Songbird (Bellator Saga Book 7)

by Cecilia London

  “Stop saying that.” Susannah shook her head, like she was trying to clear it. Something I tended to do myself. I’d never noticed her imitating me until now. “You apologize so often, for so many things, that the words have lost all meaning.”

  “But I am sorry,” I said.

  “That almost makes it worse.” She sighed. “You’re eternally sorry for things that aren’t your fault, which makes it hard for me to believe you’re sorry for the things you actually do.”

  Now she’d lost me. “I don’t understand.”

  “None of this—” She held her arms out, gesticulating vaguely. “None of what happened to this country is your fault. Except for any policy decisions you may be making now, as you wind down your time in office.”

  Policy decisions we had often disagreed on. “Okay,” I said.

  “What happened to Daddy and Jess wasn’t your fault,” she said softly.

  On that, we’d have to agree to disagree. I didn’t say anything.

  Susannah sat down next to me. Silently. Was the lecture over? That had been remarkably short, even if the end was a bit painful. She put her arm around me, a rare demonstration of daughterly generosity. I heard her take a deep breath.

  “You need more people in your life,” she finally said.

  An odd statement. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning exactly that. Who do you have? Me? Caroline and Jack? Who else?”

  No one. Not a single, solitary soul. “I don’t like people.”

  She let out a chuckle. “I know.”

  “It’s hard for me to trust anyone. Especially after everything that’s happened.”

  “I know that too. But that’s no reason for you to give up on half the population. Especially if it’s the half that might have the ability to make you happy.”

  Ugh. Susannah’s rhetorical transitions left a lot to be desired. She was going to do it again. She’d been attempting to set me up on a date with one of her mentors for months. Did she think that now, while I was in a somewhat susceptible emotional position, I’d acquiesce?

  “No,” I said. Swiftly, before she had a chance to vocalize the idea. “Not yet.”

  And she must have caught on because she bit back whatever it was she planned on saying next. I could tell by her expression that she was switching gears. Although, dammit, I’d left the door open for her to raise the subject again.

  “It’s late,” she said. “I’m going to sleep. All I ask is that you consider exactly how you plan on transitioning back to civilian life. Okay?”

  Another unresolved issue, another escape hatch spotted. “Okay,” I said.

  Chapter 2

  Washington, D.C. is beautiful at night. The monuments have just the right amount of outdoor mood lighting, the traffic slows, the federal workers go back to their families and their lives and their homes. The District goes quiet for a few hours before the cycle starts up again the next day.

  All that majesty and glory and I hated it, especially when viewed through the windows of the White House. I hadn’t even enjoyed it in winter, when the cold and the snow and the snap in the wind seemed to add historical perspective and a dash of idealism to it all.

  I knew what lurked behind the façade. I’d spent the past seven months trying to restore dignity to the country all while doing my best to drag its hidden monsters into the sunshine. Easier said than done. And in less than a day, my brief stint as the leader of the free world would come to an end.

  One more day. Not even that. A mere eighteen hours until I was no longer encumbered by lonely nights in the Oval Office or the overbearing presence of the Secret Service (though a small post-presidential detail would be a constant companion).

  Eighteen hours until I could slink out of the White House with my carpetbag in one hand and a bunch of Air Force One souvenirs in the other. (I was particularly partial to the decks of cards and the tiny boxes of M&Ms, though I’d also swiped a blanket with the presidential seal when no one was looking. A woman has to have a soft spot somewhere.)

  I was finished with it. Diplomacy. Washington. Politics. All of it.

  Fork. Done.

  Although it was more than one thing. I’d let the budget wonks take care of the numbers. I wasn’t about to crunch them in my own life.

  I examined myself in the mirror near my desk. A hint of gray was starting to peek through the roots again. Time to get myself to a salon. Maybe the White House stylist could do a quick touch-up in the morning.

  I was finally starting to look my age. No more smooth blond hair, no more hiding the wrinkles, no more continuing the game. Too much had happened for me to pretend I could pass for a woman in her forties. Or maybe I was too self-critical. The final hours of a presidency had been known to do that to a person.

  “Madam President?” My chief of staff, Joshua Delaney, poked his head through the door. “Ms. Gerard just arrived.”

  Good. I was looking forward to spending my last night as President of the United States having a sleepover with my best friend. As I was sure countless other presidents had done. “Send her in.”

  He hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  I’d forgotten where I was. The Oval Office. Caroline didn’t much care for the room, for good reason. “I’ll meet her in the private residence.”

  “10-4.”

  Joshua was a good kid. I’d miss him. He’d been one of the many ex-pats with me in Ottawa, having fled the United States at around the same time as I had. After I assumed the presidency, I instantly offered him a job. In the past few days he’d accepted an offer to stay on in the White House under Bailey, though he hadn’t told me exactly what he’d be doing. His resumé remained free of any ultra-partisan stain, and now he’d have the distinction of serving under two consecutive presidents, albeit from different political parties. I was glad he was remaining in public service, but his circumstances were unfortunately consistent with our new reality; it remained quite difficult to find qualified, fully vetted applicants who were free of political contamination. The brain drain from the nation’s capital as a result of Santos’s policies would take more than a single election to repair.

  But Joshua had always thought bigger than the petty back and forth that tended to dominate so much of American discourse. Before absconding to Canada, he had served as chief of staff to former Speaker of the House Robert Allen. A man who suffered much the same fate as Caroline at the hands of Lorenzo Santos and his underlings.

  Except Caroline had somehow made it out alive, while Robert Allen was dead. Long deceased, murdered by his own government.

  I shuddered. I had to stop thinking about that. If I spent more than a few minutes a day pondering the wrongs I was trying to right, it became impossible to do my job properly.

  There were a lot of things I tried not to think about. I’d almost slipped and directed Joshua to have Caroline meet me in the family quarters. Family. Of one. Before I left Susannah’s house the day after Christmas, I once again asked her to spend more time with me. Naturally, she had declined.

  It made sense. She’d spent almost the entirety of the Santos Administration safely tucked away in France and now that she was back in the States, she dedicated most of her waking hours to her professional advancement as a newly minted partner in the Philadelphia branch of her law firm. It wouldn’t have been right for her to stay here to placate me. One or two conversations did not progress make.

  To the contrary, I’d asked Caroline to visit me often, and she had. Most of the time after our social calls she would go back to her townhouse in Georgetown before returning to Philadelphia. I couldn’t blame her. The White House held deeply upsetting memories for her, and it wasn’t my place to tell her how to handle them. She had a therapist for that.

  Still, she was as colloquial as ever, regardless of her surroundings. I found her stretched out on the couch in the tv room.

  She sat up as soon as she saw me. “How goes it, short-timer?”

  I decided to chide her, just a little. “I b
elieve it’s common courtesy to stand when the President of the United States enters a room.”

  Caroline glanced around. “I don’t see anyone enforcing the rules. Started a countdown yet?”

  I should have figured she’d find a way to bring the conversation back to its original point. “I won’t consider it official until Roger takes the oath tomorrow and I get a chance to run down the Capitol steps and into a waiting limo.” With all the cameras on President Bailey and his family, I was hoping to make a quick escape.

  “Oh, Chrissy.” She stood up and enveloped me in a hard hug. “You’ve done good. I don’t know why you’re so keen for this to end.”

  “I don’t like this place.” I mumbled against her shoulder.

  Caroline waited a bit before pulling away from me and examining a random tchotchke on a side table. “I don’t like it much either. You taking any of this stuff with you?”

  I'd had the private residence very sparsely furnished when I moved in, too weary and overwhelmed to go to the effort of personalizing anything. “I told the President-elect to do whatever he wanted with it.”

  “Guess you don’t need me to help pack, then.”

  “No.”

  “Do I get to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom?”

  She’d done so already, numerous times. On a couple occasions her husband had joined her, though I hoped they hadn’t sullied the room with any of their… goings-on. “I thought maybe you’d want to stay with me,” I admitted.

  She smiled at me. “Chrissy, are you lonely?”

  A loaded question. I’d say she knew better but she remained hyperaware of every time she poked at a still-healing wound. Just as I remained equally aware of her attempts to get me to open up about certain things. Normally I’d indulge her but it was too early in the afternoon for me to dig into my emotional reserves so I sidestepped the question. “I’m not going to be able to sleep. I’d prefer to stay up with you and chat.”

  “What if I want to sleep?”

  “You won’t. You never do.”

  She picked up a garment bag that had been draped over her luggage. “Very well. At least let me hang up my dress.”

  “A dress? Really?”

  “I used to wear them from time to time. You should see the boots I brought. They’re sueded black leather with a three-inch heel and they zip to just above my knee and they’re going to look fantastic even if my coat covers them up. The country deserves some ladylike gentility from me. Plus, you know, cameras.”

  I hadn’t considered that eventuality when I’d asked her to accompany me to Bailey’s swearing-in ceremony. Both of us, sitting together. Side by side scattered in between former heads of state, current Congressional leadership, and their families, along with all of President Bailey’s guests. Constant social media analysis of our movements, our outfits, our body language. The major networks probably already had someone on hand to read our lips if we dared speak while the cameras were on us.

  “Are you okay with that?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter. You asked me to come and I wasn’t about to say no. Not about this. Especially not now.”

  Not now, when the smooth transition of power needed to be as public and transparent as ever. But the answer was missing a piece. Sometimes I forgot that Caroline still retained her political skill set, and her ability to sidestep questions rivaled mine. “You aren’t doing this just for me, are you?”

  Caroline unzipped the garment bag and laid the dress over a fainting couch I hadn’t realized was even in the room. “Of course I am,” she said. “Does that bother you?”

  A little, yes. “Why?”

  She hugged me again. “You know why. Stop asking silly questions.”

  I’d kept official state dinners and events to a minimum during my time in office, wanting to dedicate the bulk of my waking hours to stitching up the tears Santos had wrought in the American cultural fabric. When I dined, I dined alone. When I left the White House, I left alone. When I returned, I returned alone. Everything I did, I did alone.

  “It’s because I don’t have Tom,” I said softly.

  Her eyes got damp. “Yes,” she agreed. “I don’t want you to be sitting there by yourself.” Caroline grabbed a tissue and blew her nose. “Although he always photographed much better than I did. Don’t let my presence dampen your desire to post any images of the inauguration in your final official tweets.”

  “Aren’t you going to commend me for figuring that out without any help?” I asked.

  She chuckled before tossing the tissue into the nearest wastebasket. “No. You don’t get a gold star for figuring out basic interpersonal skills. Challenging you without reward is the only way you’ll learn.”

  “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable being in the spotlight,” I said.

  Caroline patted my arm. “Chrissy, stop worrying. This is a situation where I can control where and when people observe me and how I’m doing. It’s important for me to be there.”

  Solidarity. Unity. Recovery. All things we’d desperately been trying to achieve. Caroline had kept out of the public eye over the past few months but she was right: she couldn’t very well go about crafting a narrative if she let everyone else fashion it first. The country knew she was alive. They knew what she’d done for the American Resistance. A large chunk of them probably knew how she'd suffered during the past few years if they’d read anything describing the testimony she’d given against Santos and his flunkies at the International Criminal Court.

  People would render their verdicts regardless of the stacks and stacks of evidence one way or the other. My opinion, which was firmly based in fact, was that Caroline Gerard was a national hero. But factual bases were rarely unanimous, the consequence of a deeply divided country. Truth remained a fluid concept.

  “It won’t be too long,” I said. “Roger’s brevity is the soul of his wit.” I didn’t mention to her that both of us were likely to be acknowledged in his remarks. I’d work up to that later.

  Caroline glanced out the window at the setting sun. “If it’s like this tomorrow, I’m wearing sunglasses. You should too. We haven’t trended together in a while and we may as well get a meme out of it.”

  Susannah had told me I needed to start anticipating the needs of others. It was easiest to start with someone who wouldn’t get mad at me if I messed it up. “Are you sure—”

  “Chrissy, stop,” she said. “It. Is. Fine.”

  And that, apparently, was that. “Okay.”

  “Roger asked me to be Attorney General,” she said, a bit too casually.

  That was a rumor I hadn’t heard. Caroline didn’t have any staff anymore, and Roger’s transition team had done a commendable job of keeping such an overture on the down low. “When?”

  “A couple days ago. I graciously declined.”

  Obviously. And she’d been paranoid enough not to tell me over the phone or via text or email. Old habits died hard among those whose every move had once been surveilled by the federal government. “Are you even allowed to practice?”

  Her lips quirked. “For some reason, paying my bar dues and keeping up with my continuing education hasn’t been much of a priority the past few years. I could reinstate my license easily enough but even so…”

  “Not a job you want?”

  “I’m touched he would ask but the DOJ has to clean up a lot of messes. Any Cabinet member in his Administration is going to have a ludicrously high profile. Not my scene. Plus, I don’t want him to have to worry about any ethical concerns regarding nominations.”

  I couldn’t imagine what conflicts she would have. “You’d get confirmed in a snap. You know that.”

  Caroline picked at an invisible piece of lint on her suit jacket. “It’s not something I want, Chrissy. Not right now. It’s time for someone else, someone emotionally healthy, to take the reins.”

  Sadly, she could have been describing either one of us with that statement. “I’m glad to be getting out of here.”
<
br />   She put her arm around me. “You did good, though. Real good.”

  Words she kept using, without further explication. “Even if my appointment was of dubious constitutionality?”

  Caroline waved her hand. “Stop watching all those right-wing news channels. They’re still doling out pro-Santos propaganda, for fuck’s sake. It’s unreal.”

  They used to be all I’d watch, when I once leaned to the right myself. Those days were long gone. I wasn’t sure quite how to describe myself politically, but conservative no longer fit the bill. “I don’t want anyone coming in and thinking that everything I did was somehow… extralegal.”

  “You did what needed to be done and you did it for the right reasons. Your legacy will be sound, I assure you.”

  She was the one with the history degree. Maybe her perspective wasn’t all that implausible. “Thanks for coming early,” I said.

  Caroline spun around. “Haven’t seen me all fancy in a while, have you?”

  It was a brisk winter day so naturally she was clad in a stunningly tailored wool suit, having draped her charcoal coat over the sofa. “You clean up rather nicely, Punky.”

  “I’d like to think I hide my murderous mercenary tendencies rather well.”

  She meant the comment as pure canard, but I winced. “Any word on when you’ll be called to testify before Congress?”

  “The committee’s been in contact with our lawyers. I’m not concerned. I know the drill.”

  The newly elected Democratic majority had vowed a thorough investigation into the Santos Administration and its aftermath. Which likely included testimony from the people who were responsible for eliminating the man in charge of it. “You know better than to trust them, though.”

  Caroline gave me an exasperated look. “I’m not dumb, Chrissy. If and when I do get called before a committee, Pollyanna will not be sitting at the table next to me. I’ve endured far worse than a few hours of rapid-fire questions.”

  She’d spent the last few minutes of Santos’s presidency kneeling on the floor of the Oval Office with a gun pointed at her head. Yes, she had indeed faced worse.