Chapter Eighty-Five

…where they stood.

Elizabeth

12:44 PM

It was a mistake. She should have made it clear to Russell that she intended on seeing Henry later at home. She should have given Henry his glasses and a peck on the cheek and told him that she had a few things to sort out at work first. She should have diffused the jaw-achingly awkward tension before Conrad excused himself, Russell and Stevie, and left the two of them alone. Then she wouldn't have been forced to say 'don't' just to put a stopper on things before either of them got hurt.

Elizabeth halted in front of the door to the Oval Office. She thought about glancing over her shoulder and catching a glimpse of Henry before he left. But who would that help? He'd probably stalked off already anyway. That huff. That bitter smile. That, 'Well, I guess I'll see you at home'. Her fault, but still…

Her gaze drifted up to the crown moulding above the door instead. Spidering cracks fractured the plaster. She drew in a breath that unfurled down to the base of her lungs and then rolled up to the apex until every last part of her chest ached and burned. She steeled herself. Compartmentalise.

She rapped her knuckles against the wood—three sharp taps—and then grasped the cool bronze handle and pushed open the door before Conrad had the chance to reply. The knock was only a courtesy, really. They both knew she'd be back.

Conrad leant against the front edge of his desk, the fingers of one hand curled around the lip of the stained oak, whilst with the other hand, he held out the book he had given her and that she'd left on the cushions of the sofa—the English translation of La Disparition. With the snow tumbling down beyond the windows behind him, the flakes as thick and as delicate as the swirls of cherry blossom had been when she'd hurried back to that chipped white bench thirty-odd years ago, it felt as though she were living both the past and the present at once, as though the path of her life had looped back on itself and ran alongside where she had walked decades before.

She padded along behind the couch. The surrounding hush of the room, broken only by the clink…clonk…clink…clonk…clink…clonk… of the grandfather clock, elevated the faint tread of her sneakers against the carpet. The quiet spoke of familiarity and comfort—a balm compared to the silence that had jarred and bristled and strained between her and Henry just minutes before. She laid Will's jacket over the back of the couch as she walked past. The coarse green-grey fabric clashed with the velveteen cobalt.

Conrad's smile echoed the hint of her own as she took the book from him—a nod to their shared memory. Back then it would have seemed impossible that they would be where they stood today, he as the president and she as his secretary of state, and in some ways it still did. Was it odd that she missed the girl who had sat cross-legged on the bench that day—so much life before her to discover, so naïve, so eager, so certain—in the same way she might miss a long-lost friend?

She perched against the arm of the couch, and for a long moment—a minute, maybe more—she stared down at the book cover, with its jumble of 'e's that swarmed to spell out 'A Void' in the gaps that they left between them. A presence out of the absence. It came with a bittersweet tug, like the strum of a chord long forgotten. After all, you can't write Elizabeth without the letter 'e'. She loved that book, but at the same time she wished she'd never gone through the loss that enabled it to speak to her, that she could read it as just a word game and not see it for something deeper. But then again, if she could, then she wouldn't be the Elizabeth she was today.

When she looked up at Conrad, she held the book to her chest and twisted it around to show him a flash of the deep purple cover. "I wanted to thank you for this." She paused, holding his gaze, and then returned the book to her lap, her fingers wrapped around its spine. The flex in her muscles tweaked at her stitches. "It means a lot to me. It means even more to me that you not only heard the ramblings of a twenty-something-year-old girl geeking out over her love of language and math but that you took the time to listen to her, and that almost thirty years on you still remember."

Conrad's eyes glimmered. "Let's just say you made quite the impression."

"Good or bad?" she quipped. It didn't ask for an answer.

With an ache seeping out from her cut and through her arm, she placed the book down beside her on the armrest, and then folded her hands against her knees before she met his eye once more. "I also wanted to thank you for being a friend and refusing to reinstate me before, for believing in me and not giving away my job despite Russell's well-meaning advice, and for having faith in me and reinstating me now. At the Company, we always used to say that we were helping the world in ways that people would never know about. I like to think that's true of friendships too." She turned her head from side to side, and the ends of her hair tickled her jaw. "There are many ways in which you've helped me become who I am today, not just in my job but as a wife and as a mother. And although we all have regrets in life and things we would like to change, I wanted you to know that, for me, meeting you that day at UVA and you recruiting me isn't one of them, despite what I might have said when you visited the other week." She stilled and looked him in the eye. "You gave me a home at the CIA; you introduced me to colleagues who became more like family to me; in a world where I once felt I had no control, you enabled me to make a difference—a real difference; and what started as a conversation on a bench at college has turned into one of my longest and most valued friendships. I'm grateful for that." Then she tilted her head to one side, and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "And for the ginger snaps."

Conrad gave a huff of a laugh.

Her smile widened. "Mostly for the ginger snaps." She eased herself away from the armrest, and her smile turned a touch awkward, a touch tentative, asking for his permission.

When he pushed himself away from the edge of the desk and opened his arms to her, she met him with her embrace. Her eyes slipped shut, and she clung tight, just for a moment. The hint of Old Spice rolled through her like her father's scent once had. "Thank you, Conrad."

"You're welcome, Bess. I'm just glad you're feeling like yourself again." He ended the hug with a pat to her shoulder blade. "You know, NSC meetings aren't half as interesting without your take."

She gave a 'hah' and stepped back. "I'm not sure Russell would agree." She turned away, tucked her hair behind her ear on one side, and gathered up the book and Will's jacket from the couch. "And it sounds as though he's been terrorising my staff while I've been away."

"All in the name of keeping you safe, I'm sure."

She shook her head to herself, folded the jacket over her less-injured arm, and turned to face him. She kept her expression deadpan. "Well, just so long as they don't wind up needing therapy."

He arched his eyebrows at her.

She bit down on the inside of her cheek, but her smirk crept through anyway.

He shared in her smile for a moment, and then his expression sobered. He leant back against the desk again and folded his arms across his chest, the look in his eyes penetrating. "Not wishing to pry, Bess…but do I need to ask about you and Henry?"

Her smile withered. She tried to sustain it, but it couldn't have been any better than bitter, so she let it slip away. She cleared her throat, and hugging Will's jacket tighter to her side, she turned her back on him and paced towards the door. "You know, I wanted to thank you for keeping an eye on Stevie as well. It's good to know she's got people looking out for her."

"We all need someone." The words lingered, along with the prickle of his gaze that goaded the nape of her neck as sharp as the whistle of the breeze through the windows. The toll of the grandfather clock in the lull lent the words extra heft.

Though, of course, needing someone or wanting someone didn't guarantee that you'd have someone.

"Bess… One more thing before you go."

She halted, and twisted to face him. Her breath stilled as she waited.

He studied her, his brow furrowed. "How did you know? That day."

Her eyebrows raised. "That you were CIA?"

He gave a nod. His gaze remained heavy on her, ready to catch the slightest flinch.

"You mean aside from the abundance of tweed?" She pinned the inside of her cheek between her teeth, and reined back her smirk.

He huffed, and his chin dipped as he fought to keep the smile from his face.

She could have said goodbye again, and left it at that—again. The deflection had always felt easier; perhaps it always would. Some things never change. But returning to that chipped white bench beneath the cherry blossom tree to fetch a book she'd deliberately left behind just to let Conrad know, 'I've got a pretty good feeling you're from the CIA', led her to a job offer, to a home, to colleagues who became family, to ginger snaps, to motherhood, to a horse farm, to State, to where she stood today, so perhaps she should give him that small truth that had started it all. God knew there had been enough lies, half-truths and avoidance of late.

She ambled over and rested her hand atop the back of the couch, her fingers arched against the cushion. Her watch—the replica of her father's—peeked out from beneath the cuff of her blue plaid shirt. She stared down at it. If she listened hard enough, she could almost hear the tick…tick…tick… beneath the grandfather clock's clink…clonk…clink…clonk…clink…clonk. Not quite in sync.

She tapped her fingertips against the cushion—once, twice—and then formed a fist and dared herself to meet Conrad's gaze. "The moment you tell someone that you were orphaned, there's this look of fear that flashes across their eyes. It's as though they think that your grief might somehow be contagious, and they need to pull away. If not physically, then emotionally. That fear then dissolves into pity, which is worse in a way, because then they look at you as though your loss makes you less than human. Then they try to disguise it, of course, but it all happens too fast. And that just leaves the awkward silence, because no one knows what to say in response to someone else's grief." She paused. Her gaze drifted for a moment, towards the petals of snow that tumbled down beyond the pillars of the colonnade. Then she returned to him. "When I told you about my parents, there was nothing—no fear, no pity, no silence—despite the fact you'd been responsive throughout the rest of our conversation. Which meant either you were phenomenally good at hiding your reactions, or you already knew what had happened, even though we'd never met. Either way, the CIA seemed a pretty solid guess, and I didn't have anything to lose. As my mother always said, 'No harm in asking.' So I did." She shrugged. "And when I did, the look on your face gave away everything."

So, grief: that's why she stood where she stood today.

She nodded to him, and backed towards the door, whilst he watched her with a hint of that stunned look he'd worn that day. "Take care, Conrad. I'll see you next week."

Jay

1:16 PM

"I'm still getting a lot of questions about the secretary." Daisy's fingers flared where they wrapped around her coffee mug atop the conference room desk; a ripple of yellow light reflected off the lacquer of black nail polish. "I mean, one benefit of having an assassin on the rampage was that I could at least sell the idea of her being in a safe house, but now—"

"Speaking of people on the rampage." Blake's voice cut in.

Jay swivelled around in his chair at the head of the table to cast Blake a glance where he sat at the desk in the corner behind. Then, as Blake stared out through the doorway of the conference room with a look of mild terror, Jay swivelled in the opposite direction, towards the main hall.

Russell Jackson stormed along the aisle between the rows of desks. Clumps of melted snow flecked his black woollen overcoat, the fronts of which agitated with each thundering step. He swooped into the conference room, his brow furrowed with his scowl—"Her office. Now."—and arced straight around and through the side entrance into the secretary's office.

Jay's gaze darted from Kat along to Daisy and across to Matt—What on earth was going on now?—whilst Daisy leant into her elbows atop the desk, locked her glower on Matt, and hissed, "What have you done this time?"

Matt drew in his chin, and his chair rolled back an inch in sync. A nervous chuckle escaped him. That laughter faded though as he glanced around the others, looking for support, only to find them all staring back at him expectantly. His expression sobered to a touch shy of hurt. "Hey. Why does everyone automatically assume this has something to do with me?"

"Oh, I don't know." Daisy shook her head to herself, so that the flicked ends of her hair swayed at her shoulders, and she pushed herself up from her seat. "How 'bout history?"

Kat gave a mouth shrug, tilted her head to one side, and then paused for a sip of coffee, her gaze faraway. "You do have a pretty solid track record."

"Statistics," Blake said, through the last mouthful of panini and then dusted off his hands. He buttoned up his blazer and stepped towards the secretary's office.

At the same time, Russell's shout echoed through. "Some time today would be nice."

Blake faltered, and his expression turned to a grimace. "Anyone else feel like they're about to enter a slaughterhouse run by Hannibal Lecter Inc.? No…? Just me?"

Jay braced himself against the desk and eased up from his seat. Just what they needed on a Friday, and the Friday before a holiday weekend no less. He followed the others through, and clapped Matt's shoulder as they went. "Ten dollars says we'll be working Christmas."

Matt cast a glance over his shoulder and murmured, "At least he doesn't have props this time. It kinda makes you miss MSec and her landmines."

Jay's brow furrowed into a bemused frown. "There's so much wrong with that sentence."

"You know what I mean."

Jay pushed the door to behind him. It clunked into its frame. He joined the others in a staggered arc behind the chairs in front of the secretary's desk, and he gripped the wooden top rail of one of the chairs. Russell tossed his overcoat onto the other one, and then perched against the edge of the desk and folded his arms across his chest. They waited.

The clock on the mantlepiece tick…tock…tick…tock…tick…tocked into the silence. Snow filtered down beyond the net curtains that veiled the windows; it made that silence deeper somehow, a blanket to smother all other sound.

Russell eyed each of them in turn, his look razor-edged.

Jay's fingers fluttered against the top rail, and his shoulders gave a shimmy as he stared back at Russell. "Any chance you're going to tell us what this is about? Or do we have to guess again?"

Russell's gaze landed on Jay. "This…" His voice dragged. Then he paused, and shot a glance towards the doorway behind them. "…is about—"

"Hey, sorry about that. I got caught at the elevator." A familiar, but breathless, voice came from the doorway, causing them all to twist around in unison. The secretary stood just inside the wooden archway. She wore jeans, a blue plaid shirt, and a nervous smile. "So…what did I miss?"

There was a second's lull, like the stunned silence that comes before the applause at the end of a speech. Jay's mind reeled like a spinning top teetering to a stop. Then—

"Hey! Look. MSec's back." Matt strode across the room, the fronts of his suit jacket flapping, and before the secretary had a chance to brace herself, he swept her into a fierce hug, swamping her in his arms. "It's good to see you, ma'am."

"Hey, Matt. It's good to see you too." A chuckle lit the secretary's voice and radiated from her expression. She patted Matt's back. "And thank you again for the hodu-gwaja."

"You're welcome." Matt drew away and grinned at her, and he nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Then he grasped hold of her by the upper arms, just below the shoulders, and frowned down at her sneakers. "Hey. What's with the laces?"

The secretary looked down at her sneakers too. Wiry, black dress shoe laces had taken the place of the flat, white cotton laces you'd expect with a pair of sneakers like that. She looked up at Matt again. Her eyebrows raised a fraction, her smile a touch more tentative. "Long story."

She laid her hand against Matt's elbow, and stepped around him. She smiled up at Blake and opened her arms to him as he swooped in for a hug as well. "Hey, Blake." She clung to him, her fingers splayed across the back of his blazer. "God, I missed you guys." And then she embraced Kat and Daisy too, whilst Jay continued to hover near the chairs in front of the desk.

When she came to a stop in front of Jay, she looked up at him expectantly, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. Red-brown scratches disrupted the veneer of her foundation. "Hug? No hug? I don't want to get hit by a harassment suit first day back."

Jay gave an awkward chuckle, and his gaze dipped. Matt's words circled through his mind—If you give up on her now, it won't matter whether she gets better or not, because the damage will be done. The trust will be gone. They came with a sting of shame. Perhaps if she knew all the things he had said about her, she wouldn't deem him worthy of a hug, let alone trusting him as 'her guy'.

The silence stretched. She drew his gaze back up to her with a tap against his elbow, and then she tilted her head towards the blue-and-yellow-striped couch. She skirted around the edge of the mahogany coffee table, and took a seat, smoothing her palms down her jeans as she did so. She clutched her knees and waited for him to join her. Her smile had softened, but not faded.

A chill ruffled through the window and the net curtain behind the couch as he sank down onto the cushion next to her. He cast a glance towards the others, who had clustered in a circle near the doorway, whilst Russell frowned down at his cell phone where he lurked in the shadows just beyond—the white glow lit his expression. Then he looked to the secretary. "Ma'am…I feel I ought to tell you…when Russell told us that you were…" Unstable? Suicidal? At a mental health clinic? He left the silence to do the elaborating. "I didn't exactly act in a way that was supportive, or respectful, and some of the things that I said…"

She gave him a look as though taken aback, but the sarcasm embedded within it was almost as deep as that found in her tone. "You seriously mean to tell me that you—Jay Whitman—got thrown into an impossible situation, acted all pessimistic and cynical, before having an epiphany, and then knuckling down and pulling through right when I needed you to?"

He hung his head and gave a self-deprecating chuckle. Then he looked up and met her with an almost wince. "Why, exactly, did you hire me again?"

Her shoulders hunched to her ears, and she shook her head. "Technically, I didn't. I just kept you on and then promoted you."

She met him with a wide smile and laid a hand on his knee, just briefly, before she returned it to the other one in her lap. "Look, we've got the dreamers, the blue-sky thinkers, the idealists, but we also need people who know where the box is and can rein in those crazy plans and give them the structure they need in order for us to pull them off. Sure, you have a tendency to grumble about things at first, but once you get over that and find inspiration, you do amazing work. It's part of your process. Plus, I don't want to be surrounded by a bunch of yes-men who never question my judgment and who are too scared to challenge me."

"With respect, ma'am, there's a big difference between questioning your policies or strategies and questioning you as a person, not to mention taking up an issue with you directly versus talking behind your back. It's not exactly what I'd call professional."

"Well, I question myself every day, especially at the moment, so I'll give you a free pass on that." Then she cocked her head to one side. "Plus, you did witness me yelling at my brother to wake up from his coma and almost launching myself at him, so if you didn't question my judgment, in all honesty, I'd probably question your judgment just a teeny bit." Her smile held steady for a moment, and then stained with a hint of pity. She rested her hand on the cushion between them. Darker red-brown scratches intersected the tendons of the back of her hand. "I heard about your situation with Chloe."

"Oh?" His own smile foundered, and his gaze flitted to Matt, who at the same time glanced back over his shoulder. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second.

The secretary twisted around to follow their exchange. Her voice lowered, her tone flecked with a touch more gravel. "Don't blame him. I coaxed it out of him when I was trying to check what Russell's been up to. And besides, he means well."

She pivoted back to face Jay. Her gaze locked on his. "I wanted you to know that while of course I would love nothing more than for you to stay on at State, if you need to go, that's no problem, and there'll be no hard feelings—I promise. In fact, I've got some contacts out in California and I'll pull every string there is to get you a job out there. Not that you'd need me to—anyone would be lucky to have you—but I'm just saying, the offer's there if you want it."

Jay bowed his head and looked to his hands where they were folded in the space between his knees. He pushed back the part of him that pointed out that he'd never wanted to go to California anyway and the question of what that said about him as a father, and he met her with the glimmer of a smile instead. "And miss out on a McCord White House?" He wrinkled his nose and drew in his chin. "No way."

She gave a huff of a laugh. "Well, we'll see about that." The hint of evasion said that she wasn't exactly opposed to the idea, despite all that had happened. It was a change from the outright denials of before. Then her expression sobered again, and her gaze sharpened on him. "But if you're sure about staying, I meant what I said when I took you on as my chief of staff. I'll do whatever I can to make it work for you and for Chloe. If you need extra vacation to go out there and visit, or more flexibility when Chloe comes to stay, or if you need to block out an hour each evening for contact over Skype. Whatever it is, just let me know, and I'll make it happen."

He bowed his head again, humbled. Perhaps he was wrong to doubt her, or perhaps that was just part of his process—a necessary step in getting him to where he stood today—but either way, Matt was right when he'd said that she was stronger than he gave her credit for, and he knew now what his atonement would be: to ensure that the American public saw it. That, and that it wasn't just a McCord White House that was worth fighting for, because it went beyond the politics—it was about the woman who embodied the principles that would stand at the heart of it.

He looked up at her with a small smile. "Thank you, ma'am. I really appreciate it."

"No problem." She beamed back at him. "Now, do I get that hug or not?"

He shrugged, as though it didn't bother him either way. "Sure. Why not?"

Elizabeth

3:15 PM

"Hello?" Elizabeth's voice echoed out through the lower level of the house. "Anybody home?"

She hovered next to the console table in the entrance hall. Her reflection hung in the mirror beside her and it floated in the darkened panes of glass in the study door.

She waited.

Nothing.

She crept towards the living room, step by tentative step, the straps of her bag clutched in her left hand, the pad of her thumb pressed to the rough seam of the leather. All the lights were dimmed, and the snow-bright glow that flooded in through the windows made the rooms feel cavernous. Or perhaps the effect came from being away for so long—a loss of the cosy closeness that made a house a home, warmth stripped from the architecture.

She made it as far as the bottom of the stairs, and then paused. "Henry?"

Without any decorations or the gaud of flashing lights, the Christmas tree wedged into the corner of the living room looked lifeless, a shadow of what it ought to be, and it made the room feel more gloomy than had they gone without a tree altogether.

She waited.

Nothing.

Her grip on the straps of the bag tightened, and her nails curled into the leather. "Henry, if you're here and you're not talking to me, then that's fine—well, it's not fine because I need to talk to you—but please can you just say 'yes' or 'no', or cough?" Her voice lowered to a mutter. "Or kick something?"

Outside, a car slushed through the wet-melt of snow. The sound drifted into the distance and gave way to the drone of the refrigerator that buzzed through from the kitchen. Though the air in the house held the scent of home—enriched with the waft of pine—it felt sharper and less familiar somehow, and it reminded her more of the house they'd spent their first weeks and months in DC living in, rather than the home it had become over the years and that she'd left behind six weeks ago.

She waited.

Nothing.

Her heart stung with a bitter disappointment. It punctured a hole into which a loneliness deeper than that which she had found in her single room at the clinic flooded, and in the vast emptiness of the shell-house around her, that loneliness only expanded. At least at the clinic she could comfort herself with thoughts of home, at least at the clinic she could play out her reunion with Henry in her mind, at least at the clinic she could fantasise the happily-ever-after that she wanted.

She could have. She hadn't though. Not when she had found her mind weighed down with the wisps of worries and snared in the tangles of thoughts that she'd somehow managed to capture and wrangle into the letter that now weighed down the bag in her hand. When she'd signed that final draft at three o'clock that morning, she didn't think this would be where she would find herself now: ambling through the living room, the air of which hung thick with silent stillness; wandering alongside the dining room table, the ghosts of conversations past looming overhead; drifting into the kitchen alone with the wet from her sneakers squeaking over the floorboards.

But she'd made a mistake. She should have made it clear to Russell that she intended on seeing Henry later at home. She should have asked for Henry's new number, called him and let him know that she was back and that she wanted to talk. They should have sat down and had a rational conversation before either of them assumed that things between them would, or should, return to the way they had been before. Then they could have taken the time to figure out where they stood before either of them got hurt—again.

Thank you for reading!