by Amy Faye
"You weren't like that in law school, though. You seemed pretty ambitious."
"Can I tell you something else without getting offended?"
"I don't know, can you?"
"It was because I met you."
"Oh, good," he said. It was nice that he had that sort of effect on people. "I'm glad that I can provide such a great negative example."
"Not you, exactly. But… just… I guess Helen's still my best example. I never saw her litigate, but I bet she was great at it. She's like a dog with a bone, every little thing is another fight that she's got to win or she's… I dunno, something wrong." Lara finished the candy bar and started flattening out the wrapper on her lap. "I could have been like that. Like her. But I didn't want to. I made my choice."
"And you're happy with it?" Paul tried to hide the second part of that thought. The part that mentioned whether or not he was happy with his own choices, after all these years. He knew the answer to that one without having to think about it.
Lara's eyes moved away and she didn't answer, because a voice called from the entrance to the lobby. "Miss Beech? The doctor's ready to talk to you."
26
Lara walked behind the nurse calmly. There was a great deal to worry about, and if she let herself think about any of it then she was going to be there worrying all day. So instead, she let herself remember that no matter what was going to happen she could at least manage well enough to keep herself under control, and not worry wherever possible.
That was a comforting thought in its own way, because stuck in Sacramento without any real way home, no way to afford a hotel for another night, and no reason to assume that Paul and his people would stay with her, was going to leave her in a very bad position.
She fingered the ring around her neck absently. It was still foreign, even after wearing it for most of the day. More than likely it would remain strange to her for a long time. Somehow, it gave her a sense of comfort, even when she tried to remind herself who it was that gave it to her, and what his affection tended to carry with it.
There was a price for everything in the world, and whatever that price was going to be, she wasn't opposed to paying it. Her only real problem with that was that she didn't know what the price was until it was too late, and sometimes if she knew what it was before then it wouldn't have been worth paying.
Even still, there was only one price that had ever been far, far too great, and that was the one time that she had known it in advance. Maybe she could have kept her relationship with Paul. Maybe she could be some sort of high-up, important person in the government. Maybe her entire future would already have been set in stone, and she wouldn't have to worry another day in her life.
There were a great many things that she wasn't sure of. Things she couldn't be sure of. That was a reality that she was prepared to accept. A life without her son, even before he was born, wasn't something that she was prepared to accept. No matter what the cost, she would pay it, as long as it was for Tim.
She took a deep breath, touched the ring again, held it aloft for a moment and watched the light shine inside the stone. It was so beautiful; as beautiful as anything she had ever had before, and it was all hers. She smiled in spite of the dire circumstances.
Things would be alright, because she knew the price she was willing to pay, and further, she knew the price she wasn't. Whatever happened she'd make sure that Tim was alright.
She followed through a door and into an office. That, in itself, was a surprise. Tim ought to have been in an ER stall somewhere, waiting for her, but here she was in an office. One that looked decidedly like a doctor's office.
"Miss Beech?"
"Yes? What's going on here?"
Her heart thumped in her chest. The question repeated in her mind. What was going on here?
"There's nothing to worry about, ma'am. We just need to ask you a few questions."
"No, I want to know what's happening with my son. Once you can tell me that, I'll answer whatever questions. But only after. Am I making myself clear?"
"Timothy's doing absolutely fine."
"Then why won't you let me see him?"
The woman looked over behind her, and a noise alerted Lara to a second woman in the room. She stood up and stepped forward, taking a seat beside the one where Lara continued refusing to sit, knowing that the minute that she sat was the minute that they tried to placate her with something.
There was a very easy way to placate her, and that way was to take her to see her son. Anything else was absolutely unacceptable, and no matter how much they tried to pretty it up, that wasn't going to change.
"Miss Beech, I'm Tara Young. I'm a social worker working for the state of California."
Lara raised an eyebrow. "Okay, is there some sort of problem?"
"I don't know," the woman said, her smile never fading. "Is there?"
I don't know, Lara wanted to shout in her face. You won't let me see my son; that's certainly a problem, with nothing else. If that were the only thing that Lara had to worry about, then that would have been problem enough to raise hell over.
"I don't know. I brought my son in with a fever. I've been waiting for over an hour for some sort of news on his condition, and now instead of taking me to see him, or telling me anything at all, I'm sitting in an office speaking to a social worker. Why don't you tell me if everything's alright?"
"We just received a tip, Miss Beech, that…"
The woman started rummaging in her papers. Tip? What sort of tip?
"I don't know what sort of tip you're talking about, but I assure you that I would never do anything that wasn't what was best for my son," Lara said. Her eyes were wide and her skin felt like it was crawling. What the hell kind of ambush was this?
"We got a tip that you were neglecting your son. That you'd been leaving him for long stretches of the day alone."
"That's absurd." It was absurd. "He's being taken great care of. I don't know where you're getting your tips, but I want you to know that in this case, they're off the mark."
"I'm sure that's the case, Miss Beech; that's why we check to make sure, because sometimes people get the wrong impression. Do you live around here?"
"I live in Salt Lake City. I'm on a… vacation." She still wasn't sure what she was supposed to call this. 'Vacation' wasn't exactly wrong.
"Vacation?"
"A friend invited me to take a trip with him. He's got a tutor for Tim, so he won't have to miss school, and we've been going around."
"That seems like an awfully accommodating friend, Miss Beech."
"I don't know what to tell you. That's what they offered. My son was very interested in coming. Otherwise, I wouldn't have even left Utah."
The woman's face pinched. "Alright, then. We'll be in touch. Is your address on file with the hospital?"
"I filled out all the forms, if that's what you mean."
"We'll be in touch," the woman repeated. She gave Lara a hard look that she couldn't explain. What the hell had she done to get anything like that called down on her head?
Lara didn't have to wonder very long. There was one woman that she knew who had a long-standing reputation for this sort of chicanery. Lara's throat went dry.
"Do you know anything about who called in this tip? I've barely spoken with anyone, so it seems odd…"
"Of course not, Miss Beech, and if I did have it, then I wouldn't be able to share that information with you in either case. That's not how this works."
Lara watched her go and knew immediately what had just happened. There was no doubt in her mind. Helen had her eyes on Lara and on her son. Paul had said as much. She blinked.
"Now, Doctor. Can you tell me what's wrong with my son? I've been worried sick since before I ever even called the ambulance."
The doctor closed her eyes and rubbed the place along her nose where the bridge piece of a pair of glasses would fall, though she wasn't wearing any.
"Yes, I can tell you all about it, if you'll follow
me, please."
When they stepped outside, an orderly was waiting, and followed them. Lara watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was big, for a hospital employee. Somehow, deep down inside her gut, she couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't there to push dollies and make doctors coffee at one in the morning.
Something told her that he was there for her, and if she stepped too far out of line, it wasn't going to be one bit of trouble for him to stop her from doing something to her child.
She would never in a million years. Nobody who knew her thought that was even a risk. But when the right mouth reaches the right ears, it's not hard to get people to believe anything. And in Lara's case, it seemed she'd just about pissed off the right people.
27
Paul's skin felt wrong on his body. The suit was too tight, the career path too narrow, and everywhere around him, the grass was green. All except the path where he walked, where the last thousand people to walk through had left the grass dead and dying and a trail of blood to go along with it.
Was that what he wanted? Was that what he wanted the world to be like?
What if he didn't want to? What did that even mean? He was the Democratic nominee. The people had voted, and they'd evidently decided that he was the candidate they preferred.
He'd always considered the mantle of President, like any other power, to be one that someone should only wield if they wanted nothing to do with it. Someone who would be reluctant to use any of his power would be even more reluctant to use it wrong.
When had he stopped feeling that way? When had he decided that there were a thousand little things that he could fix, if only he worked hard and hoped to hell?
What did that mean about him? Did it mean that he was moving towards a big fall? What did it say that in order to get there, to use the power that he shouldn't have wanted in the first place, he'd surrounded himself with all the muck and filth of people who shouldn't have been trusted with your dry cleaning?
He let out a breath and looked up at the waiting room doors again, hoping that he'd see a woman who looked every bit like she was the perfect mother walking through it.
She didn't. Lara had been gone a long time. He'd checked his watch when twenty minutes were gone, and that was a long time ago. He didn't want to check the watch again, for fear that he would find out it had only been another twenty minutes, and that she would be at least another twenty after that. Each unit of twenty seemed to be getting longer than the one before it.
Two hours, by the time expansion he seemed to be experiencing, might take up the rest of his life, and she would come back in looking as perfect as usual to find him a withered old husk of a man. Ten years was a long time. It was a long time that had turned him from someone testing the edge of his morality into a man who knew where the lines were because he wasn't afraid to cross them to get what he needed.
He wondered again what that meant. The sound of a door closing drew his attention and he looked up again, forcing his hope to stifle itself as long as he could. Footsteps came closer, and he allowed a little bit of it to seep in.
Then the man turned the corner. He was tall, dark-skinned and he looked like he'd been there the better part of twenty-four straight hours. Paul watched him go with the sort of mild interest that someone has for anything changing against a blank canvas.
The woman who seemed too fat for any single chair snored loudly, her head pressed back against a wall and her mouth lolling open. He took a deep breath and tried to pretend that he wasn't disgusted by it, but he was.
When Lara got back, hopefully with Tim in tow… he didn't know what he'd do precisely, but something told Paul that he needed to do something. Some celebratory gesture, celebrating that Tim was fine. That there was really nothing to worry about.
The plan formed itself in his head, and he went back to the last time he'd tried to celebrate something. The other night he'd hoped to celebrate a decent speech performance, and he'd gotten them all in a car accident. What was the next celebration going to bring? A crazed gunman?
He nixed the idea of any sort of celebration. Everyone was tired. They could celebrate on the plane, if they wanted to. Get some fast food or something on the way to the airport and once they were in the air, break out the happy meals or whatever.
Another deep breath and another long wait. On the television was the sort of thing that gets shown after midnight; in this case, it was a program explaining about rocks. The rocks in question, apparently, were sufficiently rare to merit discussion, but he wasn't exactly sure how that was supposed to be.
He didn't want to pay attention to the television so he didn't. The rocks might as well have been magic rocks. Maybe then he'd at least pay that amount of attention. He pushed his hair back. It was getting a little bit long. He'd need to have it cut again before the next debate, or his disastrous hair would be all the talk.
Kennedy had learned that lesson well. Television cameras mean that the better-looking man wins the debate, regardless of what is said. Kennedy had been the better-looking man and he'd won. Too bad good looks can't stop a bullet, or he might have had a really good run.
Paul stood up and crossed the room, looked out and down the hall, and then crossed the room back the other way. There had to be something he could do, he told himself. There had to be. It just wasn't clear yet what that was. Who precisely did he have to cut a check to get them to give him some kind of feedback on one little boy?
He sat down again, looked around the room, stood back up and walked over again. There was someone coming from the other side of the waiting room door. Another orderly stepped through, perhaps Lara's height. Petite. He also had a beard tracing his chin, and the entire thing smacked of a man trying somewhat too hard.
Paul stepped back, and his spirit broke enough to check the time on his watch. It hadn't been twenty minutes, thank God. It had been forty, and the whole thing together had added up to two hours so far, and no end in sight. He let out a long breath, tried to ignore the buzz-saw across the room, and paced back to his seat.
He didn't bother to sit this time. He crossed back to the door, stepped out and into the lavatory this time. The room lights flicked on as soon as he stepped inside without any need to touch them, and he locked the door behind him with a turn of a heavy bolt into place. There was a great deal that he was more than willing to ignore. A great number of things he was willing to risk.
For example, he'd never been a fan of condoms. It was a risk that he took, but not a risk that he was afraid of ever falling victim to. There were a thousand things that he could do to make the problem go away if it ever arose. He could pay the mother to keep quiet, for one thing. But so far, thankfully, he hadn't had to.
He finished his business in the lavatory, straightened up, washed his hands and left. He stepped back into the waiting room, his head bowed for a moment to give his neck muscles at least a moment to relax. He was nearly to his seat when he noticed someone standing there.
"I'm sorry I took so long," Lara said. Her voice was clipped and irritated, but for once Paul thought she didn't seem irritated with him. Something else had gotten to her. Something he didn't much care to think about, in spite of all the time that he would spend later worrying about it.
"There's nothing to be sorry for. What's the problem?"
She let out a long breath. "I don't know," she answered finally. "They said that he's got a fever. They think it's a bacterial infection."
"Anything serious?"
She shrugged. "They're going to put him on antibiotics, and he should be improved in a couple of days."
Paul let out a long breath and lowered himself into one of the seats. "So until then we wait?"
"I wait, at least. You don't exactly have time to waste waiting around, do you?"
Paul closed his eyes. No, he really didn't. She was right about that. But he'd spent years worrying about all the wrong things, and this wasn't going to be one of those times, if he could help it. He could help it, just barely.
He reminded himself of that.
"I guess I technically don't," he agreed.
"So what am I going to do? Are you going to, what, fly me back to Utah when he gets out?"
Paul looked up. "No such thing. I won't hear a word of it. No, I'm going to wait here."
"But you just said…"
"I know what I said, and I said I'm going to wait here. The press can wait."
"You don't have to do that for me," Lara answered. Paul smiled to himself, in spite of his better judgment.
"I wouldn't. I'm awfully selfish, Lara; you know that. I'm staying because I want to stay."
"For me?"
"For Tim," he answered. He tried to play it off like a joke, but it wasn't. "And just a little bit for you, too, I suppose."
28
The question of how she was supposed to get home at who knows when at night, without getting herself mugged or shot or worse, was never a question that crossed Lara's mind. Staying up past midnight wasn't a habit that she kept, and staying out of the house past dark wasn't particularly common.
She had everything she needed at home, with the possible exception of things like groceries. There were thousands of things to worry about out in the world, but in her little apartment, there wasn't much. Crime was fairly low, and break-ins when people were actually home? Almost unheard of. The few that happened were closer to home invasions than robberies. A jealous ex-husband decided to come and do what he wanted to punish his wife for the terrible injustice of leaving him.
Well, she wasn't going to allow that to happen to her. It was the easiest thing in the world for Lara to avoid because she didn't have any jealous ex-husbands. She didn't have any jealous ex-boyfriends, either.
That, she was discovering, was not entirely true. To her great relief, her jealous ex-boyfriend was sitting across from her, as the two of them rode along the street in an SUV with a big enough space in the middle of it to fuck. The comparison made her blush when she realized that she probably wouldn't have been the first to think it.