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There has been no greater privilege in my life than representing the great state of Connecticut. Therefore, it is with a heavy

heart that I

As much as I genuinely intended to carry on and fight the good fight, I’ve realized that without Wray by my side

In the iconic words of New Haven’s favorite son, Michael Bolton...

Wes didn’t immediately dismiss that one. As a Connecticut transport in the early aughts, it hadn’t taken him long to figure

out that the pride the state had in Michael Bolton ran true and perplexingly deep. But he couldn’t help but laugh as he ran

through the Bolton discography in his mind. Which song should he quote?

“When I’m Back on My Feet Again”?

“How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?”

His constituents would love it, even if “Said I Loved You... but I Lied” seemed like a better song with which to conclude his once-promising and illustrious career in politics. If he was going to burn the whole thing to the ground, why not hide the water and extinguishers?

Still, no matter how much the thought made him laugh as he sat there brainstorming what would be his final speech, he knew

he wanted to go out on a high note. Or at least by taking the high road. Not to salvage any future political aspirations but

to show the proper level of respect for all parties. He owed it to Wray. He owed it to the people who were still out there

campaigning and working hard for him, having no idea they were all about to be unemployed, just because he was about to be unemployed. He owed it to the people of Connecticut.

Mostly, he owed it to Wray. That was the debt he needed to focus on. Otherwise, he was afraid it would be far too easy to

crumple up his in-progress Michael Bolton speech and start jotting down thoughts for a “Time, Love and Tenderness”–centric

Inauguration Day instead.

He sighed and pushed aside the Inn Between notepad before standing from the desk chair in his room and walking toward the

nightstand where his phone sat charging. Charging and buzzing. Always buzzing. He liked to think he wouldn’t miss that—when

his phone stopped ringing. When the only calls he received were requests to serve on second-tier philanthropy boards or maybe,

once the dust had settled, deliver a TED Talk. His phone had been an extension of his hand for so long he really was a bit

worried he wouldn’t know how to function without that urgent buzzing against his skin and in his ear—at this point he really

felt it more than heard it—at all hours of the day. From the time he landed in Adelaide Springs, he’d certainly made himself less

available than he’d been in years, and even having it charging across the room while he scrawled notes at the desk had been

a sort of test for himself. He’d mostly passed, he felt, despite the compulsive need to check his messages being his current

motivation for crossing to the nightstand.

Phil.

Phil.

Senate whip.

Phil.

Hartford office manager.

Daughters of the American Revolution.

Phil.

Phil.

GQ . ( How’d they get his number? )

Phil.

Phil.

Phil.

Wes groaned and threw the phone across the room. Or he tried to, anyway. It might have gotten past the floor at his feet if

he’d unplugged it first.

He knew he couldn’t keep Phil in the dark much longer. The truth was, he was going to need his help to pull things off as

elegantly as he hoped to. But there was no aspect of it all that he was dreading more than telling his campaign manager he’d

just been wasting his time. That he’d been wasting so many people’s time. In some ways, Wes suspected Phil had a hunch. Maybe not that he was preparing to drop out of the race, but certainly

that something was amiss. No, he couldn’t have known he was preparing to step away with a forty-two-point lead for the nomination

heading into the primaries. Only a crazy person would do that, and of all the things Phil probably thought Wes was, he doubted

crazy was among them.

A natural. Born for this. Even ordained , whatever that meant. These were the ways Phil Brewster described Wes—at fundraisers, on Meet the Press , to Wes himself when he needed a pick-me-up. And all of those terms were on Phil’s vocabulary list because Governor McNeese

had spoken them into being, chanting them over his son and to anyone who would listen from the day they’d met in 2003.

Well, that’s not entirely true. He’d come at it from the opposite perspective, just long enough to gluttonously feed all of his son’s fears about himself that he would never amount to anything.

And then, when Wes had imploded under the weight of his inferiority and worthlessness and guilt and regret, the governor set about convincing him he was destined for greatness.

Among the most painful experiences of his life had been finally seeing his father’s “love” for what it was, but he tried to comfort himself with the rationalization that there wasn’t an eighteen-year-old in the world who wouldn’t have fallen for it.

At least not if they’d been as desperate for a dad as young Wes Hobbes had been.

Wes picked his phone off the floor and disconnected it from the charger before flopping onto the bed, his head on the pillow,

and pulling up his voice mails. He skimmed through, intending to start at the beginning of all he’d missed in the last few

hours, but instead he did what he did so often lately and scrolled back in time to just weeks before Wray died. Just days

before he checked her into the hospital and never brought her home again.

“Hey, Hobbes. I’ve got some things to say, and I can never quite get you to listen. I know you think I need you to be strong,

and in your mind, I think that means tricking me into believing none of this is as bad as it seems. So we never get to have

the real conversation. That’s fine. But I just need to say—I need you to hear me say—that you’re enough. If anyone tells you

different, don’t walk... run. But guess what? You are not God’s gift to mankind. You’re not dipped in gold. If anyone tells

you different, don’t walk... run. You’re as imperfect as the rest of us, but you do try harder than most. I’ll give you

that. So figure out what matters to you, Wes, and give it your all, and I promise you, you’ll be okay. Just stop letting everyone

else tell you who you are. Just... stop. Be Wes Hobbes. Wes Hobbes is good and fun and smart and cares about things. Wes

Hobbes is my favorite person in the world, and it’s time for him to figure out what sort of legacy he wants to leave. And

yeah, I’m really sorry I won’t be here for you. But you don’t need me. You don’t need your dad. You don’t need focus groups or polling numbers.

Just... Babe, listen to me. Trust yourself. And if you can’t trust yourself, trust me, just this one more time. It’s going

to be fine. You’re going to be fine. Alright? And no matter what, I love you. For better or worse.”

He set the phone aside—so careful, as he always was, to make sure he closed out of the voice mail properly so he didn’t accidentally delete it—and then pulled one of the pillows out from under his head and covered his face with it before giving in to the sobs that always hovered just under the surface as he listened to Wray’s ragged breaths and fading energy.

He’d never imagined he would miss her as much as he did. He’d always cared about her, of course. He’d even grown to love her,

though theirs was never going to be a great love story for the ages. They were partners for years. Allies. Their mutually

beneficial, symbiotic relationship was the stuff DC fairy tales were made of, and they both would have sworn during the course

of those early years that they didn’t need or want anything else. They both had other desires, of course, but those were secondary.

What they had was what mattered, and while other young married couples daydreamed about future children and grandchildren

and all the adventures they’d have together, Wes and Wray dreamed of making real strides toward equal pay for equal work and

ending childhood hunger and easing racial tensions. They registered for wedding china while pointing out various characteristics

of pieces that they would want to integrate into their White House set. And they were there for each other in every circumstance,

just like other couples, even if in their case that meant making sure their assistants and social secretaries knew that being

each other’s plus-one received highest priority on the calendar.

And then cancer reared its ugly head, and where others may have gotten lost in self-pity or thrown themselves into accomplishing

as much as they could in whatever time they had left—at least Wes was pretty sure that’s how he would have responded—Wray scaled back. Reevaluated. Focused. Savored. She sent handwritten notes—hundreds of them in those

last months—to charities she believed in and role models who had inspired her. She cleared her schedule and covertly cleared

his so they could spend an entire afternoon each week playing board games in his office in the Rayburn Building while Senate

aides scrambled to explain his absence.

And she started talking about home .

Wes pulled the pillow away from his face at the sound of an urgent knock on the solid oak door to his room. He remained immobilized,

listening, until she spoke.

“Wes, are you in there?” Her voice was a stage whisper. “It’s me. It’s Addie.”

“Coming,” he called out and then set the pillow, wet tears–side down, back on the bed and hurried to the door. Well, he began by hurrying, then caught his reflection in the mirror. Oh yeah, totally looking sane there, Hobbes. “Be right there!”

He stepped into the bathroom and splashed cold water onto his face and rubbed at his eyes. In the process of rubbing, he inadvertently

got a whiff of his coffee breath bouncing off his hand, so he quickly squeezed some toothpaste onto his finger and slid it

onto his teeth before swishing it around and spitting it into the sink.

Well, it was supposed to go into the sink, and chances were good he would have accomplished that simplest of tasks if he hadn’t grown overly ambitious

and attempted to run a comb through his hair at the same time. It all proved too much for him, and white toothpaste slobber

spilled all down the front of his blue dress shirt.

Trust me, America. I’m doing you a favor here. Your commander in chief should be able to spit into a sink.

He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and pulled it over his head just as Addie stage-whispered, “Everything okay

in there?”

He sighed at his reflection and chuckled before turning the crumpled shirt right-side-out again and slipping it back over

his head. “She’s seen you look worse,” he said to himself.