Nielsen folded his arms. “What are you proposing, Senator?”
“That you think harder about who gave this to you, and what their motives are. And about whether their desire to use her against me is a reason to punish a fragile young woman for what happened when she was sixteen years old.”
Nielsen placed curled fingers to his lips, and slowly shook his head. “Their motive may be interesting. But that doesn’t change the facts, or their public relevance.
“All I can offer, Senator, is the chance for you and your family to help shape what’s in our story. But if we don’t run this, our source will feed it to someone else. You don’t have much time.”
“No time,” Chad retorted. “Like you, we tried to reach Kyle, and we couldn’t …”
“How do I know you’re not hiding her?”
Chad leaned forward, staring into Nielsen’s eyes. “Because I say so, damn you.”
After a moment, Nielsen looked down at his watch again. “When can you talk to your family?”
“My wife, immediately. Kyle, as soon as we can find her.”
“Will you ask them to speak with us?”
“I’ll ask them to consider it. If you’ll promise to hear them out, and reconsider whether to run this.”
Nielsen began drumming his fingers on the desk. “You’ve got twenty-four hours,” he said.
“We can’t control this,” Chad said quietly.
He sat with Allie in the brick-walled living room of their town house on Capitol Hill. But, for Chad, the moment resonated with another conversation, four years prior. Then Allie had spoken with the quiet ferocity of a mother protecting her daughter; now, she looked frightened for Kyle, distraught for Chad, desperately intent on bearing up. It was, Chad thought, like so many moments in Allie’s life as a wife and mother—she would think about herself later, if at all. With instinctive stubbornness, the unwillingness to accept something so unnatural as Kyle’s exposure, she said, “Do we have to involve her? I can’t stand to think of Kyle on the cover of a magazine.”
Chad reined in his impatience: it was his fault, after all, that she was unprepared for this. “Someone else could break the story,” he told her. “Something else could set it off. I don’t know where this is coming from, or what their motives are. I don’t know how to please them, whom to please, or if there’s any way.” He strained to keep his tone gentle, reasoned. “I don’t want Kyle ambushed, or made to sound like some irresponsible, self-indulgent girl. The best way to protect her is to tell her story—once—and then hope it dies as soon as possible.
“All we can do is try to influence how the story turns out. That’s the only way to help Kyle get on with her life.”
Despite his efforts, Chad heard the despair in his own voice. Allie looked down at the coffee table, and then at Chad again. “Do you blame me, Chad?”
“No. You did what you thought was right. For Kyle, it probably was.”
“But not for you.”
“As a candidate for President?” Chad’s voice was quietly bitter—this dream of the future, once so vivid, was suddenly part of his past. “No. But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it. Because I wanted to be President.
“I’m also a father, Allie. We’re a family. So we have to take what comes together.” He softened his voice again. “I’ve experienced much worse, sweetheart. I’ll be all right.”
Tears came to her eyes. Chad imagined her reviewing the moments of their life together: falling in love with more optimism than insight; the awakening of a young wife to her husband’s selfishness and infidelity; the uncertainty of his capture; learning to cope as a mother on her own; his return, refined by suffering, to a woman who had changed and a daughter he did not know; the dawning awareness of Kyle’s problems; her desperate—and, it must have seemed—solitary struggle to save their daughter’s sanity and even life; her fateful consent to an abortion; the slow renewal as a family with two parents who cared deeply; the revival of Chad’s ambition to be President.
“I don’t tell you nearly enough,” she said in a muffled voice. “I always think it, and so seldom say it.”
“What’s that?”
“How much I love you. How kind you are.” She managed a somewhat shaky smile. “I must have known that, from the beginning.”
This touched him. “That makes you a rare woman,” he answered. “But then you are.”
They both fell quiet, cocooned for a moment from the reality about to overtake them. As if awakening herself from a dream, Allie went to the kitchen to call Kyle again.
Edgy, Chad waited. Allie returned, silently shaking her head.
Chad felt his tension rise. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “Either we bring her to their offices, or tomorrow afternoon the Frontier goes with what they’ve got.”
“I know.” Allie sounded defensive now. “You told me.”
Chad replayed her tone of voice. In the manner of a husband who knew his wife so well that words were superfluous, he fixed her with a steady, mildly reproving, gaze of inquiry.
“Kyle has a new boyfriend,” Allie said at last. “She might be there.”
Chad felt a familiar and unhappy emotion, the sense of being an outsider, a stranger to the intimacy between mother and daughter. Had he time to dwell on it, he would wonder who this boy was, whether he was good for Kyle, why he did not know. But all he said was, “Do you have his number?”
“No. Of course not.” Allie’s voice was tired. “Kyle’s a woman now, Chad. Or trying to be.”
Another memory came to him: Allie waiting up for Kyle, hour after anxious hour during one or another of the drug-or alcohol-fueled disappearances which, they both feared, might end in her death. As if sensing this, Allie said gently, “She’s all right now. Really.”
It was becoming hard for Chad to sit. “I hope so,” he murmured.
TWENTY-THREE
AT NINE O’CLOCK the next morning, after a sleepless night in which Kyle did not call, Chad Palmer answered his telephone.
“Chad?”
Recognizing the voice of his Chief of Staff, Chad sat down heavily at the kitchen table. In a wan imitation of his usual manner, he said, “Morning, Brian. What’s up?”
“The Supreme Court just ruled in the Tierney case. I’m faxing you the opinion.”
Chad heard an anxious undertone in Brian Curry’s normally phlegmatic voice. “What’s it say?”
“It’s pretty unusual,” Brian answered. “Actually, I’ve never heard of anything like this.”
Clayton placed the opinion on Kerry’s desk. “A four-to-four split,” he said. “Four justices voted to grant a stay, and to hear the case; four judges opposed both.”
“Where does that leave us?”
Clayton turned a page. “Justice Fini,” he said, “goes out of his way to explain that. And I mean way out of his way—Adam Shaw tells me he’s never seen a justice comment on a decision whether or not to hear a case.”
Fini, Kerry knew, was the justice closest to the late Roger Bannon, an outspoken conservative and pro-life advocate. Quickly, the President began reading:
“Under the ‘rule of four,’” Fini had written, “the votes of four justices are sufficient to grant certiorari; in this case, to hear Professor Tierney’s appeal on behalf of the fetus. However, five votes are required to extend the stay granted by Justice Kelly, and prevent an abortion until the appeal can be heard …”
“No stay,” Kerry murmured.
“Just keep reading.”
“Therefore, the four justices who favor a full hearing are unable to preserve the life of the intervenor’s unborn grandchild.
“Currently, the Court is without a ninth member, the office of Chief Justice being vacant. We do not express an opinion regarding the wisdom or propriety of Judge Masters’s participation in the rehearing en banc. However, such participation clearly disqualifies her from considering this petition, even if confirmed …”
Kerry looked up. “Very nice,” he sa
id. “Fini makes it seem like she’s the reason they can’t hear this.” When Clayton’s only answer was a bleak smile, Kerry read further.
“Those of us,” Fini continued, “who favor a full hearing regret our inability to address the important legal issues presented, including the value our society places on viable life, and the role of parents in helping minors face a moral choice so permanent and profound. But such is the harsh reality of our procedural dilemma.
“Without a further stay, this abortion will be performed, and the case mooted. None of our brethren opposed to a hearing on the merits will vote to grant such a stay. Put baldly, we have the four votes necessary to decide whether a life should be spared, but not the five votes required to spare it until we decide.
“With great reluctance, we are forced to acknowledge that granting Professor Tierney’s petition would be pointless …”
The President looked up at Clayton. Softly, he said, “So it’s Caroline’s fault.”
Clayton nodded. “What Fini’s done is blatantly political. Read how Justice Rothbard responds—you can almost see the blood in the margins.”
Avowedly pro-choice, Miriam Rothbard was the only woman on the Court. Turning the page, the President began reading:
“I regret,” Rothbard had said, “the extraordinary statement by those colleagues who favor a grant of certiorari.
“The statement is unprecedented: it is a political, not a legal, document, calculated to inform the Senate and the public that we appear to be deadlocked on the issues presented, including the constitutionality of the Protection of Life Act. The effect can only be to insinuate this Court into the Senate’s deliberations regarding the nomination of Judge Masters as Chief Justice.
“The issues posed by this appeal are best left for another day. The statement of our colleagues would have best been left unwritten …”
“If anything,” Clayton said, “it makes matters worse. Far worse.”
Kerry pondered this, wondering what role his decision to withdraw the government’s support for the Protection of Life Act might have played in the outcome. “Maybe for us,” he answered. “But not for Mary Ann Tierney.”
A little after 6:00 a.m. in San Francisco, Sarah took the last page off the fax machine in her bedroom.
It was over—the law, if not the consequences for Mary Ann, Caroline Masters, Sarah herself. Despite the startling nature of what she had just read, the Tierney case was consigned to history. As a lawyer, Sarah had done all a lawyer could do. She had won.
After some moments, she went to the kitchen to make coffee, absorb what had happened. She thought of herself two months ago, sheltered from the misty drizzle, watching a nameless red-haired girl cross a line of pickets, to begin a process which now had transformed both their lives.
It felt enormous; together, they had brought down an act of Congress, defined the law for whoever followed Mary Ann, at least within the Ninth Circuit. But Sarah felt no elation. Perhaps her reward would be a deep satisfaction, years from now—especially if Mary Ann Tierney prospered.
Finishing her coffee, Sarah went to awaken Mary Ann, imagining as she did the same moment in the Tierney household, Margaret and Martin Tierney awakening to the end of the case, trying to imagine a future which included—for them—facing the literal loss of a grandson, and the estranged daughter who had caused this. Standing over Mary Ann, Sarah hesitated, as if by pausing she could delay the pain to come.
The girl’s eyes fluttered open, blank at first, then focusing on Sarah. In them Sarah read fear and hope; she knew that Sarah would not awaken her without reason.
Sarah took her hand. “We’ve won,” she said. “The Supreme Court has refused your parents’ appeal.”
Mary Ann looked stunned and then, to Sarah, as frightened as she was relieved. Sarah could imagine how complex “winning” must seem: victory must carry with it the fear of sin, an imagined whiff of hell. Two months could not erase the girl raised in her parents’ home.
Sarah knelt by the bed. “When the time comes,” she promised, “I’ll be there with you.”
Reflexively, the girl felt her rounded belly. Then she covered her face, and began to weep.
For Caroline, the news had come from Clayton Slade, his call breaking a restless sleep. She sat up in bed, heartsick.
What Justice Fini had done felt like a blow to the solar plexus. We don’t want you here, his statement told her. We do not want you here, and we want the Senate to spare us your presence. If there had been any doubt as to how divided the Court was, and how divisive Caroline might become as Chief, that doubt was gone.
In two months her life had been exposed, her daughter wounded, her own reputation damaged. Her only consolation was that she had acted as she felt a judge must act, and faced the consequences as they came.
And so she would, until the Senate voted.
* * *
In Washington, Macdonald Gage, too, felt leaden. Even Mace Taylor, the most cold and practical of men, was reduced to a contemplative silence. At last, Taylor said, “You’re out of time.”
Gage looked up from his coffee. “The baby, you mean.”
“The baby. If it turns out it never had a brain, there’ll be more sympathy for Masters. You might not get the last few votes you need.” Taylor’s voice was quiet, sober. “Tony Fini left you in as good shape as he could. But that may be a matter of days, or hours.”
Gage stared at his carpet. “I could call a vote tomorrow,” he said. “But Kilcannon would scream bloody murder about ‘surprise tactics.’ And I may not have the votes to win …”
“And a filibuster?”
“Might take us past when the girl has her abortion. Some of our own people are getting real vague on me, like they’ve been cutting deals with Kilcannon.” Gage felt a rising unease. “The dumbest thing in the world, Mace, is for a lawyer to ask a question he doesn’t know the answer to. Except for a leader to call a vote that you don’t know you’ll win, when there’s nothing to gain by losing, and the greatest harm you’d be doing is to yourself. And then there’s Palmer.” Pausing in his reverie, he looked up at Taylor. “Always, there’s Palmer.”
Taylor watched him, his thoughts imponderable. “So there is.”
Gage studied him. “If I call the vote tomorrow,” Gage said at length, “Chad’s the wild card.”
Now it was Taylor who contemplated the carpet with veiled eyes. “You willing to gamble on the baby being normal?”
His tone was cool. “No,” Gage answered. “That’s something to hope for, but surely not to count on.”
Taylor looked up at him. “Then call the vote,” he said. He did not mention Palmer.
Shortly before eleven, Chad Palmer heard a click on his line, the signal for call waiting.
“That may be her,” he said to Henry Nielsen. “Hang on for a moment.”
Hastily, Chad hit the flash button.
“Senator Palmer?”
It was a man’s voice, high-pitched and, to Chad’s ears, invasive. “Yes,” Chad answered tightly.
“This is Charlie Trask.”
Startled, Chad took a moment to steel himself, feeling surprise turn to dread: a call from the gossip columnist, the man who had implied that Caroline Masters was a lesbian, was, on this morning of all mornings, something to fear. In an even tone, mustered with difficulty, Chad inquired, “What can I do for you, Mr. Trask?”
“I’ll get right to the point. We know about your daughter’s abortion, and I’m about to go with it on-line. I thought you’d want to comment before I do.”
Sickened, Chad felt his hope of protecting Kyle slip away, Henry Nielsen waiting on the other line. “Yes,” he managed to say, “it’s not relevant …”
“Don’t even try relevance, Senator. This morning’s pronouncement from the Court makes it doubly relevant. And Senator Gage just called a vote. So do you have anything to say, or not?”
Chad forced himself to pause, thinking of Kyle. “Not to you,” he said softly.
TWENTY-FOUR
IT WAS TWILIGHT before Kyle Palmer returned to her apartment.
On impulse, she and Matthew had decided to just blow off the day—their classes, his part-time job, pretty much anything which had to do with the outside world. She felt kind of guilty about that. But then it wasn’t every day you figured out that, just maybe, you were falling in love.
Matthew was a film student, tall and bearded, with ruddy cheeks, gentle brown eyes, and a smile so genuinely happy and unaffected that it transformed his face entirely. They could talk so easily; in between making love—wonderful in itself for his tenderness—they had pretty much talked all night. She could imagine his parents now, his teenage twin brothers, the six-year-old sister Matthew clearly adored. Kyle was still careful about what she told him; she didn’t want him to look at her and see damaged goods. But if this kept up she could imagine, someday, telling him almost everything—he seemed that good. Kyle prayed that he really was.
This was what she wanted: something of her own—a career in fashion design, but also a husband she loved who loved her, an understanding between the two of them that they were the central thing in each other’s lives. Though Kyle loved her parents, she wanted something different in a marriage; with tenderness, yet guilt, she knew that she had been the most important person in Allie Palmer’s life, and that her father was born to be a hero, at home in the larger world—adored by those who barely knew him, and millions more who only knew his name. Kyle wished to be safely anonymous, with a husband she would spend her days and nights with.
She turned the corner onto her street in a kind of dream state, driving by memory and instinct, her imaginings of Matthew more vivid than her surroundings. So that the men and women clustered in front of her apartment, the snug basement of an old house, struck her as unreal.
Parking across the street, Kyle walked toward them. Only then did she see the Minicams and know that, though she did not know why, they had come for her.
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