She squeezed his arm. “I owe you everything.”
“It’s quite the other way around.”
“No, it isn’t. Our entire shift is long gone, and you’re still here because you’re my partner.”
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Go on home. You need some… fixing up… before you go on TV.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Truth hurts, pal.”
She flipped him off and left him laughing, too, as she headed for the morgue exit, texting Vernon and Lilia to let them know she was coming.
Too bad there wasn’t a switch she could flip to change gears from detective to first lady to wife to mother to sister to friend to whatever role she was required to play at the moment. That would be nice to have. Maybe she could invent such a thing. She’d work on that as soon as she got a spare minute—probably ten years from now.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Brant stuck his head into the Oval Office. “FLOTUS is on her way home.”
“Thanks, Brant.” Nick was glad to know she’d be there in time for the announcement. As always, when he knew he was going to see her soon, everything was better.
While he knew she probably didn’t approve of him going to see his mother, Sam would understand that, regardless of whether or not Nicoletta deserved a minute of his precious time, he’d give it to her anyway.
Psychologists would have a field day analyzing his tormented relationship with the woman who’d given birth to him and then foisted him off on his paternal grandmother to raise. And what a picnic that’d been, hearing every day about how he’d ruined his grandmother’s retirement and left her almost bankrupt, even though she barely spent a dime on him.
He hated thinking about that cramped apartment in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he hadn’t even had his own bedroom. Even while sitting in the Oval Office at the freaking White House as the president of the United States, thinking about Lowell and that apartment took him right back to how it’d felt to be unwanted and unloved.
Nick had traveled a million miles from there, had a loving family and the best of friends surrounding him, and one call from his mother could knock the legs right out from under him. He hated that she still had that kind of power over him and wished he were the kind of son who could say fuck her and get on Air Force One and fly to Greenland without a thought as to whether he’d ever see her again.
Why should he even care if he ever saw her again? She ought to be nothing to him after the way she’d treated him all his life, wanting him around only when there was something he could do for her. Here he was, giving her time he didn’t have and thinking about the why of it all.
His goal in seeing her before he left was to keep his own conscience clear. If she died while he was gone, he could say he saw her and could go on with his life not having to feel guilty about being like her.
Sam would tell him he had nothing to be guilty about where that woman was concerned, but if she died and he hadn’t gone, he would feel guilty. That’s the only reason he could find to add seeing her to a day already packed with obligations.
Nick tried to focus on the speech Trevor had helped him write to announce Graham as his new VP nominee but read the same sentence four times before he gave up. It’d be on the teleprompter, so he’d be fine. He tossed the pages on the coffee table and had settled in for a brood when Harry poked his head in.
“Julie’s not at her desk. Is it safe to enter the lion’s den?”
Smiling, Nick waved him in and saw that Derek Kavanaugh, deputy chief of staff and another longtime friend, was with him.
“Gentlemen, what can I do for you?”
They took seats on the sofa across from his.
“We’re just checking in,” Harry said.
“Which means you heard from my lovely wife that my mother has slithered out from under her rock and wants to see me.”
“Actually, we saw the Inova stop on the schedule and asked Brant, who told us why you’re going there,” Derek said.
“Sam would’ve gotten to us eventually, though,” Harry said.
“You guys are too funny.”
“Looking out for our buddy,” Derek said. “Congratulations on Graham. That’s an inspired choice.”
“Wish I’d made it the first time around, but I’m very glad to have had the first woman VP, even if that went south. I hope she’ll be the first of many to hold that office and this one.”
