Madame President - Tara Sue Me Page 0,77
is over. I sigh. The benefit was my idea, and it was my idea for Navin to give the keynote, so if it’s anyone’s fault I’m not able to spend Navin’s last few hours in the White House sobbing my eyes out, it’s all mine.
We’re holding the benefit at the White House, the way I’d told Navin months ago. Guests have started arriving, and I reach the antechamber where I’m meeting the Hazar family before they go in and I’m introduced. Nicole, keeper of my life and the person who should be cloned so there’s more of her, is behind me, at my elbow. She’s wearing a discreet and simple black dress. She catches my attention to follow-up on a few items I had her look into. We wrap up as Navin walks in with Sunshine at his side and their parents behind them.
Sunshine looks radiant, the absolute picture of health. I hope little Emma, from the children’s hospital, is as vibrant and full of life when she’s thirteen. After obtaining her parents’ information, I called them to check up on her a week ago. She’s at home now, her parents told me, and doing better than the doctors had predicted. I let them know that was the best news I’d received all week and I couldn’t be happier.
As a result of our picture going viral, the hospital has been able to set up a college fund for little Emma. Her parents don’t know about it yet because I wanted the staff who’d worked with Emma for so long to be the ones to tell them the good news.
I greet Navin and his parents. Then I whisper to Sunshine that I love the color of her lipstick. She thanks me and asks in a whisper back if there’ll be any boys attending her age. Unfortunately, her whisper is too loud and Navin shoots her down with a brotherly reminder she can’t date until she’s thirty and that he knows the perfect spot to hide dead bodies.
“You’re in the same room with the President, Navin,” she says. “You can’t say things like that in front of her.”
“Why not?” he replies. “She’s the President, so it stands to reason she knows a place or two, herself.”
“Or twenty,” I add. They both look at me in shock. I shrug. “What can I say? I know people.”
Sunshine thinks this is hilarious. Navin? Not so much.
Navin and his family aren’t at my table, but they are close enough I can see Navin if I tilt my head the right way. I look in their direction only a few times to make sure they have everything they need. From what I see, they’re doing great. Navin looks a bit off, but maybe he gets that way before speaking.
Even though he’s given numerous speeches before, this is the first one about an issue so personal to him, he’d told me. I hope I haven’t made a mistake in asking him to give the keynote. My stomach churns with anxiety for him because he really doesn’t look well.
An hour later, he steps up to the podium, thankfully looking much better. I’m off to the side of him, a place I’m told where I can see and be seen. Watching him walk across the platform, the way his muscles move under his clothes, I once again get the feeling I was wrong to turn him down that day in the Oval Office.
Too late now, I tell myself, making sure I don’t move or shift or give any indication I’m anything other than two hundred percent content with everything.
“Madame President, honored guests, those of you who are survivors, and those of you who lost loved ones far too soon, thank you for allowing me to share with you a piece of my story. A piece of my heart.”
With those few sentences, Navin manages to captivate the entire audience, and I know he was the right choice. He continues by telling Sunshine’s story, though I notice he doesn’t mention Harvard or law school or any of the sacrifices he made personally. He talks about the sorrow of watching a beloved sister grow sicker by the day and not being able to stop it or make her better.
He then asks Sunshine to stand up, and though her face is beet red and she’s obviously embarrassed out of her mind, her love for and pride in her bother is in her expression for everyone to see. He thanks her and apologizes for putting