The President’s expecting me in the library. But for the first time since I’ve been in Leland Manning’s personal orbit, well, for once… he can wait. “Sure,” I say.
Boyle nods me a thank-you and scratches from his head down to his cheek. This is hard for him. “You should put a warm compress on it,” he finally says. Reading my confusion, he adds, “For your eye. Everyone thinks cold is better, but the next day, warm helps more.”
I shrug, unconcerned with my appearance.
“By the way, how’s your friend?” Boyle asks.
“My friend?”
“The reporter. I heard she got shot.”
“Lisbeth? Yeah, she got shot,” I say, staring at Boyle’s sharpened features. “The one in her hand was the worst.”
Boyle nods, glancing down at the old stigmata scar at the center of his own palm. He doesn’t linger on it, though.
“Wes, I–I’m sorry I had to keep you in the dark like that. In Malaysia, when I was trying to get to Manning… All these years, I thought he might’ve screwed me — that maybe he was The Fourth — so to find the crossword… to see it was her — and then when I saw you, I just — I panicked. And when O’Shea and Micah started trailing you…”
He waits for me to complete the thought — to yell at him for using me as bait these past few days. To blame him for the lies, for the deception… for every ounce of guilt he dumped on my shoulders for eight years. But as I stare across at him… as I see the deep circles under his eyes and the pained vertical line etched between his brows… Last night, Ron Boyle won. He got everyone — The Roman… Micah and O’Shea… even the First Lady — everyone he’d hunted for so long. But it’s painful to see him now, anxiously licking his lips. There’s no joy in his features, no victory on his face. Eight years after his ordeal began, all that’s left is an aged man with crummy nose and chin jobs, a haunted vacancy in his eyes, and an unstoppable need to keep checking every nearby door and window, which he does for the third time since we started talking.
Suffering is bad. Suffering alone is far worse.
My jaw clenches as I try to find the words. “Listen, Ron…”
“Wes, don’t pity me.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he insists. “I’m standing right in front of you, and you’re still mourning me like I’m gone. I can see it in your face.”
He’s talking about the swell of tears in my eyes. But he’s reading it wrong. I shake my head and try to tell him why, but the words feel like they’re stapled in my throat.
He says something else to make me feel better, but I don’t hear it. All I hear are the words that’re trapped within me. The words I’ve practiced in my sleep at night — every night — and in my mirror every morning, knowing full well they’d never get to leave my lips. Until this moment.
I swallow hard and again hear the crowd at the speedway that day. Everyone happy, everyone waving, until pop, pop, pop, there it is, the scream in C minor as the ambulance doors close. I swallow hard again and slowly, finally, the screams begin to fade as the first few syllables leave my lips.
“Ron,” I begin, already panting hard. “I–I…”
“Wes, you don’t have to—”
I shake my head and cut him off. He’s wrong. I do. And after nearly a decade, as the tears stream down my face, I finally get my chance. “Ron, I… I’m sorry for putting you in the limo that day,” I tell him. “I know it’s stupid — I just — I need you to know I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry, Ron,” I plead as my voice cracks and the tears drip from my chin. “I’m so sorry I put you in there.”
Across from me, Boyle doesn’t respond. His shoulders rise, and for a moment, he looks like the old Boyle who screamed in my face that burning July day. As I wipe my cheeks, he continues staring at me, keeping it all to himself. I can’t read him. Especially when he doesn’t want to be read. But even the best facades crack in time.
He rubs his nose and tries to hide it, but I still spot the quivering of his chin and the heartbroken arch of his eyebrows.
“Wes,” he eventually offers, “no matter what car you put me in, that bullet was always going to hit my chest.”
I look up, still fighting to catch my breath. Over the years, my mom, Rogo, my shrinks, Manning, even the lead investigator from the Service, told me the exact same thing. But Ron Boyle was the one I needed to hear it from.
Within seconds, a tentative smile spreads across my face. I spot my own reflection in the glass panels of the French doors. The smile itself is crooked, broken, and only lifts one of my cheeks. But for the first time in a long time, that’s plenty.
That is, until I spot the flash of movement and the familiar posture on the other side of the glass. With a twist, the brass eagle doorknob once again turns, and the door opens inward, behind Boyle’s back. Boyle turns, and I look up. Towering above us, President Manning sticks his head out and nods at me with an awkward hello. His mane of gray hair is matted just enough that I can tell it’s unwashed; the whites of his eyes are crackling with red. His wife died last night. He hasn’t slept ten minutes.
“I should go,” Boyle offers. From what I heard last night, he’s blaming his death and reappearance on Nico and The Three. Not The Four. For that alone, Manning’ll make him a hero. I’m not sure I blame him. But as Manning knows, I deal with things differently than Boyle.
Before I can say a word, Boyle walks past me, offers a quick shoulder pat, and casually leaves the room, like he’s going to lunch. The problem is, I’m the one about to be eaten.
On most days, Manning would simply head back into the library and expect me to follow. Today, he opens the door wider and motions me inside. “There you are, Wes,” the President says. “I was starting to worry you weren’t coming.”
115
I appreciate your getting here so early, Wes.”
“Believe me, I wanted to come last night.”
Nodding soberly and ushering me to the seat in front of his desk, Manning turns his back to me and scans the framed photos and leather-bound books that line the built-in maple shelves that surround us on all sides. There are pictures of him with the pope, with both Presidents Bush, with Clinton, Carter, and even with an eight-year-old boy from Eritrea, who weighed barely twenty pounds when Manning met him during one of our first trips abroad. Unlike his office, where we cover the walls, here at home he displays only the pictures he loves best — his own personal greatest hits — but it’s not until I sit down in the antique Queen Anne chair that I realize that the only photo on his desk is one of him and his wife.
“Sir, I’m sorry about—”
“The funeral’s Wednesday,” he says, still scanning his shelves as if some brilliant answer were there among the peace prizes, bricks from the Hanoi Hilton, and imprints of the Wailing Wall. Across from him, I also stare — at the bronze casting of Abraham Lincoln’s fist that sits on the edge of the desk.
“We’d like you to be a pallbearer, Wes.”
He still doesn’t face me. The snag in his voice tells me how hard this is. The way his hand’s shaking as he shoves it in his pocket shows me the same. As President, Leland Manning buried three hundred and two American soldiers, nine heads of state, two senators, and a pope. None of it prepared him for burying his wife.
“A pallbearer?” I ask.
“It was her request,” he says, trying to pull it together. “From her checklist.”
When a President and First Lady leave the White House, as if they’re not depressed enough, one of the very first things they’re forced to do is make arrangements for their own funerals. State funerals are national events that need to be mounted in a few hours, almost always without any notice — which is why the Pentagon gives the President a checklist of all the gruesome details: whether you want to lie in state in the Capitol, if you want a public viewing, whether you want the final burial at your library or in Arlington, how many friends, family, and dignitaries should attend, who should do the eulogies, who shouldn’t be invited, and of course, who should be the pallbearers.