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from the bathroom sink and brought it to me. “Here.” He placed his hand gently on the back of my head for less than a second

before realizing what he was doing and pulling it back as if he’d been bitten. “How about a wet washcloth? Would that help?”

I gulped the water down and shook my head. “I’m okay now. Thanks.” He still stood over me, concerned, so I put a little more

effort into selling it. “I’m fine. Really. It was just...”

The truth would be so easy in some ways and so impossible in others. I hadn’t thought about that day for years. The way we’d

fought. The way I’d cried. The way we’d both been so exhausted by the time we got to that point in the conversation. The way

the fight had left us—and the way I stormed off to my bedroom a few minutes later without telling him I loved him. The way

my last words to him that night had been a dismissive, “I’m not sure I even know who you are.”

They were my last words to him for twenty-two years.

Still, even then, as far apart as we’d been and as angry as I’d felt, the thought of him not showing up in the morning never

entered my mind. It was beyond unfathomable. It was an impossible truth.

“I just don’t think I’ve had enough water today.”

Wes took the cup from my hand and had it refilled and back to me within seconds. He watched me as I drank, ready to fill the

small cup again, but when I shook my head, he sat back down across from me.

“There’s a story that’s going to break,” he began, and I set the cup down on the desk behind me.

“I’m not sure when, exactly. I’ve been going crazy, actually, just waiting.

It’s hard to imagine we’ll make it past Super Tuesday, so.

.. soon. It’s, um...” He began fiddling with that weird extra collar button sewn into the bottom of men’s dress shirts.

“It’s not going to be good for me. I’ve been feeling for a while like this isn’t what I want anyway.

I mean, running for president. So I was already weighing my options.

This just... Yeah, it takes the choice out of my hands.

And that’s fine. Really. But, um...” He lowered his eyes to watch his fiddling fingers.

“I’d just rather try to control the narrative as much as I can.

And I’m thinking Sebastian Sudworth may be my best hope of doing that. ”

“Did you have an affair?”

His head snapped up, and his red-rimmed eyes met mine. “What?”

I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be insensitive.” Although, let’s face it, I wasn’t trying superhard to be sensitive

either.

He blinked repeatedly. “No. I, um... No.”

“Sorry. That was... Sorry. You don’t have to tell me, obviously.”

His phone buzzed, and he groaned and walked over to it and held it long enough to turn it off, then threw it back onto the

bed. He walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain—the snow was still coming down in the type of storm that I was

certain had brought the town to a standstill—and stared out at the blanket of white. And I just watched him.

It wasn’t my first time looking at him since he got into town, of course, though I suppose it was the first opportunity I’d

had without him being aware. It wasn’t so much about seeing him in person for the first time in more than two decades, though.

That wasn’t what made my jaw and my nerve endings and my heart all tighten. It was seeing him in contrast to the clear image

of the eighteen-year-old young man I’d seen so vividly in my mind just a couple of minutes ago.

That young man, standing across the island from me, had been dressed in a shirt and tie and actual dress shoes, though until

then his version of dress shoes had been his black-and-white-checkered skate shoes. His blond hair—that blond hair I had spent

countless hours running my fingers through while we watched movies and his head rested on my lap—had been trimmed and combed

and slicked back. At our rehearsal dinner, Cole—his best man, of course—had asked him if he’d left any hair gel for the rest

of the wedding party, and we’d all laughed. All except for Wes, who was uncharacteristically offendable that night.

Now, with his wrinkled shirt and his sock-clad feet and his disheveled hair, he reminded me of my Wes more than the person I’d fought with that night, and certainly more than any image I’d ever seen of the senator on television or on the cover of Time or Newsweek .

I couldn’t explain it, but I knew this guy. The one staring out the window. The one who had seemed so genuinely touched by

a gift of—at this point—unpaid-for gloves. The one who, I was willing to bet, was used to not having anyone to share his secrets

with.

If nothing else, after a lifetime together followed by a lifetime apart, we had that in common.

“I was in the CIA.”

I felt his eyes focus back on me as I took my cup to the sink and refilled it. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have predicted—”

“What? That I’d actually make something of myself after you left?” I groaned softly and my chin fell sharply to my chest.

“No! Addie, I didn’t mean anything remotely like—”

“I know.” I turned off the faucet and faced him again. “I seem to be incapable of keeping snarky thoughts to myself around

you. Sorry. All I meant—and the only reason I brought up the CIA at all—is that I’m pretty good at keeping secrets.”

“I bet you are.” He watched me with a sad expression on his face as I came back around the corner from the bathroom, and then

he sat on the edge of the bed just as I sat back down in my chair.

I chose not to add on, “Of course I also got kicked out of the CIA,” and instead kept my mouth shut and waited for him to

carry on when he was ready.

“So look, here’s the thing,” he finally said. “Wray and I didn’t have what you would call a traditional marriage.”

“How so? Were you into kinky stuff or something?”

It was a good thing I was the one drinking water. He spewed, nonetheless, and I laughed as he recovered by coughing into the

corner of his elbow. “Um, no. But thanks for helping to prepare me for some of the hard-hitting questions I may get asked

by the media.”

“My pleasure.”

“What I mean is, we got married because... well, because we both thought we needed to get married. She was my best friend from the time she showed up at Yale to the day she died. Maybe my only friend. We were partners. There was trust and respect, and... I needed a perfect DC wife, and Wray was... yeah, she was made for that life. The public service life, I mean. So much more than I was, truthfully. She cared , Addie. She had her own ambitions, but it wasn’t ever about power or control for her.

If she’d been a little more power hungry,

she would have made a much better candidate than I ever did, trust me. But it just wasn’t about that for her. She needed to

be in the conversation, because everything she had to say made the conversation better.”

My thoughts and memories of Wray Gardner were, like so many aspects of my life, divided into two eras. When we were kids,

she’d been two or three years younger than us. Not so young that we had to babysit her but young enough that we sort of just

viewed her as a nuisance. An annoying brat who wanted to hang out with us and whom we allowed to do so from time to time if

she stayed out of our way until we needed her to get us more soda from the fridge.

And then I just didn’t ever think about her at all until I saw her on TV with Wes.

“Did you cheat on me with her? Is that why you left?”

“Oh goodness, Addie, no. She was a kid, and I’d never looked at her. I’d never looked at anyone .” He pulled his eyes away and sighed. “No, I promise you nothing ever happened. There wasn’t even the idea of anything ever

happening. I don’t think I even had a full conversation with her until Yale. That’s the truth.”

I took a swig of water and then stood for another refill. God bless the tiny little cup and its gift of frequent opportunities

to walk away from discomfort. “Anyway, you were saying your marriage was not a traditional one.”

“Right.” I walked back in as he was running his hands through his hair, disheveling it further. “So yeah, I needed a political-asset

wife, and Wray needed a cover-up-story husband. It was perfect.”

“A cover-up story? Why? What was she covering up?”

He released another heavy sigh. “This is her story, Addie. I need you to know that.”

“I said you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want—”

“No, it’s not that. I’ll tell you.” His eyes locked with mine as he restated the sentence with a new emphasis. “I’ll tell

you . But I don’t tell people this because she didn’t tell people this. And that’s why I’m in a tight spot now—”

“Wray was a lesbian?”

He bit his bottom lip and nodded.

I scooted back in my chair and crossed my ankle up onto my knee. “Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay... Okay...” I tried once again to think of it all from the perspective of a political strategist. “That’s awkward

to manage, I’m sure. I mean, yeah... there’s lots to consider there. But I don’t see any reason why this has to end with

you dropping out of the race.”

“Well, like I said, I was probably going to do that anyway. But it needs to be now. I need to get ahead of it.”

I nodded, finally understanding. I thought. “That’s the story that’s about to break?”

Wes’s lips formed a tight line, and his nose scrunched up. “No, actually. I’m pretty sure no one knows. I mean, Andrea didn’t

even know.”

“How did her own sister not—”

“Because Wray didn’t want her to. She didn’t want anyone in this town to know. She didn’t want to deal with being judged and ostracized—”

“Oh, come on, Wes. No one would have—”