asked. He hadn’t been paying attention, evidently, when Cleo had proposed it.
“Yes, if that’s what you want.”
“So, like, I could see Esme?”
This aspect of the trip had not crossed Cleo’s mind, but the brain of a lusty teenager never ceased to surprise her.
“If . . . that’s what you want, I’m sure we could make that happen. This whole experience is your call,” Cleo said, and she smiled at Georgie, whose joy was practically bursting through the camera. They had discussed, leading up to the conversation, that this one time in Lucas’s life needed to be about him. Not about her needs, not about her job, not about her issues or regrets. Just . . . him. Lucas hadn’t quite forgiven her for her years of mistruths, and Cleo knew it would be a long time before she earned back his complete trust. That was fair. They had a lifetime together, and she also believed they could get there. Peas in a pod. They had to.
“Yes,” Lucas said. “That’s the one I choose.”
Cleo disconnected with Georgie and called Arianna at the office and asked her to book two tickets for the next day.
“Should I let Gaby know?” Arianna asked.
Cleo and Gaby had settled their differences, though it would take a while for the feelings to subside entirely. But that’s not why Cleo said what she said next.
“It’s OK,” Cleo said. “This isn’t a work trip. This one is for family.”
Gaby, of course, wanted to come. Likely to see Oliver Patel but also, Cleo surmised, to make sure that nothing more could go awry. The hashtag protesters had cooled off; their office hallways were no longer clogged with angry, often pimply men and the confused women who ran behind them; the phone lines were starting to quiet too. The Dancing with the Stars video was still hot as ever, but Cleo never expected to get through life in politics as a woman without being laughed at once or twice. It would pass. And the regrets list? Well, Cleo had personally written a press release about it. And she knew that it had landed and made its mark when she watched Bowen read it on-air.
(Incidentally, he still hadn’t replied to her email in which Cleo proposed a drink [her treat].)
The gist of it was that of course she had regrets. That made her human. She didn’t think that it made her less of a senator or less presidential, she’d said. If anything, she’d written, it made her a better one. She had thought that the list was her form of confession—to jot down the error of her ways and be absolved simply by acknowledging her mistakes. But that wasn’t restitution; that wasn’t taking a wrong and making it right. And over these past few weeks, she said, she’d learned the difference between recognizing that she could be fallible and accepting ownership of it. And wasn’t that, after all, what the point of this whole thing was? Not governing, she noted. But living. The point of all this was to try to be as good as you can while you can. And she had regrets, but who didn’t? All she could do now was apologize, sincerely, to those she had aggrieved and try to hold herself accountable for the future.
Bowen held his breath for a moment when he finished reading it, and then he smiled and looked into the camera and said, “That, my friends, is the most we can ask of anyone.”
Cleo told Gaby that she wanted her to stay in DC, that this trip was just for the two of them, mother and son. Gaby looked a little disappointed and asked Cleo again, as she had done all week, if she really wasn’t still angry over the list leak.
Cleo wasn’t. And she told her as much. She called Veronica Kaye instead and told her that she welcomed her endorsement, but not if it meant that she or someone on her staff was willing to sell her out. Gaby had relayed Cleo’s distress, so Veronica was not put off by Cleo’s bluntness.
Veronica quieted on the other end of the line, then pressed a button, and Cleo heard her call Topher, the man who always lingered one step away from her, into her office.
“Topher,” Veronica said into the speakerphone. “Did you leak the confidential information about Senator McDougal’s list to the media?”
“No,” Topher said.
“Topher,” Veronica repeated with seemingly significantly less patience. “I spoke with the editors at two sites, and they forwarded your