So Close (33 page)

I nodded.

“So,” she continued, “She asks about Ashleigh a lot, like, in the present tense.”

“What should I say?”

“Just go along with it.”

“Okay.” 

I was walking to the wrong door and was unprepared for her to open the one to Ashleigh’s room.  “Mrs. Davis, Amanda is here.”

“Come in,” she called softly.  She was sitting propped up in a pink canopy bed, her bald head bandaged in a turban.  I sat down next to her.

“Hi.”

She smiled weakly at me.  “I’m sorry I called you a puppy.”

“I’m sorry I hid your husband’s mistress.”

She smiled. 

“Too soon?”

“He married her, you know.”

“I had heard that.”

“She is, quote, waiting for him.”

“She can wait.”  It turned out, before Jeanine had the brilliant idea to create a paper trail linking Pax and Cheyenne, that Tom had wined and dined Cheyenne on the campaign’s dime.  Those fabulous neon outfits?  Paid by Davis for America.  Her flying saucer hat?  Underwritten by some donor who wanted universal healthcare.  The hotel he kept her jogging distance from the Riverside house?  A line item on an expense report that the prosecutor read out loud on day six.  Tom was currently serving six to ten. 

“The White House.  The Big House.  Same diff.” 

I wanted to squeeze her hand, but it was bruised from the IV.  “I’ve missed you. 

“Me, too.  I’m sorry, Amanda.  Even after everything I was still irrationally angry at you.  It made no sense.  I think I was just embarrassed by my own stupidity.”

              “Millions of people believed in him—he put on a good show.”

              “I shared his bed—I should have known.  It was happening right before my eyes and I didn’t want to see it.”

              “He was clever.”

              She shook her head.  “Not the affair—his transformation.”  She pushed down on the mattress with her knuckles to prop herself up. 

              “Can I help?”

              She shook her head again.  “I’m going to see Ashleigh very soon.  I’m in here getting ready to face her.”

              “She won’t hold you responsible for his actions.”

              Again her head trembled to quiet me.  “It was my fault.”   She held up a hand to keep me from interrupting.  “The accident.”

              “Ashleigh’s?”

              “They were always a team—from the day she was born.  He was the fun one—I was the bedtime enforcer, the broccoli cooker, the homework proofer.  He was Chuck E Cheese and lifting her by her ankles and sneaking ice cream on the way home from a game.  Of course you throw that teenage stuff on top, the hormones and the hating your mother—well, it got ugly.  And she wanted to go out that night to a party—I had a brief to write—I didn’t want to drive her—she was one of the youngest in her class—everyone else was already driving after dark—blah blah blah—I gave her the keys.  To my old car—a ’98 Volvo.  Built before cars beeped if you drove without the seatbelt buckled.  I just wanted to be liked.  So you see I can’t really fault Tom too much because I understand how much that need can cloud your judgement.”  She gestured for her water glass and I passed it to her.  “I needed you to know the whole story.  He forgave me.  I have forgiven him.”

              I leaned over and kissed her cheek.  “Thank you.”

              “For what?”

              “Trusting me.  Not just with the truth.  But from day one.  You trusted me.”

              “How do you like Lanier?” She managed a smile.

              “That was you?” I breathed.  “Oh my God, of course it was—why didn’t I think of that?”

              She reached out and took my hand.  “You deserved a second chance.”

              “We all do.  Tom wasn’t wrong about that.”  Me and Pax and Delilah and
maybe
even Tom.  Someday.

But not today.  The parole board has denied his hearing.  “Baby, grab your frog umbrella, we’re gonna jump in puddles the whole way to camp.”

              “Okay, Mommy!”

I sat with Lindsay through the night and she passed a little before the sun rose.  She wasn’t with Tom.  But she was with someone who loves her.

              I hope she is with Ashleigh and I hope they have forgiven each other.