just because. She typed out a quick text to Gaby—she had longer thoughts that needed to be unpacked between them—but at the very least, they should celebrate this. That two young women had spoken up. That they had been heard. That two older men were being held to account.
Then she turned off her phone entirely, because she knew that thrusting herself into the presidential conversation meant a thorough examination of her life, but she also knew that like most things, this would all pass. Maybe not all of it. She could already see how the conversation about her regrets was being framed in some outlets: “Can We Trust a Woman with So Much Baggage?” and “How Many People Does Cleo McDougal Owe Apologies To?” and so on and so on.
She ran through her local streets with her hat pulled low and resolved that she did owe apologies to a few people—like Lucas, like MaryAnne, and like Doug Smith, whom she should have tracked down on campus because he deserved to be part of Lucas’s story, but at the time Cleo, fairly or not, had been so let down by everyone she’d come to count on—her parents were dead, her sister was absent, her high school boyfriend too smothering, her best friend, well, that was Cleo’s own doing—but as Cleo saw it at the time, she was her own best shot. It wasn’t how she would do it now, and she didn’t want to excuse it, but then, that’s what regrets were, after all. How you looked back and realized how different it should have been.
She felt a cramp building and slowed her pace. And then the idea came to her all at once, though it had probably been twenty years in the making. That’s how easy and how hard it was to ask for help.
She scrolled to his number in her contacts, where she’d located his address not too long ago to send that salmon from Alaska. She shook her head and smiled, looking at how he typed it in back in the Sheraton bar: MATTY!
It was early in Seattle. Not yet eight. But she remembered that, like her, he’d always been a morning person, and so she took a chance.
He answered it on the second ring and sounded like he was inside a wind tunnel.
“Am I catching you at a bad time?” Cleo shouted.
“One second, hang on!” he shouted back. He adjusted something on his end, and then the line was quiet. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m on my bike. Training for a triathlon.”
Cleo grinned at the notion of her geeky high school boyfriend morphing into a triathlete but then realized that anyone could be anything if they worked to redefine themselves, and maybe with this call, Cleo was aiming to redefine herself too.
“I’ve been meaning to call you,” he said. “That salmon! Best I’ve had in my life. Think I’m going to book a cruise up there, just to see if I can catch some for myself.”
Cleo grinned wider now, at the ease between them, at how happy she was to be able to pick up the phone and connect with her past.
“Listen, I was hoping I could ask a favor,” she said. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind, I could use a little help.”
Matty laughed for what felt like a minute. Cleo imagined him pulling over on the side of the deserted road to get a hold of himself. “Are you kidding me, Cleo? I think this is probably the first time in the history of Senator McDougal’s life that she has asked someone for help. I’m fucking honored. Tell me what I can do. I’m ready.”
Matty said it would take a couple of days. He thought they had some data searches that he could run internally to track down the generically named Doug Smith.
“I’d think you’d have better access through the government,” he said. “Don’t you have big intimidating databases that can do things like this? Like, not only find Doug Smith but tell you his last eighteen purchases and what he’s craving for dinner and what side of the bed he sleeps on?”
“We do,” Cleo said. “But this one is personal. And for once in my life, my job has nothing to do with it. And I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
Matty whistled his approval. “I guess people can change.”
“I’m not changing, Matty. I’m improving. There’s a difference.”
He laughed again and said, “Goddamn it, you are such a fucking politician. I can’t believe I ever