Protect and Defend (75 page)

Finishing her coffee, Sarah went to awaken Mary Ann, imagining as she did the same moment in the Tierney household, Margaret and Martin Tierney awakening to the end of the case, trying to imagine a future which included—for them—facing the literal loss of a grandson, and the estranged daughter who had caused this. Standing over Mary Ann, Sarah hesitated, as if by pausing she could delay the pain to come.

The girl’s eyes fluttered open, blank at first, then focusing on Sarah. In them Sarah read fear and hope; she knew that Sarah would not awaken her without reason.

Sarah took her hand. “We’ve won,” she said. “The Supreme Court has refused your parents’ appeal.”

Mary Ann looked stunned and then, to Sarah, as frightened as she was relieved. Sarah could imagine how complex “winning” must seem: victory must carry with it the fear of sin, an imagined whiff of hell. Two months could not erase the girl raised in her parents’ home.

Sarah knelt by the bed. “When the time comes,” she promised, “I’ll be there with you.”

Reflexively, the girl felt her rounded belly. Then she covered her face, and began to weep.

For Caroline, the news had come from Clayton Slade, his call breaking a restless sleep. She sat up in bed, heartsick.

What Justice Fini had done felt like a blow to the solar plexus.
We don’t want you here
, his statement told her.
We do not want you here, and we want the Senate to spare us your presence
. If there had been any doubt as to how divided the Court was, and how divisive Caroline might become as Chief, that doubt was gone.

In two months her life had been exposed, her daughter wounded, her own reputation damaged. Her only consolation was that she had acted as she felt a judge must act, and faced the consequences as they came.

And so she would, until the Senate voted.

*  *  *

In Washington, Macdonald Gage, too, felt leaden. Even Mace Taylor, the most cold and practical of men, was reduced to a contemplative silence. At last, Taylor said, “You’re out of time.”

Gage looked up from his coffee. “The baby, you mean.”

“The baby. If it turns out it never had a brain, there’ll be more sympathy for Masters. You might not get the last few votes you need.” Taylor’s voice was quiet, sober. “Tony Fini left you in as good shape as he could. But that may be a matter of days, or hours.”

Gage stared at his carpet. “I could call a vote tomorrow,” he said. “But Kilcannon would scream bloody murder about ‘surprise tactics.’ And I may not have the votes to win …”

“And a filibuster?”

“Might take us past when the girl has her abortion. Some of our own people are getting real vague on me, like they’ve been cutting deals with Kilcannon.” Gage felt a rising unease. “The dumbest thing in the world, Mace, is for a lawyer to ask a question he doesn’t know the answer to. Except for a leader to call a vote that you don’t know you’ll win, when there’s nothing to gain by losing, and the greatest harm you’d be doing is to yourself. And then there’s Palmer.” Pausing in his reverie, he looked up at Taylor. “Always, there’s Palmer.”

Taylor watched him, his thoughts imponderable. “So there is.”

Gage studied him. “If I call the vote tomorrow,” Gage said at length, “Chad’s the wild card.”

Now it was Taylor who contemplated the carpet with veiled eyes. “You willing to gamble on the baby being normal?”

His tone was cool. “No,” Gage answered. “That’s something to hope for, but surely not to count on.”

Taylor looked up at him. “Then call the vote,” he said. He did not mention Palmer.

Shortly before eleven, Chad Palmer heard a click on his line, the signal for call waiting.

“That may be her,” he said to Henry Nielsen. “Hang on for a moment.”

Hastily, Chad hit the flash button.

“Senator Palmer?”

It was a man’s voice, high-pitched and, to Chad’s ears, invasive. “Yes,” Chad answered tightly.

“This is Charlie Trask.”

Startled, Chad took a moment to steel himself, feeling surprise turn to dread: a call from the gossip columnist, the man who had implied that Caroline Masters was a lesbian, was, on this morning of all mornings, something to fear. In an even tone, mustered with difficulty, Chad inquired, “What can I do for you, Mr. Trask?”

“I’ll get right to the point. We know about your daughter’s abortion, and I’m about to go with it on-line. I thought you’d want to comment before I do.”

Sickened, Chad felt his hope of protecting Kyle slip away, Henry Nielsen waiting on the other line. “Yes,” he managed to say, “it’s not relevant …”

“Don’t even try relevance, Senator. This morning’s pronouncement from the Court makes it doubly relevant. And Senator Gage just called a vote. So do you have anything to say, or not?”

Chad forced himself to pause, thinking of Kyle. “Not to you,” he said softly.

Chad hit the flash button, and banished him.

I
T WAS TWILIGHT
before Kyle Palmer returned to her apartment.

On impulse, she and Matthew had decided to just blow off the day—their classes, his part-time job, pretty much anything which had to do with the outside world. She felt kind of guilty about that. But then it wasn’t every day you figured out that, just maybe, you were falling in love.

Matthew was a film student, tall and bearded, with ruddy cheeks, gentle brown eyes, and a smile so genuinely happy and unaffected that it transformed his face entirely. They could talk so easily; in between making love—wonderful in itself for his tenderness—they had pretty much talked all night. She could imagine his parents now, his teenage twin brothers, the six-year-old sister Matthew clearly adored. Kyle was still careful about what she told him; she didn’t want him to look at her and see damaged goods. But if this kept up she could imagine, someday, telling him almost everything—he seemed that good. Kyle prayed that he really was.

This
was what she wanted: something of her own—a career in fashion design, but also a husband she loved who loved her, an understanding between the two of them that they were the central thing in each other’s lives. Though Kyle loved her parents, she wanted something different in a marriage; with tenderness, yet guilt, she knew that
she
had been the most important person in Allie Palmer’s life, and that her father was born to be a hero, at home in the larger world—adored by those who barely knew him, and millions more who only knew his name. Kyle wished to be safely anonymous, with a husband she would spend her days and nights with.

She turned the corner onto her street in a kind of dream state, driving by memory and instinct, her imaginings of Matthew more vivid than her surroundings. So that the men and women clustered in front of her apartment, the snug basement of an old house, struck her as unreal.

Parking across the street, Kyle walked toward them. Only then did she see the Minicams and know that, though she did not know why, they had come for her.

They scrambled toward her. The red-haired young woman in front, a local news reporter, was calling out. “Tell us about your abortion, Kyle. Did your father support your decision?”

Kyle froze, immobilized by disbelief.

“Your father,” the woman persisted, “says you had problems with drugs and alcohol …”

“Your boyfriend,” another voice called, “claims you were emotionally unstable. Was having an abortion right for you?”

Kyle felt shaky, sick. “
Go away
,” she said in a trembling voice. Then she began running across the lawn, circling the
house to the rear. As she fumbled for her keys to the basement door, she heard them running after her.

Slamming the door behind her, Kyle haltingly descended the stairs into the basement.

She sat on the edge of the bed, skin clammy, staring at the white rectangle which was her home. She barely noticed the blinking red light on her answering machine. From outside came the faint sounds of a commotion.

Thank God there were no windows.

Dully, she crossed the room and saw that her machine had recorded sixteen messages. She made herself push the button …

“
Kyle
.” Her mother’s voice sounded strained. “
Please call …
”

Each message added to the story, a tortured sequence in which the truth teased itself out, climaxing with her father’s halting explanation of what was happening, then the questions of reporters who had somehow discovered her number.

Tears ran down Kyle’s face.

Someone had betrayed them. They knew of her abortion, her mother’s consent. Eric had given an interview describing her father’s “brutality” to him, their sudden move to Washington, her parents’ collusion in the breakup of their “relationship” and the “cover-up” which followed.

“
Please
,” her father’s voice had pleaded. “
As soon as you get this message, come home
.”

Eric.

Her father had been right. Eric was a sleaze. He had used her, then abandoned her. Now he was back in their lives—probably for money as well as for notoriety—to shame her mother and destroy her father. Because of
her
.

The telephone rang.

Standing by the answering machine, Kyle hesitated.

“Kyle?” It was her father. She had never heard him sound so hopeless, so humiliated. He was
Chad Palmer
, in Kyle’s mind so impervious to pressures …

Shaken, she turned from her father’s voice.

“Kyle?” he asked again. “Are you there?”

She could not bring herself to answer this new Chad
Palmer—so pleading, so unfamiliar, that it devastated her. Hands covering her face, she sat on the bed again.

Matthew. Her whole life would be exposed to him, and to his family. Kyle Palmer, the drunken, druggy, crazy girl who had ruined her father’s career and made her mother’s life a living hell. Now she would be that girl forever; such was her agony, the wrenching feeling inside her, that all she wanted was to escape. But she could not—the reporters outside imprisoned her.

On the table was a bottle of cheap Chianti.

In his innocence, unaware of the reasons Kyle did not drink, Matthew had left it here. She found herself staring at the bottle.

She should not touch it. But this did not seem to matter now—it was an escape, the only one available. Right now she wouldn’t care if she were dead.

Shakily, Kyle filled a coffee mug with wine.

There were shadows on the wall, cast by the lamp on Kyle’s nightstand. The room receded, became unreal; stunned by alcohol—the shock to a system now unused to it—Kyle was motionless save for pouring wine, placing the mug to her lips. Repressed images surfaced from the past, vivid and immediate—Eric on top of her, her father’s rage, her mother holding her hand while the doctor slipped the tube between her legs. Memories she now shared with the world.

Her father had been right about Eric, about her. She was a fuck-up, an albatross, flawed from birth. Her mother and father would have been better off if she’d never been born—how vividly she remembered the silent fear in her mother’s eyes, the wary, probing look behind the mask of serenity which fooled everyone but Kyle …

Her poor mother, who loved so much and tried so hard. She did not deserve this.

No
, Kyle thought with a jolt.
She did not deserve
this.

In a moment of strange clarity, she saw herself as she was—hiding in her room, drunk, the ultimate betrayal of her parents and herself. Her hand shook as she held the wine bottle; with a ferocious act of will, she flung it against the painted stone wall. Shattering, it made her flinch and then, abruptly, stand.

Reeling, she went to the bathroom and stripped.

The shower was cold, a punishment. She hunched, shivering beneath the icy spatter, the shock to her skin which would help her confront her life again. Stepping from the shower, her hair was moist ringlets, and her skin felt blue.

Her parents couldn’t see her like this, she couldn’t call them like this. Naked, she paced the apartment, straining to get sober, stepping over the jagged glass with the exaggerated care of intoxication. When the phone rang—this time her mother—she did not answer; when Kyle got to them, she would be better.

At last, fingers stiff and fumbling, Kyle dressed again, disguising the wine on her breath with mouthwash. Her car keys were still in her jeans.

When she cracked open the door, she heard nothing.

Outside it was dark and chill; a thin sleet hit her face, the dying fall of March. Like a nightmare, the reporters had vanished.

She would go to her parents.

Walking to the car, a plan came to Kyle. She would drive the long way, with her windows open, along Rock Creek Parkway. By the time she reached her parents, maybe they would not know—that, now, was the only way she could help them. As capable as they were, they needed that: her father, who had never needed anything, needed the best that she could give.

Sitting in the car, she envisioned him. Her handsome father, whom she had always worshiped, whose approval she had always needed, even when she hated him.

She loved him now. That, and a fierce desire not to worry him, were all she had to give. She imagined draping her arms around his neck.

At last she started the car.

The streets seemed a maze—once or twice, memory failed her, and she missed a turn. But her instincts were good; eventually, she found herself on Rock Creek Parkway.

Though the parkway was quiet, she drove with care; the pavement was slick, and she did not trust her reflexes. Time passed. She craned her neck, peering out at the moving patch of asphalt illuminated by her headlights. To her right, the dark
forms of trees slipped by, sloping toward the creekbed. Through her open window, sleet misted her face.

She was almost fine now.

At the edge of the headlights, something moved. Kyle squinted; back hunched, a squirrel, scrambling, stopped suddenly, frozen by her headlights.

Kyle stabbed the brake.

The car shimmied, then began to skid sideways. She wrenched the wheel, and lost control entirely. For Kyle, the next moments were like watching a film; as she left the road, the looming trees seemed insubstantial. The first few seemed to slip by her; then—in a moment vivid with reality and horror—she saw the massive trunk in her windshield.