Page 9

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE ROOSEVELTS

Cynthia sits in the back of the SUV, the privacy glass shielding her from the two agents up front. She gazes out the side window at the sunset, the stunning streaks of orange and pink. Blane is right about one thing: It is beautiful here. Three hundred days of sunshine a year, he always says. Low humidity. Her East Coast boy has been seduced by California. Not just the weather, but its mood, its character, its vibe—his persona now resembling that of Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High , a movie Cynthia loved as a teenager. The movie means she was carefree once, right? If she was, Washington stomped it out of her. She feels a stab of melancholy thinking about her ex, Hank. Theirs isn’t a unique story. As her career went north, his tumbled south, and all the predictable problems ensued, including his affair. They might’ve had a chance. They’d loved each other once. But Blane’s abduction was the last straw. She’s never said so aloud—and to his credit, Hank hasn’t either—but her job, her ambition, her meteoric rise precipitated it all. At times, the guilt consumes her. But she won’t let it conquer her.

“Where’s this dinner?” she asks her chief of staff, who’s perched in the seat next to her, thumbing his phone.

“A place called The Hut.”

Charming.

“Who will I be meeting?”

This part isn’t just for security, the checks her team runs on guests at scheduled events. It’s to give her a leg up, a trick the senior U.S. senator from Virginia taught her years ago. Investigate the guests so you’re prepared to ask them questions about their boring lives. As Winston Churchill’s mother once said when asked to size up two competitors for prime minister of England, “When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli, I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman.” The secret to Cynthia’s success is her ability to make everyone in the room feel like the cleverest.

Her team has done workups of the families from Blane’s capstone group. Paul digs through his briefcase and pulls out a file, opens it like he’s handling oppo on a political adversary.

The first page of the dossier shows a guy in his late forties or maybe early fifties. He’s handsome, dark eyes, strong jaw. Maybe this dinner won’t be torture after all.

Paul says, “Dr. David Maldonado. A plastic surgeon from New York.”

Cynthia turns to Paul, puts her index fingers on the sides of her eyes, pulls the skin tight. “Maybe he can slip me some Botox.”

Paul frowns. “His wife’s name is Nina. She teaches yoga.”

The wife is attractive, in the way of clean living and organic vegetables. She’s not smiling in the photo, though.

“No concerns. A normal affluent family. Their daughter Stella got into some trouble as a teen—shoplifting, that kind of stuff, but nothing serious.”

The next page shows an anxious-looking woman with slightly frizzy brown hair. She looks kind, like the sort of woman you’d ask for directions if you were lost. Paul explains that Alice Goffman is the admin assistant to the dean of the university. Her son Felix is a scholarship kid. Single mother. Lives in a rundown apartment on the edge of Santa Clara.

Cynthia nods as Paul turns the page. “Is that the judge from the Rock Nelson trial?” she asks, placing a finger on the photo. She doesn’t keep up with pop culture but there was no escaping coverage of that trial. The late-night shows, which Cynthia watches mostly because they skewer politicians and are a good barometer for public sentiment, took a particular liking to the judge. They gave him a nickname, but Cynthia can’t remember it.

“Yep,” Paul says. “Judge Kenneth Akana. Obviously no red flags there. Though he’s received threats of his own from Rock Nelson supporters, so our team reached out to his detail.”

“A kindred spirit,” Cynthia says dryly. “This is going to be the most fucking protected Parents Weekend in history.”

Paul raises his brows. “Judge Akana apparently isn’t bringing his detail, now that the trial’s over. Our team thinks that’s fine. Our guys won’t let any crazies get within a hundred yards of the place.”

Next up: photos of Akana’s wife Amy, a lawyer turned stay-at-home mom—dark-rimmed glasses, enviable bone structure—and their beaming daughter Libby. He closes the file.

“That’s it?” Cynthia asks.

He nods. “Nothing of any concern. That said, given what happened with the air strikes last week, the team is recommending you skip public appearances until things calm down.” In response to an attack that killed three U.S. service members, the military bombed the shit out of militias affiliated with the government that put the bounty on her head.

“I didn’t come all this way to sit in a hotel room.”

Paul gives a resigned nod, like he expected this. In true Washington form, he was just covering his ass.

Cynthia would love to skip all the small talk and pretending to be interested in these people. But if her ex found out she missed the Parents Weekend dinner, it would prove the asshole right. And she’s not proving Hank right.

She peers out the window again. The sky is an extraordinary shade of purple now, though this area is not particularly quaint: strip malls and a Jack in the Box.

“One last thing,” Paul says. “Again, not a concern, but we did get a hit we thought you should know about.”

Cynthia is intrigued. She nods for Paul to continue.

“Mark Wong’s father.”

“Blane’s friend?” she says. “He and Blane are pledging that fraternity together. Blane was voted pledge class president and Mark is VP.” Her son was quite proud that the other pledges voted him their PCP.

Paul’s eyebrows knit together. He plainly wasn’t cool enough to be part of Greek life and almost certainly spent college as a virgin, so it’s lost on him.

“The father has a sheet. But don’t worry, he’s not coming to Parents Weekend. He appears to be estranged from his son.”

Cynthia turns to her chief of staff. “A sheet?”

“He did a ten-year stretch inside.”

“Inside prison ?” In Washington she’s surrounded by criminals every day, but none ever sees the inside of a cell.

“Yes. For multiple counts of sexual assault.”

Back at the dorm, Blane checks himself in the mirror. His ’stache looks good. Who cares what Mom says? And if he shaves it, his pledge master will make him pay. The last pledge who disappointed had a dinner of Pledge Apples—raw white onions—followed by two hundred push-ups. No thank you. Blane “Goose” Roosevelt is keeping the ’stache.

He did find a clean shirt—borrowed from another pledge. In the mirror’s reflection, he catches Mark, who’s tapping on his phone.

“Sure you don’t wanna come to the dinner? You don’t need to have parents there to come. No one gives a shit.”

Mark doesn’t talk much about his family. Blane knows why.

“Nah, but meet you after?”

“Cool cool cool. It’s gonna suck anyway. Free food, though…” The Hut isn’t some fancy place, but it’s still cost-prohibitive to most students.

“Check you after.”

“Shit.” Blane notices the time on his phone. “I gotta jump. My mom will be pissed if I’m late.”

He musses his hair one more time in the mirror, nods in satisfaction, grabs his skateboard, and leaves.

Riding the board through campus, his mind drifts to lunch and Stella and Libby’s beef. Libby’s such a damned Goody Two-Shoes. And all the rest of the drama. He’s going to put it out of his head. Deal with it later.

A fraternity brother spots him and stops in his tracks, standing erect. Blane gives him a salute as he skates by—shouts “Sir, yes sir” in military fashion—in his Goose persona.

The brother gives an exaggerated salute back. “At ease,” he yells as Blane flies past.

Blane has always been social. Always been part of teams—football, lacrosse, soccer—but he never would have guessed how much he’d love the fraternity. Sure, the hazing sucks and it’s not even Hell Week yet. But it’s part of the process. The bonding of a band of brothers. And it’s nothing like the movies. Just silly shit. This isn’t the fucking eighties and nineties. And while some of the blue-hairs on campus stereotype him and his boys, it’s all bullshit. They respect women. When a pledge got handsy with a girl, the frat booted him out. And they hate racists. When a brother made a racist comment to Mark—called him Tommy Choi instead of Tommy Boy—they excommunicated the dick.

He sees The Hut up ahead. It’s only a thousand feet from campus. A shack-like structure on the same block as the frat house and other run-down places rented to students. He’s looking forward to a juicy burger and a cold craft beer. Nah, better not use the fake ID in front of Mom.

As he nears the restaurant, the breeze in his face like he loves, he hears his name from behind. He turns and looks and that’s when he goes flying through the air, after the wheels hit a patch of gravel.

On the ground, it takes a moment to confirm he’s okay. No broken bones. A few scrapes. He looks around to confirm no one saw this embarrassing plunge. Or caught it on their phone. He does not want to end up on PrankStool. That would serve him right for all the prank videos he and Mark have posted on the site.

A hand reaches down.

Holy shit . He blinks. Takes the hand. Feels himself being yanked upright.

“Dad?” he says, confused. This is Mom’s weekend. They were just fighting about it on the phone. “What are you doing here?”