Chapter Three

Henry

"Maybe Will's right. Maybe you should leave." A kick to the stomach would have left Henry with more breath.

Elizabeth held his gaze. Her eyes were drained of their usual sparkle, instead filled only with hurt. And Stevie, their daughter—We made this—stood between them. She bit her bottom lip to stop it from trembling, but the tears continued to roll down her cheeks and tumble to the floor. The way they looked at him now, he felt as though he was Gregor Samsa, metamorphosed into a hideous creature with six legs and a shell. He might be the same inside, but they couldn't see it; all they could see were the images and this monstrous form.

Henry placed the pictures down on top of the hob. "Elizabeth—" he took a step towards her, but Will grasped his shoulder again, holding him back, and Stevie backed up, shielding her mother.

"You heard her, Henry," Will said, and though he kept his tone level, the hatred bubbled just beneath the surface. "It's time for you to go." And then he was steering Henry towards the door.

Henry dug his heels in. This was his home, his family. How could they believe this? How could Elizabeth even begin to think…? He stared hard into Elizabeth's eyes, but his vision softened as tears began to well. "I didn't do this. I would never do this. I love you, Elizabeth—" she flinched, and her gaze fell to the floor "—I love you." His throat clenched so tight that it felt as though those might be the last words he ever got to say.

Elizabeth pinched her temples, whilst her other hand found her hip. "Then why—" she began, but then her frown deepened as her gaze sharpened on the slip of paper that had fallen from the envelope. She touched Stevie's waist. "Did the copies you got come with a note?"

Stevie's expression faltered, a jolt of surprise through the hurt and anger. She glanced over her shoulder and nodded. "But it didn't make any sense…just something about President Dalton condoning such behaviour."

Elizabeth stepped around Stevie and knelt down at the end of the kitchen island. She clutched the slip of paper in both hands, her face fixed in a frown as she mumbled over the words. Then she stopped. Henry's heart pounded so hard that its thuds seemed to echo off the walls. What did it say?

Elizabeth let out of whoosh of breath, and her shoulders caved forward as if her whole body were collapsing. She shook her head to herself, the ends of her hair dancing, the golden blonde gleaming almost white beneath the kitchen lights. She looked up at Henry, and though the weariness was still there, it now fought with the potent mix of fear and hope. "It doesn't say 'condone'," she said, and she handed him the slip.

He took it. He skimmed over the monospaced typeface; reminiscent of bad spy movies and smudged typewriter font. Will President Dalton endorse such behaviour? Endorse, not condone. His hope hung on a single verb. He looked down at Elizabeth. She was still staring up at him. He cleared his throat as he placed the note down on the countertop. "You think…?"

Elizabeth nodded. The election. He extended his hand to her, half-expecting her to flinch away again, but her fingers wrapped around his and clutched tight as she hauled herself to standing. "Oh, Henry." Then her arms were around his waist, her face buried in his shirt, hot tears soaking through to the skin beneath. His whole body froze—like the moment when you wake up from a deep sleep—and then he wrapped his arms around her; one hand against the small of her back pulling her closer, the other smoothing circles over her shoulder blades. He kissed her crown and breathed in her scent, filling his lungs with orange and warmth and jasmine and—

"Wait," Jason said, and his tone cut between them, "what's going on?"

Elizabeth drew back, and still holding on to Henry's waist, she leant to the side and looked past him. "I think someone's trying to frame your father."

"Lizzie," Will said, his voice thick with incredulity, "that's insane. You can't seriously believe that this is some kind of conspiracy?"

Henry's body tensed and a flush of anger rippled through his veins. He spun round to face Will. "You know what's insane, Will? The idea that I would ever cheat on my wife." Because no matter what happened, no matter how strained their relationship became, he would never cheat. His vows weren't just words; they were an oath, a promise, something sacred that he would die before breaking.

"Henry," Elizabeth said, his name sounding more like a breath than a word. She laid her hands against his shoulders, and the tension melted beneath her fingertips. Then she rested her forehead against the base of his neck, and her voice reverberated through him. "Go sit down."

Everyone watched him, waiting to see what he would do next. But he just nodded and stepped away from the comfort of his wife's touch, and then walked towards the dining table next to the den. He brushed past Will, whilst Alison and Jason stepped aside to let him through. Alison's gaze held to the floor, whilst Jason met him with a scowl. He leant back against the edge of the table and folded his arms across his chest as the scene in the kitchen continued.

"You have photographic evidence," Jason said, and he gestured to the pictures still resting on the hob, "and he—" he stabbed at Henry "—has no alibi. You can't possibly believe him just because whoever sent these pictures has crappy verb choice."

"I can," Elizabeth said, and her gaze flitted to meet Henry's for a second, "and I do."

And in his mind, Henry recited a prayer of gratitude, because it was God's grace that had enabled Elizabeth to see the truth and to trust in him when no one else could.

"I know what this looks like," Elizabeth said, and she looked to their children and to Will in turn, "but please can you just think outside the box for one moment; don't be blinded by the narrative that whoever sent these wants us to believe."

"Then what narrative would you have us believe?" Jason buried his fists beneath his elbows. He leant against the bannister. And even with his back to him, Henry could recognise his son's sullen pout.

"Lizzie." Will dragged out her name. "I know you want to believe him, but this is crazy."

"Trust me, Will," Elizabeth's tone sharpened, "whatever this is—" her hand hovered over the photographs "—it's not half as crazy as the things that I've seen."

"Maybe that's the problem." Will shrugged. "You've lived through too many spy movies, and now conspiracies are all you can see. Sometimes the truth is the truth, even when it sucks."

A flash of annoyance coursed across Elizabeth's face. "Thanks for the aphorism, Will. But until someone can provide incontrovertible proof that this is real, I'm going to believe my husband."

"Geez, Mom, just how much proof do you need?" Jason turned and stormed up the stairs. His footsteps thundered through the house and then died with the slam of a door. Seconds later the walls shook with a blaring baseline. The neighbours had complained about the engines of the motorcade, just wait until they had a taste of teenage animosity.

Elizabeth looked to Alison, then Stevie, as though hopeful that they might agree with her point of view. But they found interest in their shoes, their hair sweeping forward to shield their faces. Then, without a word, they disappeared upstairs too.

Elizabeth's eyes closed, and she let out a long breath. "So much for team McCord," she said when she met Henry's gaze. And his heart sank, not from surprise, but more in acceptance of what he already knew. Trust was a blown glass figurine; laboriously crafted, but it could shatter with a single blow.

He stood up from his perch against the table and opened his arms to her. She stepped into them, and as she held him, she bunched the back of his shirt in her fists. When she spoke, her lips moved against his shoulder. "I think we need to speak to Conrad."

The grandfather clock that stood just inside the door of the Oval Office chimed. Its toll rang out like church bells over a graveyard. Elizabeth was leant back against the cushions of the cerulean couch, her leg crossed away from Henry, as she stared distantly at the prison cell stripes of the wallpaper. Henry laid his hand against her knee. She jumped, and her gaze fell to her lap.

Maybe she was having second thoughts. Maybe she doubted him too. "Babe?" His mouth had turned dry. He clutched her hand. "Elizabeth, I swear—"

She twisted her hand beneath his, bringing them palm to palm, and then she laced their fingers together. "I'm sorry—" her throat bobbed as she swallowed "—I'm sorry that you have to go through this."

Oh. She didn't doubt him; she blamed herself. Henry slid closer and tangled his free hand through her hair as he drew her towards him. "Babe, this isn't your fault." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and the silky strands tickled his chin.

"But it's because of my job," Elizabeth said, "because of my plans to run." Her breath puffed against his neck. "Now Will, the kids…"

He kissed her again. "I know." And his chest tightened; whoever was doing this had his own family fooled, even—for a while—his wife.

"Bess, Henry." Conrad's voice greeted them, and Elizabeth pushed herself away from Henry's embrace. One hand still clutched his and rested in her lap, whilst the other raked through her hair. Conrad and Russell took their seats on the opposite couch. Both looked at Elizabeth with concern. "What's the matter, Bess?"

Elizabeth leant forward and retrieved the envelope from her bag; the one marked 'For the attention of Russell Jackson'. She passed it to Russell. "This arrived at your office earlier on today." Russell frowned at her and opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. "Stevie opened it. Then she brought it home. A second copy, without the note, was sent straight to my office."

Russell pulled the pictures out of the envelope. He stared down at them, his gaze flitted to Henry—a flash of judgement—and then he passed them to Conrad.

"That's why you wanted to know about intelligence work?" Russell asked. His gaze kept flitting back and forth between them, an unnerving metronome. Elizabeth nodded. So she had checked up on him after all, had assumed that there must have been a logical explanation for those images. Russell's gaze stopped on Henry. "But surely you must have an alibi?"

Before Henry could speak, Elizabeth said, "I was working on the adoption bill all night, and the kids were out, so Henry was alone. There wasn't much security at the house, and he didn't speak to anyone on the way in, so the security log says there was no one home." She pointed to the slip of paper fastened to the top of the photographs. "When Stevie brought back those copies, I saw the note." Russell glanced down at it, as if it could have said anything, but Conrad stared hard; he could see something more.

"Odd choice of words," Conrad said.

"That's what I thought," Elizabeth said, and she squeezed Henry's hand, as though Conrad's statement was a kind of vindication, a hope that they could cling to that everything would be all right. "I know it's far-fetched, sir, but you've always trusted my read on a situation before."

Russell looked at the note again, and he raised his eyebrows. Now the metronome ticked between Conrad and Elizabeth. "You think this has to do with Bess's plans to run?" Tick, tick, tick, tick.

"Either that," Conrad said, "or Henry's having an affair." His gaze turned on Henry, the look so keen it could pierce every pore. Henry's breath bound his chest. Surely Conrad would believe him, after all the intelligence work he had done; NSA, Bolivia, DIA, Murphy Station, SAD. But Conrad was the one who had advised Elizabeth to trust no one.

"Sir," Elizabeth said, her tone much firmer than before, "I know Henry. I know he hasn't done this." She leant forward and waited until Conrad met her eye before continuing. "I'm not asking you to trust him, but I am asking you to trust me."

Tick, tick, tick, tick. The grandfather clock and Russell's gaze had synchronised. Back and forth, back and forth. Conrad, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Conrad. Trust no one. But there were exceptions to every rule. Right?

Conrad nodded. "All right, Bess. I'll have the agencies look into it."

"Thank you, sir," Elizabeth said, and she let out a deep breath. Her palm was clammy against Henry's, but he couldn't tell whether the sweat was hers or his own.

Above their house, a thick blanket of clouds swathed the night sky, murky grey blocking out the stars and cloaking the moon. Henry offered Elizabeth his hand as she climbed out of the car, and she slipped her arm through his whilst they walked up to the porch. The security agent nodded to her—"Ma'am."—and stepped aside. Their eyes were always watching out for her, if only they had looked out for him too.

Henry froze on the front step. Elizabeth let go and turned to face him. Her brow creased. "What is it?" She definitely didn't need him adding to her stress, but something was niggling away.

Henry scratched the back of his head. "I just…I don't want to face Will." There, he'd said it. He shrugged. "It just irritates me how he's absent for so long and then swoops in…" his hand sailed through the air; the same way her own had so many times when talking about her brother.

Her hands found his waist, and her thumbs brushed circles through his shirt, easing away the tension that gripped his body. "He's just trying to protect me."

"I know," Henry said. And it was good that Will was there, that Elizabeth finally had her brother back again. At least he was just a phone call away and she no longer had to worry so much about being the last Adams standing. "But it's my job to protect you."

Elizabeth snorted and her eyes danced with laughter. "Jealous much?"

Henry turned away, pushing her hands from his waist. If she was just going to tease him—

But Elizabeth pulled him back and wrapped her arms around him so that she could trail her fingers up and down his spine. She looked up at him, her smile still crinkling the corners of her eyes. "One good thing about Will is that he is remarkably reliable." Henry scoffed at that, and she raised her eyebrows at him. "Just as he will swoop in and inflict unknown levels of chaos, when the time comes he will swoop out again, and everything will return to how it was before."

"After we've cleared up the mess," Henry said, and she gave a little shrug as if to concede the point. His tone sobered again. "But what if things can't go back to the way they were before? What if I can't prove my innocence? What if the pictures get leaked?" His gaze fell from hers, as the pit of his stomach twisted tighter and tighter, run through the mangle of 'what ifs'.

"Hey." Elizabeth cupped his jaw. She drew his gaze back to her eyes.

He took a deep breath, and as he let it out, his chest shook. "I just can't stand people—your brother, the kids, your colleagues—thinking that I would do this, thinking that I could do this to you."

"We'll figure it out," Elizabeth said, "I promise." And as she brushed her thumb over his cheek, she leant in and pressed her lips to his—just a flutter of a kiss. "You go up to bed. I'll deal with Will."

Elizabeth

Music filtered down the stairs and filled the lower level of the house with an asynchronous hum. Elizabeth found Will in the den, sat on the sofa, sipping from a bottle of beer. He looked up when she came in. "How'd it go?"

Elizabeth perched on the arm of the couch. "Fine." She let out a terse sigh. Everyone looked at her as though she was a fool to believe her husband, but apart from that, everything was fine. "Thanks for staying." She lifted the bottle from Will and took a swig before passing it back. The beer was cool and smooth against her tongue. "Have the kids been all right?"

"They haven't come out of their rooms; not even for pizza." He tipped his bottle towards the half-eaten box of Hawaiian that was strewn across the coffee table. "They seem intent on drowning out their thoughts with music, or at least giving themselves tinnitus."

"Hah."

Will stood up from the couch and stretched. He turned to face her, then paused, as if debating whether to say whatever it was that he wanted to say next. "I know that you want to believe him, maybe have to believe him, but I'm worried that you're going to get hurt." He studied her, a certain sincerity in his features that had never suited him, never suited them—that was why they bickered, to distract themselves from the things that they really ought to talk about but couldn't bear to broach.

Elizabeth crossed her wrists in her lap as she met his gaze. "If our sole focus in life was to avoid being hurt, we'd never live."

A smile cracked his lips. "Thanks for the aphorism, Lizzie." And the air lifted for just a second, a parachute rising before its fall. "I remember what it was like just before you left the CIA; what he was like." If you leave, I don't know what things will look like when you get back. "No one's perfect, Lizzie, not even Henry."

Elizabeth tugged her lips to one side. She shook her head. "I'm not saying he's perfect, and our marriage certainly isn't perfect, but it works because we are committed to one another, to us. For him to have an affair…" the images of the blonde woman flitted across her mind "…he would have to be a totally different person."

Will's gaze continued to rake through her eyes, as if trying to uncover any seeds of doubt that lay beneath. Then he shrugged. "Okay, but you'll have to forgive me for not trusting him, and know that if at any point you start to see things differently, I'm here for you." She nodded, and he rested one hand against her arm as he kissed her cheek. "Night, Lizzie."

"Night, Will." Elizabeth lingered on the arm of the couch, whilst Will's footsteps faded through the kitchen. But before they died away completely, she called over her shoulder, "And when I prove that he's innocent, that he didn't do this…?"

The footsteps stopped. "I'll be the first to apologise."

Elizabeth nodded. She'd remind him of that when the time came.

The baseline pulsed down the landing and vibrated through the soles of Elizabeth's feet. If she didn't know better, she'd say that all three of her children were going through simultaneous break-ups. She knocked at Stevie's door, and when there was no reply, she pushed the door open anyway.

Stevie was on her bed, huddled in a pink mohair blanket as she scowled down at the laptop that rested on her bedside table. Elizabeth picked up the remote control from the end of the bed and zapped the speakers into silence. Only when she sat down on the edge of the bed and touched Stevie's knee did her daughter look up at her.

Stevie's eyes were swollen, their edges as pink as the blanket, and she wore a firm pout. She could almost be thirteen again, distraught when her first boyfriend had ditched her and taken some other girl to the mall.

She tugged at the tassels that fringed the throw covering her bed. "Last time I saw him with another woman, you said that I was entitled to my opinions but not to an explanation." She stared Elizabeth hard in the eye. "Do you have an explanation this time?"

Elizabeth's lips tweaked into a sorry smile. Of course, Stevie had been through this all before, had been through the cycle of trust and distrust, had lived with those niggling doubts. "No, I don't, not yet."

Stevie's frown deepened. "Then how can you trust him?"

"Because I know your father better than I know anyone," Elizabeth said. She shrugged slightly and her gaze sailed past Stevie to the poster on the wall. Her shoulders fell again, a kind of deflation, a soundless sigh. "And because I love him."

People always said that her daughter was the spitting image of herself, but there was so much of Henry there too. It was the kindness in Stevie's eyes that had always struck her, their openness, their willingness to learn. But the barriers had come up now, the defences she had inherited from her mother.

"And you don't think that maybe that's clouding your judgment?" Stevie said.

That's what President Dalton had wanted to say back in the Oval Office, when she had pointed out that he had always trusted her read on a situation before. At least he had the decency not to say it in front of Henry. Some things didn't need words in order to be told though.

"Would you rather that your dad was cheating on me?" Elizabeth asked.

Stevie shook her head, an adamant—"No."

"Me neither," Elizabeth said. "And as long as there's a chance, however slight, that something else is going on, that's what I'm going to believe." She brushed away the stray tear that trailed down Stevie's cheek, then tangled her fingers through the ends of her daughter's hair. When had it gotten so long? She offered Stevie a small smile. "There's pizza downstairs, if you want some."

"I'm not hungry," Stevie said, but she hugged her stomach as if to smother any telltale grumbles. And Elizabeth wouldn't be surprised if she found all three children scavenging in the kitchen like feral animals the moment that she retired to her room.

She eased herself up off the edge of the bed, then leant in to press a kiss to Stevie's forehead. "Night, sweetheart. I love you."

"Night, Mom. I love you too."

Elizabeth paused when she reached the doorway. She held onto the frame as she turned back to her daughter. "And no more music—please. I can't remember the last time I had a proper sleep." Though even without their music, she doubted that true sleep would come.