Chapter Two

…permission slip.

Elizabeth

1:16 PM

The maître d'hôtel guided Elizabeth through the maze of tables and chairs towards one of the private booths at the far side of the restaurant. Every last seat in the dining hall was taken, and the clamour of a hundred or more voices soared to mingle with the clatter of cutlery and the clink of glasses in a cacophonous symphony that bounced off the vaulted ceiling.

"Nice of you to finally join me." Will slipped his cell phone into his inside jacket pocket.

"Sorry. This morning's been…well, hectic." Elizabeth sank into the seat opposite. She nodded when Will motioned to the carafe of water that stood next to the miniature manzanita tree centrepiece.

He filled a glass three-quarters of the way to the brim, slid it across the table towards her and then topped up his own. "Problems with the Russians?"

She paused, the glass to her lips. "Why? What've you heard?"

"Nothing, but isn't it always problems with the Russians?" He set the carafe down with a clunk that reverberated through the table. "Bravo on nearly annihilating the planet, by the way."

She opened the leather-backed menu and scanned down the list, though Blake had already printed off a copy and presented her with it as soon as the elevator doors had pinged open on the seventh floor that morning. "Do we really have to discuss that now?" She shot him a look over the rim of her reading glasses. "Or ever?" And then returned to the page.

"I just find it extraordinary that some people can devote their whole lives to saving others, and you and your cronies can destroy it within a matter of minutes. Really, bravo." And there was that smile of his, just one of the fourteen reasons why she'd had to learn to meditate.

She snapped the menu shut, and the flames of the tea lights housed in the glass orbs that adorned the manzanita tree swayed and flickered and threatened to blow out. "So, how are Sophie and Annie?" She took another sip of water, her gaze steady on Will. "I hear they've gone to London—without you."

Will's smile faltered, and though he fixed it within a fraction of a second, the glimmer in his eyes died. "Nice deflection."

She rocked forward and slid her hand towards him across the tabletop, the tablecloth rough and cool beneath the heel of her palm. But when he folded his arms across his chest and leant back in his seat, she wrapped her fingers around the tumbler instead. Too close to the bone? Or after decades of dulling the blade, was the knife not sharp enough?

"I'm serious, Will. Why didn't you go with them?"

"Excuse me, sir, ma'am." A waiter stepped up to the booth. "Are you ready to order?"

"Perfect timing." Will handed the waiter his menu. "Yes, I think I'll have the salmon."

The salmon? Elizabeth did a double take. "Wait, what?" She turned to the waiter, one finger raised. "We're going to need another minute."

"Of course, ma'am." The waiter bowed his head and then backed away again and hovered near the wait station.

Elizabeth lowered her voice to a hiss. "The salmon? You hate salmon."

"Correction: I hate salmon done badly."

"When have you ever had salmon that you've considered done well?"

"I can order the salmon if I want to order the salmon." Will held her gaze, each word pronounced like a challenge.

For one long minute, they were kids again, squaring up across the monopoly board. Hey! That was five spaces, not four. / I thought you were meant to be good at math, but you can't even count. / You started on Atlantic Avenue, which means you landed on 'Go to Jail'. / No, I didn't. I started on Ventnor Avenue. / Mom, he's cheating! / Am not! / Are too!

Elizabeth held up her hands and leant back in her seat. "Fine, whatever, but when it arrives and you realise that you'd rather have whatever I'm having, I'm not swapping, not again."

"Fine."

Elizabeth tipped her head towards the waiter, and when he returned to the table, she handed him the menu. "He'll have the salmon, and I'll have the pasta."

"Certainly, ma'am. Anything else to drink?"

Elizabeth glanced at Will, and he shook his head. She looked up at the waiter. "We'll stick with water, thanks."

A glass—or three—of red would certainly take the edge off the meal, but who knows, she might end up signing away Alaska.

Chatter floated through the main dining hall like dandelion seeds buoyed on a summer's breeze, but in the booth the silence dragged with the weight of damp air. The flames of the candles that hung from the manzanita tree flickered; they wavered one second, and flared the next, governed by the whims of the unseen, proof of all that is felt but not known. She should have tired of these conversations long ago, yet something bound her and Will together in this push and pull, this struggle to fend off the darkness and to salvage even a glimmer of light. Were people any different from the candles on the tree, or were they just flames to the winds of fate?

"So, are you going to tell me what's going on with you and Sophie?"

"No."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at him.

Will picked up his dessert spoon and studied it as he turned it over and over. "There's nothing to tell. Sophie had some time off, and they haven't been back in a while, so she's taken Annie to visit her family."

"And you didn't go with them?"

"I had to work." The spoon stilled and his gaze darted up to meet hers. "You know work. I might not be in charge of triggering nuclear holocaust, but I still think my job's pretty important. I might even be training the doctors who one day treat the people you nuke."

Elizabeth stared him hard in the eye. "Nice deflection."

He reflected the look back at her. "It's what we do, right?"

They paused for a beat, and then broke into simultaneous smiles.

A waitress approached the table, a wicker bread basket draped in an ivory napkin balanced in the crook of her arm. She peeled back the cloth cover and offered the basket to Will first, but he shook his head and raised the fingers of one hand, and so she turned to Elizabeth, who peered into the basket and then plucked one of the poppy seed rolls from amidst the nest of petit pains.

Elizabeth tore the roll apart, sending a spray of poppy seeds skittering over the side plate, and as she folded a chunk of the still-warm bread into her mouth, Will eyed her with a look that landed somewhere between amusement and disdain, his tongue poised, as though he was fighting to restrain whatever snark had popped to mind.

"What now?" she said through her mouthful. The fluffy bread melted on her tongue.

"Nothing." He dismissed her with a flap of his hand, but when she widened her eyes at him, he continued. "Just—bread and pasta? I didn't realise you'd taken up marathoning."

"You'd be feeling carby too if you'd had a morning like mine."

"I'm sensing it's more than just the Russians."

She paused to dislodge a poppy seed from between her teeth using the tip of her tongue. "Just one of those days." Though when was the last time it hadn't been just one of those days? She let out a soft snort and shook her head to herself. "You know I've been up since three AM every day this week, and I thought that maybe I could arrange something nice for this weekend just to give me the strength to drag myself through, but my own daughter—who I gave birth to, without an epidural I might add, because she insisted on arriving during a snowstorm—would rather hang out with the White House Chief of Staff than with me; work has been non-stop and if I sit down for so much as two seconds, someone pops up out of nowhere with some new disaster that only I can deal with, and it needed to be dealt with five minutes ago, by the way; then I'm trying to get to the elevator so I can at least make it here on time and have a full hour's break from the office, when I'm pounced on at least three times by three different people all with some document or other requiring my urgent attention. Plus—" She she let out a long sigh. "—I gave Henry my muffin."

Will raised his eyebrows. "Is that a euphemism?"

She frowned at him. "No, Will, an actual muffin." She stared down at her napkin as she worried the off-white cloth between her fingers. "It was a walnut muffin and it had red bean paste in the centre, just like the hodu-gwaja the South Korean minister brings over from Seoul, and it had brown sugar sprinkled on top."

"I see." He raised his glass to his lips.

She gave another stream of a sigh. There was a reason why people would queue for over half an hour for the opportunity just to sample one of those muffins.

She dropped the napkin back to the table, and looked up at Will. "And then I 'gave Henry my muffin'."

Will choked on his water.

Elizabeth smiled to herself. "I bet you wish we were talking about Sophie and Annie now."

Will was still blotting the spray of water from the front of his shirt and blazer when the waiter reappeared with their meals. He placed Will's grilled salmon down first and twisted the plate into some predetermined alignment, and then presented Elizabeth with the béchamel bolognese; as he did so, the cuff of his shirt sleeve rode up just enough to reveal a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, but he tugged it down and covered the inking over again. His eye caught Elizabeth's for half a second, no more, and he offered her a hesitant smile.

"Enjoy." He gave a half-bow, and then backed away two paces, turned on his heel and strode off towards the kitchens, his stride perhaps a half-step too quick.

She stared after him. A pinch gathered her brow, and her gaze lingered even once he had disappeared into the sheen of stainless steel and the bellows of orders and steam that lurked beyond the swing door. "He doesn't seem the sort to be working in a place like this," she said, more to herself than to Will. But then she shook the thought away as quickly as it had arisen. Maybe Henry was right, maybe she was just looking for distractions.

"He's probably just nervous. You have that effect on people, you know." Will poked at the salmon with his fork. He broke off a chunk and flaked it over the plate.

Elizabeth's own fork hovered over the dish of sauce-drenched pappardelle. "I don't make people nervous. And will you quit prodding the salmon."

"You do. And I'm not."

"Yes, you are." She twisted a ribbon of pasta around her fork and raised it to her lips. "And you're pulling that face."

"This is my normal face."

"Look, just say it." She stuffed the pasta into her mouth.

"Say what?"

"You want to swap." Her voice was muffled by her mouthful.

"It just looks a bit dry…and is that albumin?" He poked at the globs of white that clung to the golden pink sides of the salmon fillet.

"God, Will, you're such a child. Give it here." She grabbed Will's plate, heaped a couple of forkfuls of the pappardelle onto it and then handed him the rest of her meal. She mixed the salmon with the sauce from the pasta, and she let a lull pass between them before she spoke again. "So anyway, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"I knew it."

"Knew what?"

"We couldn't just have a nice, normal meal together. There had to be an ulterior motive."

"Since when have we ever had a nice, normal meal? And do you have to make it sound so sordid?"

"Well then, let's hear it."

She rested her fork against the edge of her plate, and then dabbed the stains of bolognese sauce from the corner of her lips as she chewed over her mouthful. The salmon was perhaps a touch overdone, but nothing that a little sauce couldn't rectify. She returned the napkin to her lap, paused, swallowed. No more distractions, just say it. Her gaze locked on Will's. "I'm thinking about running in the next election."

"And?" He looked at her as though she had just announced she was planning to have oatmeal for breakfast.

"And…" Her eyes widened. "I wanted your opinion."

He shook his head, and then concealed a wry smile with a sip of water. "You mean you want my permission."

"That's not what I said."

"But it's what you meant."

She furrowed her brow. "Why would I want your permission?"

"Well, if I say yes then it will assuage any misplaced sense of guilt you have over wanting to run. And if I say no, it gives you the perfect excuse as to why you had to back out when you get cold feet. So, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to give you permission like this is some school trip in sixth grade. You need to make this decision for yourself. Own it, rather than hiding behind the 'opinions' of others."

Elizabeth stared at him as he shovelled her pasta into his mouth. "I remember when you were in twelfth grade and I drove almost seven hours to Houghton Hall and back, missing what should've been my second date with Henry, just to sign your permission slip so you could go on that trip to New York."

Or at least that's what she would have said, if only she'd had that glass or three of red wine.

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