“Nathaniel, look at me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”
He turned his face away to stare somewhere across the street. A gust of wind buffeted some fallen autumn leaves, and he waited until they fell to the cobblestones before he finally spoke, his voice so soft that she could barely hear it.
“I can’t bear to see her.”
“Mrs. McKinley?” Maybe this was why he’d made himself scarce. Except for the few hours she’d been allowed to visit the president, Ida had been constantly in Caroline’s presence.
He gave the barest of nods. “For as long as I live, I’ll never be able to look her in the face again.”
“She doesn’t blame you.”
His gaze turned cynical. He didn’t need to speak, for the agony in his eyes made it apparent he blamed himself and always would. Caroline opened her mouth to speak but couldn’t find the words to ease his pain.
“I need to go meet with that judge,” he said, pulling away and stepping around her to continue his journey.
She watched his back as he walked away, fearing this tragedy had broken him in a way she could not fix.
A flurry of activity descended on the Milburn house as members of the cabinet began assembling in Buffalo. Caroline made arrangements at local homes for their accommodation and hired carriage drivers to transport the men to and from the president’s sickbed each day. George was a constant presence, carefully monitoring the president’s energy and allowing a few visitors, but most of the work went on in the parlor. Cabinet members advanced plans, and clerks drafted articles to be released to the press.
Ida had been relocated to the Milburn house, and Caroline’s time was split between sitting with Ida in an upstairs bedroom and attending George’s business meetings in the downstairs parlor. It had been five days since the president was shot, surely the oddest five days of her life. While the mood upstairs with Ida was tense and teetered on the edge of a nervous collapse, downstairs was different. Caroline had a front-row seat as George cleared the way for a vote on the president’s proposal to end American isolationism. Sven was there as well. He met with cabinet officials and congressional leaders, searching for pockets of resistance to the president’s agenda and devising plans to counter it.
The Secretary of the Treasury wanted to move quickly. “No one can sell this proposal better than the president himself,” he said. “Get him to Washington now, while sympathy is still high.”
“Not until he is ready to travel,” George said.
“But you said he is on the mend,” the secretary blustered.
George remained implacable. “He is, but sticking him on a train for two days could jeopardize that.”
The bickering continued, and Caroline lost interest in the quagmire of congressional maneuvering, reconciliation bills, and procedural motions. She hadn’t taken this job out of political motivation. She’d stupidly accepted the job because she thought it would befun.
Her gaze strayed out the window, where a delivery boy rode past on his bicycle, tossing several copies of this afternoon’s newspaper toward the house. Normally he would have ridden up to the front porch, but the soldiers standing guard in the front yard made it impossible for anyone to get close.
She excused herself from the discussion of international tariffs and went to collect the newspapers. She was only yards away from the president’s sickroom, but she was entirely dependent on the newspaper to track the ongoing investigation into the shooting.
She nodded to the pair of army guards sitting on the front porch. One of them had already snatched a copy of the paper and had opened it wide, his nose buried deeply in the interior. It was a little disconcerting. Shouldn’t he be guarding the house rather than engrossed in the newspaper?
“Any news?” she asked.
He startled and closed the paper. “Just checking up on the world, ma’am.”
She took an educated guess. “And what vital events have occurred in the world of baseball?”
The guilty flush on his face indicated she’d guessed correctly. He sent her a bashful smile. “The Brewers beat the White Stockings, five to one. Life is good.”
She ought to be annoyed, but oddly it was exactly what she needed to hear. Inside the house, it was tense with anxiety and political rumblings, but in the rest of the world, life went on. Baseball games were played, the apple harvest was in full swing, and college classes were in session. While her corner of the world was shrouded in darkness, she needed to remember that somewhere the sun was shining.
“Did the Washington Senators play?” she asked.
The soldier looked momentarily surprised but cracked the paper open again in search of an answer. “They beat Boston, five to three.”
“Good,” she said softly, then leaned down to pick up the rest of the newspapers. She’d leave a few for the men in the parlor, but first she needed to scan every page before delivering a copy to Ida. If there was one negative word about the president, that page would be “lost” before it was delivered to her. Caroline carried the newspaper to a wicker chair at the far end of the porch. It would be easier to read out here amid the rustling of autumn leaves instead of the political haggling inside.
The front page was a shock. Emma Goldman had been arrested in Chicago and would soon be transferred to stand trial in Buffalo. A ghoulish political cartoon labeled her “the high priestess of anarchy.” Ten others had been arrested on the strength of their participation in various anarchist groups and publications. A sick feeling took root as she continued reading, for the news got worse. Members of Emma Goldman’s family had been arrested to pressure her into turning herself in. The adolescent children of Abe Isaak, another anarchist, had also been arrested, one girl only fifteen years old.
“This isn’t America,” she whispered. “This isn’t America.”
But it was, and Nathaniel had his hand in it.
