David Baldacci - First Family

The writer informed her that the next letter would be sent to a P.O. box in D.C. that was identified for her in the letter. That was what the key was for. To open the mailbox.

Jane sat back in her chair. There was a creeping dread working its way through her body that was nearly incapacitating. She picked up her phone and then put it back down.

No, she would not make that call. Not yet. She locked the letter away in her desk and slipped the key in her jacket pocket.

She was hosting a reception in ten minutes for a delegation of female governors and other women in politics who were in town for a caucus on healthcare reform. She was to give brief remarks, all carefully typed out and waiting for her at the lectern set up in the East Room. It was the sort of thing she had done hundreds of times before, and almost always flawlessly. She'd had lots of practice. The White House typically entertained thousands of such visitors a week.

Now she knew it would take all her willpower merely to walk to the lectern, open the book, and read the words someone else had written for her. As she walked down the hall five minutes later surrounded by her staff and security, her mind was not on healthcare reform. Nor was it on the contents of the letter.

After she pressed him mercilessly, her brother had finally told her what Sean had asked him over the phone.

Was Willa the adopted one?

She stumbled a bit as she thought this, and a Secret Service agent immediately took her arm.

"Ma'am, are you okay?"

"Fine. I'm fine. Thank you."

She marched on, going into full-scale First Lady mode.

But one terrible thought pierced this usually rock-solid armor like it was paper.

Is the past finally catching up?

QUARRY DROVE. Gabriel was in the middle, and Daryl on the other side of him. The truck rocked, pitched, and rolled until it reached the firmness of asphalt. They'd spent pretty much all day in the fields and were bone-tired. But this visit was not an option. They'd headed out right after dinner.

Gabriel looked out the window and said, "Mr. Sam, I think you were right about old Kurt. He moved on. Not hide nor hair of him."

Daryl glanced at his father but said nothing.

Quarry said nothing either, just kept one hand on the wheel and stared dead ahead, the smoke curling off the end of his Winston. They pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home. As they climbed out Quarry snatched a cassette recorder off the dashboard, crushed his smoke out on the pavement, and they all headed in.

As they moved down the hall, Quarry said, "Been a long time since you visited your sister, Daryl."

Daryl made a face. "Don't like seeing her like that. Don't want to remember her that way, Daddy."

"She didn't have any choice about it."

"I know that."

"She might look different on the outside, but your sister is still in there."

He pushed open the door and they walked inside.

The nurses had turned Tippi on her right side, so Quarry slid chairs over that way. He slipped the Jane Austen book out of his pocket and handed it to Daryl.

"I ain't no good at reading," Daryl said. "Especially that old stuff, Daddy."

"Give it a whirl. I'm not handing out prizes for performance."

Daryl sighed, took the book, sat down, and started reading. His delivery was halting and slow, but he was doing his best. When he made it through four pages, Quarry thanked him and then handed the book to Gabriel.

The little boy was clearly the superior reader and he whipped through an entire chapter, getting into the personalities of the characters and changing his voice to accommodate them. When he was done Quarry said, "Didn't sound like you were too bored that time, little man."

Gabriel looked sheepish. "I read the book back at Atlee. Figured if you and Miss Tippi liked it so much I needed to give it another go."

"And your verdict?" Quarry asked, a smile playing across his lips.

"Better than I thought it would be. But I still can't say it's my favorite."

"Good enough."

Quarry set the cassette recorder on the nightstand next to the bed and turned it on. He picked up Tippi's hand and held it tightly as the voice of Cameron Quarry, Sam's dead wife and Tippi's mother, engulfed the room. She was talking directly to her daughter, expressing words of love and encouragement and hope and all the things she was feeling in her heart.

Her voice grew weak toward the end because these had been Cameron Quarry's dying words. At her insistence Sam had recorded his wife at the end of her life, as she lay in bed at Atlee slowly passing on.

The last words were, "I love you, Tippi, darling. Momma loves you with all my heart. I can't wait to hold you again, baby girl. When we're both healthy and fine in the arms of Jesus."

Quarry mouthed these last words his wife had spoken, ending exactly when she did. He cut the recorder off. As soon as the name Jesus had passed across her lips Cameron Quarry had taken her last breath and just died. For a God-loving woman, Quarry felt, it was a dignified way to head on. He'd closed her eyes and put her hands across her chest, much like he'd done with his own mother.

Daryl and Gabriel had tears in their eyes. They both brushed them away while steadfastly not looking at each other.

"Momma was the best damn woman that ever lived," Daryl finally said in a hushed voice while Quarry nodded in agreement.

Quarry touched Tippi's cheek. "And this one here is right up there with her."

"Amen to that," said Gabriel. "Is she ever going to get better, Mr. Sam?"

"No, son. She's not."

"You want to say a prayer for her?" Gabriel put his hands together and started to kneel.

"You can if you want, Gabriel. But I don't go down that road anymore."

"Momma says you don't believe in God. Why's that?"

"Because he stopped believing in me, son."

He stood and put the small recorder in his jacket pocket. "When you're done I'll be outside in the truck smoking."

Quarry sat in his junk of a truck, the window down, an unlit smoke dangling from between his parched lips. The Alabama heat was in all its glory at nearly nine o'clock at night, and Quarry flicked a bead of sweat off his nose as a mosquito buzzed at his right ear.

The skeeter wasn't bothering him too much. He was watching a meteor flame across the sky, the Big Dipper serving as a celestial backdrop to the show. After it was over his gaze dropped to the low cinderblock building that was his daughter's home now. No husband, no kids, no grandkids for Tippi. Just a dead brain, a beaten body, and a feeding tube.

"You messed up there, God. Shouldn't done that. I know the 'work in mysterious ways' crap. I know the 'everything has a purpose' BS. But you got it wrong. You're not infallible. You shoulda let my baby girl alone. I'll never forgive you for that, and I don't give a damn if you never forgive me for what I got to do." He spoke in a lurching, halting voice before he fell silent. He wanted the tears to come, if for no other reason than to relieve the pressure on his brain. On his soul. But they wouldn't bleed through his eyes. His soul apparently was scorched earth, no water left to give.

When the two came out and climbed in the truck, Quarry tossed his unlit cigarette out the window and they drove back to Atlee in silence.

Quarry went immediately to his library, sat behind his desk, fortified himself with a slug of 86-proof Old Grand Dad, lit the fire, thrust the poker into it, rolled up his sleeve, and held it against his bare arm, making a second mark perpendicular to and at the right end of the long burn already there. Ten seconds later the poker fell to the carpet, burning another hole in it, and Quarry collapsed back in his chair.

Breathing heavily, his eyes staring up at the sooty ceiling that had caught the flameouts and driftbacks of centuries of his ancestors, Quarry started talking. Most of it made little sense except to Quarry; he found it crystal clear. He started out telling folks that he was sorry. He named names and his voice rose and sank at odd intervals. He took another pull of Grand Dad, holding the bottle to his lips for the longest time.