words echoed after him as he strode on down the corridor.

After the bomb, he'd hoped—perhaps more selfishly than he cared to admit—that Elizabeth would come straight home. He needed to hold her and soak up her presence—from her smile to her scent, from her soft warmth to the rise and fall of her breath, from the cloudless skies of her eyes to the way her fingers laced perfectly with his own—just to know that she was safe and to prove to himself that he had more than memories of her to cling to. And he couldn't deny that the surge of relief that had washed over him like the warm waters of an Epsom salt bath when he'd opened the door late on Sunday evening to see Will standing there, safe and unharmed, was tinged with the bitter sting of disappointment to find that an FBI agent, not Elizabeth's detail, had dropped him off and that rather than her returning home with him, he had travelled there alone. Will's vague reassurances that 'Lizzie's fine' apart from 'a few scratches' and that she 'just has some things she needs to figure out' before she was ready to come home offered Henry about as much comfort as any words could when they were spoken through a mouthful of three cheese pizza snatched from the grease-stained box on the kitchen counter. Though he needed her to be home, perhaps the fact remained that she still needed to be at the clinic, maybe even more so after the third attempt on her life in as many months.

Five days had passed since Will had shown up alone. Five days in which the security agencies had reassured them that the threat had now gone; five days in which the White House—much to the kids' relief—had freed them from their Secret Service detail; five days in which they'd settled into a somewhat normal routine at home. With one thing missing.

And now his cell phone held the text message, 'White House. Now.', and he found himself once again in the ice cold clutch of fear that something else had happened and maybe she—his Elizabeth—would never come home.

He ducked into the reception area outside the Oval Office. The assortment of chairs that pressed against the walls were deserted, petals of snow floated down outside the windows, and a murmur of voices drifted through the narrow gap between the office door and its frame.

Lucy did a double take and then smiled up at him from her desk. "Dr McCord, go straight through." She held her hand out towards the door, her smile fixed in place, taut yet warm.

Henry grasped the brass door handle, and was about to sweep the door open.

But then it struck him.

And he froze.

That laugh. The one that would rise above every last voice at a state dinner, no matter how packed the room. The one that resonated with something deep inside him, as though its frequency matched that of his soul. The one that he had promised himself on their one-and-a-halfth date he would coax from her every time they were together. Because it suited her. And with that laugh, every last fear melted, like the flakes of snow against the windows.

She had come home.

He eased the door open with his fingertips, and then hovered in the doorway, one hand steadying him against the frame. His breath stilled.

Elizabeth sat on the nearest of the two cobalt couches with her back turned to the door, her body pivoted to face Stevie who perched at the opposite end, her eyes gleaming with the smile that stretched across her face; whilst Conrad leant back against the edge of his desk, his arms folded across his chest, his chin dipped with his chuckle; and in front of the Christmas tree that thrust its red, white and blue bauble-spangled branches towards the walkway door, stood Russell, his hands braced against his hips beneath the open fronts of his suit jacket, his head bowed to disguise the inflection of his own smile.

A smile eased its way onto Henry's lips as Elizabeth continued to talk. Her laughter lit her voice and added that touch of gravel that he loved. "—and I swear to God this horse tries to bite him, probably because he's so on edge around her, because as it turns out, he's afraid of horses, has been ever since he was little and there was some incident at a dude ranch that his parents took him and his brothers to, which he probably should have mentioned, given that I keep dragging them all back to the horse farm. I mean, you think he could've—"

"Mom."

Elizabeth stopped and leant forward to squeeze Stevie's knee. "What is it, baby?"

Stevie raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes until their whites flared beneath the light cast from the chandelier overhead, and then she nudged her gaze towards Henry.

For a moment, Henry wished she hadn't. He could have listened to Elizabeth talk all day, especially when her tone alone was enough to tell him that she wasn't the Elizabeth who had spoken of all the ways she should have died before the true meaning of those words hit him and she fell into the shadows of their bedroom, but that she was his Elizabeth again, the one who part of him had feared couldn't return—through no fault of her own, but because they'd missed that 'narrow window'. But then Elizabeth let go of Stevie's knee and twisted around to face the door, and as soon as her gaze landed on him, her smile dancing on in her eyes, he didn't know why he'd waited so much as one second to wrap her in his arms.

Except that now, with a clammy sweat gripping his palms as relentlessly as it had done when he'd marched across the quad to pick her up for their first date, and with a nervous energy shivering through every last muscle and binding him tight, he wasn't sure if he could move. Forming a coherent sentence might be a stretch too.

Elizabeth placed the book she had balanced in her lap onto the cushion of the couch, braced herself against her thighs and pushed herself up from the seat. She ambled around the end of the couch and padded across the carpet towards him; the silence in the room was as deep as the drifts of snow that mounted on the lawn outside, and it felt as though the hushed tread of her sneakers echoed.

His hand fell away from the door frame of its own accord, and somehow he managed to stumble a step further inside and push the door to behind him. His fingertips tingled. God, this was stupid. She was his wife, for crying out loud; he shouldn't be this nervous.

She sauntered to a stop in front of him. Her smile had softened, yet still it twinkled up at him.

His own smile had dwindled though. Perhaps he should have spent less time worrying that she wouldn't come home and more time preparing himself for the moment when she did. His fingers flexed at his side. He wanted to— . Or— . No, he wanted— . Maybe he should— . Or— .

God, he didn't know what to do.

The grandfather clock tolled out the silence that stagnated between them. Clink…clonk…clink…clonk…clink…clonk… With each second that clunked by as faltering as a wagon wheel lurching into the mud-water potholes of a dirt track, his palms only sweated even more—not helped by the way that her eyes shone up at him with such hope, nor by the way that the longer he stared at her, the more it looked as though she held a wince on standby.

Just say something. Anything. Seriously, anything at all. His mouth hinged open, the flat of his tongue tasted the seconds that continued to lumber out, then—

"Hey." The word fell out in a breath.

She continued to stare up at him, the hope still alight—it felt as though she were waiting for something more. But when nothing came, she bit down on the inside of her cheek and her thumb nudged her wedding ring so that the gold gleamed at the edge of his vision. "Seriously, Henry. You haven't seen me in six weeks and the best you can do is 'Hey'?"

A blush threatened his cheeks, and as his chin dipped, a chuckle reverberated through his chest. Wholly unbidden. Half self-deprecation, half nerves.

With his gaze lowered, her thumb froze against her ring.

When he looked up at her again, her smile had grown more tentative still, as though beneath the surface, she were straining to hold it up, and as a result, the wince became evermore prominent. If she'd been expecting more than a 'hey' by way of greeting, she had certainly been expecting more than him avoiding her gaze when she called him out on it. Perhaps a riposte or a quote, or a quote in riposte. Yet still the words wouldn't come.

Conrad pushed himself away from the edge of the desk, and perhaps sensing the awkwardness between Henry and Elizabeth—Who couldn't? It was like someone had stretched tensile wires across the room, and so much as a flinch or even an ill-timed breath triggered an electric jolt.—he looked to Stevie and Russell. "I think I could use some fresh air, clean out the cobwebs."

Stevie stared wide-eyed up at Conrad for all of two seconds, and then taking the hint, she rose from her seat and smoothed her palms down the skirt of her navy blue dress as she did so.

But Russell's brow furrowed in disbelief. "It can't be more than thirty degrees out there, and that's not factoring in windchill. Plus, it's snowing." He swept one hand towards the walkway door, its net curtains as white as the blanket of snow that cushioned the lawn beyond. "And I hate snow."

Conrad gave him a firm look. "Then grab your coat, Russell, and don't stray from the walkway."

Russell grumbled. Something about snow being a deathtrap, a blight on the US economy, and utterly pointless to boot. But he filed out after Stevie and Conrad anyway, and then flipped up his collar and huddled his suit jacket around him as his silhouette loitered beyond the gauze veil that stretched across the door.

The bitter chill from outside along with stinging-sweet scent of snow unfurled through the room and lingered on even after the door had juddered into its frame. The gust, and the silence that it ushered in, made the toll of the grandfather clock heavier and more absolute somehow, like the peal that echoes through the blackened streets and summons worshipers to Midnight Mass.

Henry's heart thudded against his ribs in an attempt to match.

Elizabeth had unhooked the reading glasses from the neckline of her blue plaid shirt, and she bowed her head as she stared down at them and rubbed her thumbs against the frames. Her hair had swept forward on one side, and it fell in a shimmering curtain that ached to be tucked behind her ear, whilst pinprick flecks of rusted red marked her face—scratches scabbed but not yet healed.

Henry's fingers itched where they hung loose at his sides. He wanted to brush back her hair, lace his fingers through the silky-soft strands and draw her close so that he could press feather-light kisses to each one of those cuts. But he wasn't sure if she'd want him to. Perhaps it would have been okay if he'd done that straight away, but as the awkwardness stretched, it felt like maybe they weren't even looking at the same book let alone the same page, and he didn't want to misread the situation. And so he watched her instead as his chest grew tighter and tighter, his heart a knot at the centre, and he wasn't entirely convinced he wouldn't wake up in a moment and find himself alone again in the shadows of their bedroom.

Elizabeth's thumbs stilled against the frames. She looked up at him, and proffered his reading glasses. The hope in her eyes had dimmed, and the smile on her lips had turned pained.

He looked to the glasses, and then to her. "You came back."

"I did." Her eyebrows arched, adding emphasis to her words, and she attempted to widen her smile, but it turned into more of a grimace.

He took the glasses from her. The same rusted red dots that marked her face streaked the back of her hand too, only these ones strung into lines, like stars of a constellation linked. He hooked the plastic arm over the front of his shirt, and then stood facing her, still at a loss for what to say.

Silence throbbed between them. The grandfather clock clink…clonk…clink…clonk…clink…clonked; a gust of wind whistled a draught through the gaps around the windows and ruffled the net curtains; a telephone trilled in the office outside.

Russell, Conrad and Stevie huddled on the walkway, and they chatted away whilst Conrad pointed to something on the lawn and the snow flurried down in flakes as thick as shredded cotton candy.

Elizabeth's smile-grimace withered into nothing, and her chin dipped again. She shook her head to herself, and the curtain of her hair quivered and caught a ripple of the soft yellow light.

Henry's mouth opened and closed. He swallowed. The words came out thick, and they dragged as though smothered in black treacle. "How…how are you?"

A flash of a smile lit her lips as she met his gaze. Her eyes sparkled. "Good." She tilted her head to one side, and her gaze drifted away over his shoulder. "I mean, still very much a work in progress—" She returned her gaze to his. "—but good." She paused, and then reached as though to grasp his hand, but her fingertips merely brushed against his fingers before they retreated again instead. The corners of her lips tweaked into a half-wince. "How about you?"

He nodded, her touch still tingling through his skin, cold and warm all at once. "Good."

The word hung in the air. It should have loosened his tongue and enabled more words to follow, but instead it felt as though it carved out a hollow into which more silence spilled.

He studied her, looking for what to say—anything to say.

The seconds ached. The grandfather clock clink…clonk…clink…clonk…clink…clonked; Conrad's chuckle rolled through from the walkway and melded with the lilt of Stevie's laugh; Lucy's voice drifted through the gap between the door and its frame.

No words emerged, only clouds in Elizabeth's eyes—overcast skies. Then she pinched them shut, and with a derisive huff (self- or otherwise), she shook her head.

He stepped towards her, reached for her.

But at the same time she turned away.

He stopped.

She dug circles into her brow with the tips of her fingers. Stilled. Took a deep breath that shook through her. And then let her hand fall away. A moment or two passed. Then she clutched her hips and turned her chin so that—at a guess—she stared towards the walkway door. Perhaps she'd rather be out there with Conrad and Russell instead. (Stevie's silhouette had disappeared.)

Henry eased a step closer. "I'm pleased to see you."

"Henry…" She shook her head again. The ends of her hair trembled. Then she turned to him, and hugged her arms loosely across her chest. Her gaze drifted, perhaps to avoid his. "You know, I've had warmer welcomes from wannabe dictators who've just been told I'm planning on cutting off all financial aid… And even their vocabulary extends beyond monosyllabic words."

He chuckled. Wholly unbidden. Half self-deprecation, half nerves—once again.

The pinch in her brow said that wasn't the right response.

He closed the gap between them, bringing them toe to toe, and he smoothed his palms down her upper arms and over the curves of her elbows.

But she flinched away from the touch, as though stung.

He stopped. His smile evaporated in sync to the strum that ached out from his heart. So much for holding her, let alone soaking up her presence. He scruffed his hand over the hair at the back of his head instead and then let it fall empty at his side. He gave a stilted shrug, and his lips twinged at one corner. "I just wasn't expecting to see you here, that's all. Russell sent a text saying, 'White House. Now.', and I was worried that something had happened to you—again—but then I heard you laughing and I saw you and I was surprised—good surprised."

She pinned her bottom lip between her teeth at one side, the way she did when she was too anxious to hide the fact that she was anxious. Another shake of the head.

"Look…do you think we could start again?"

Clink…clonk…clink…clonk…clink…clonk.

She continued to stare towards the exit, still worrying her lip between her teeth. If it weren't for the grandfather clock keeping count of the seconds, forever could have passed.

She took a deep breath and her shoulders hunched to her ears. "I don't know." With her sigh, her shoulders fell. Then she met his eye, and a small smile broke through. "If we were to start again again, that could take a while, and I'm kinda worried that if I leave Russell freezing his ass off standing around out there for much longer, he'll start coming up with initiatives to promote global warming in the vain hope it might actually lead to less snow."

He gave a huff of a laugh. "Have fun trying to explain that paradox to him."

Beyond the door, Russell tugged on a black woollen overcoat—presumably what Stevie had been sent to fetch before she returned to her work or to grab him a coffee that he probably shouldn't be drinking but would attempt to justify because of the cold—whilst flurries of snow twisted and tumbled through the white stone pillars and whipped onto the walkway.

Elizabeth followed Henry's gaze, staring over her shoulder. She murmured, "I'm sure I will."

Henry rested his hands on her hips, waited for her to flinch or push him away, and when she didn't, he brushed his thumbs back and forth over the patches above the juts of her hipbones, ruffling the cotton of her plaid shirt as he did so. A smile dawned across his lips. It was cheesy, no doubt, but when had cheesy ever failed him before? "Then how about we start here, with these monosyllabic words?"

She turned to him, and looked up at him expectantly, almost puzzled.

"I missed you. A lot. A lot a lot. More than you can know. I'm glad that you came home, and I'm glad that you feel good. And I love—"

But as he spoke, pain seeped into her eyes, as though the clouds they held had started to rain grey sleet. She bowed her head. Her hair shivered. "Henry, don't."

Uh… His mind fumbled over silence. He sought sense where none was to be found. "What?"

She lifted her chin and looked up at him. A wall of ice had risen up in her eyes.

He frowned and his hands fell away from her hips. "Why not?"

But she just stared up at him, her expression a mask, and as she did, the walkway door swung open and a gasp of bitter air flooded the room.

Russell and Conrad bustled inside. Russell pushed up the sleeve of his black overcoat, the wool now adorned with flecks of melting snow, and he frowned at his watch. "Bess, we need to get a move on if we're going to do this. I don't want to get caught up in the snow, or wait around until the liquid lunchers start spilling out of the bars."

Elizabeth continued to stare up at Henry. Her lips parted. Her throat bobbed.

Henry frowned back at her. What on earth was going on?

"Bess?" Russell said.

A second longer, and then she broke their gaze. She cleared her throat. "Sure."

She slipped past Henry, causing him to stumble aside, and she grabbed what appeared to be Will's green-grey jacket from the armrest of the couch. She folded it over her left arm and then faced Conrad, who had once again taken his perch against the front edge of his desk. She nodded to him. "Mister President."

"Madam Secretary." Conrad gave her an equally formal nod in reply, though a smile snuck through in a sly glimmer. Then he tipped his forefinger at her. "And I'll be holding you to that promise about NSC meetings. One single complaint…"

Elizabeth backed towards the door that Russell had wedged open with one foot, whilst he held a cell phone in either hand, his gaze flitting from one screen to the other as his thumb tapped away at one of the keypads, and she held her arms out to the sides. "See, and here I was thinking that that conversation never happened."

Conrad huffed. "Take care, Bess. I'll see you next week."

"If not sooner." She turned and strode out into the waiting area, leaving Henry in a daze.

Russell paused his tapping for half a second and shot Henry a look. "Henry…" He jerked his head towards the doorway. "Are you coming or are you planning on hanging around here all afternoon?"

Henry hesitated, and then gave Conrad a nod. He might have mumbled Conrad's name or a quick 'Mister President', he didn't know. And then he wandered past the abandoned chairs of the waiting area and Lucy's warm yet taut smile, and into the corridor outside.

On the opposite side of the hall and with her back to Henry, Elizabeth stood in front of one of the radiators, its white paint flaked away to reveal the rusted steel beneath. Henry joined her. She didn't acknowledge him though, just continued to stare out through the window. The snow on the concrete path outside had already turned to grey-brown sludge with the Secret Service agents traipsing past. Although the chatter of staffers, the trills of telephones and the judders of inkjet printers still filtered through the halls, as Henry and Elizabeth stood side by side, it felt as though the silence that had stagnated between them before now surrounded them in their own awkward bubble and trapped them from the normality outside.

When the backs of their hands brushed, Henry froze.

A second later, Elizabeth's fingers plucked at his. Still she stared out of the window. Her voice lowered to less than a murmur. "Henry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"Then how did you mean it?"

She shook her head. Her voice thickened. "I just wanted to talk to you first."

"We were talking. I tried to tell you that I love you, and you said 'don't'."

Her head bowed. Her hair swept between them.

"Is this what you've been trying to figure out?"

She shot him a sideways glance. "What?"

"Will said you were trying to figure some things out. By that did you mean 'us'?"

She stared at him. Something akin to alarm lit the whites of her eyes.

"Bess." Russell's voice came from behind.

She shook her head and murmured, "I'll talk to you at home."

Russell swooped in on her opposite side, one of the cell phones he had been studying held out to her. "This is for you, seeing as you 'being fine' resulted in water damage to the last one. I'll make sure all the key people have your new number, so you needn't worry about that. No doubt Mike'll be in contact regarding that interview. And in the interest of checks and balances, those first two speed dials are non-negotiable." He leant back and shot Henry a look behind her. "Sorry, Henry, you'll have to make do with third place."

Henry continued to study Elizabeth, whilst she stuffed the cell phone into the front pocket of her jeans and avoided his gaze. His jaw tightened. "Somehow I don't think that'll be a problem."

Elizabeth's gaze darted up. The whites of her eyes flared.

"Good." Russell clasped his hands together in front of him, almost a clap. He looked from Elizabeth to Henry and back again. "Shall we?"

Elizabeth turned her back on the window, but she made no move to leave. She raked her fingers through her hair and left them lodged in her roots, whilst her gaze whistled away into the distance. Her lips parted a second or two before she spoke. "I forgot something." She swallowed, and as she hugged Will's jacket tighter against her stomach, her gaze drifted to Russell. "Give me a minute, and I'll meet you in your office."

Russell's cell phone bleeped, and he fished it out of his coat pocket. "Sure." He frowned down at the screen and stepped away from her and Henry. "But don't take too long. I've still got a country to run, even if everybody else has checked out for the holidays."

Russell strode off down the corridor, a thud with each step, whilst Henry and Elizabeth stood trapped in their bubble of silence. Time inside it stilled.

Henry wished they had the clink…clonk…clink…clonk…clink…clonk… to echo through the hush and measure the seconds now. He stared out of the window. Elizabeth's presence hung at the edge of his vision whilst outside the tufts of snow drifted down, white and pure, to melt into the trampled murk of sludge that clogged the concrete slabs of the path. He waited for her to say something—anything, anything at all—whilst at the same time, some part of him told him that she'd already said enough and that he should just go. He'd thought she had been pleased to see him. She had looked up at him with such hope. But then there was that wince, and that flinch, and the nudging of her wedding ring, and the weeks and weeks of silence.

"I should…" She tilted her head towards the Oval Office.

He frowned. Then—

Oh. He gave a self-derisive huff. He'd thought the 'forgotten something' was an excuse for them to talk. He needled his brow with his fingertips—How stupid.—and then he let his hand fall to his side. He gave her a bitter-tinged smile. "Sure. Well, I guess I'll see you at home."

He turned and walked away.

But before he had made it a single stride, something grabbed hold of his hand.

He froze and looked at her, and then to the knot of their fingers. Will's jacket had slipped down her arm to her wrist and half-covered the bridge between them.

She squeezed tight.

He looked her in the eye.

She looked back. Cloudless skies. "Henry, I love you."

He'd wanted her to get better. He'd wanted her to come home. He'd wanted to hear her say those three words. And now that she had? He was reminded of the night when she had spoken of all the ways in which she should have died before the true meaning of those words hit him and she fell into the shadows of their bedroom, and how as she curled up on her side beneath the covers of their bed and he'd begged her to seek help before he'd warned her that he would make the call himself, she had told him she would never forgive him and she'd threatened to leave him if he did. At the time he'd said he could live with that, so long as she was well.

It wasn't a lie. He just never thought it would come true.

She let go of his hand, caught hold of Will's jacket, and walked away towards the waiting area and the Oval Office beyond. Nothing made sense. Her behaviour was as much a paradox as global warming leading to increased snowfall. But as he stood alone in the White House now, he found himself gripped by a fear far more chilling than before. Elizabeth had come back. But what if she didn't want to be his Elizabeth anymore?

Thank you for reading!