Linwood Bean, Buxton’s press secretary, sighed, folded his newspaper, and reached for the phone. Before he could dial, his wife Elnora put a hand over his. “How’re you going to tell him, Woody? This is like a good news/bad news joke, except it’s for real.”
Elnora Bean was lovely. She was good. And she was wise. Because his wife was wise, he held off making the call, waiting to hear what she had to say.
“Do you honestly think he has no idea?” She poured him more coffee, stirred in two teaspoons of sugar, and set the cup in front of him. The cup said, “World’s best Dad.”
He stirred it again. Passing time. Considering. “I do,” he said finally. “I’ve been with Jim more than twenty years and he’s never, in all that time, even hinted at the possibility.”
“But how could he not? You think he really loved her. What kind of man abandons a pregnant woman he loves, without a backward glance?”
He shrugged. “You have to understand the relationship they had. It was quite unusual. Lila Friedman was… is… quite unusual.”
“It must have been quite unusual, Woody, because I don’t understand. I don’t see how a man could walk away from something so important.” She caught his look. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I know guys abandon pregnant women all the time. But this is Jim we’re talking about. And even if Jim wanted to walk away from it, what about her? I don’t see how a woman could have a child by a man she loved and never tell him.”
“It was the politician in him that she loved, I think, the driven, ambitious, looking for a venue to do good kind of politician Jim was when they met. He was sort of a knight in shining armor back then. They both were. They were drawn together by their shared passion to right wrongs. He was the Attorney General. She was an able and eager young lawyer. He was handsome. She was attractive.” He stared into his cup. “Beautiful, I mean. She had a kind of personal electricity that crackled around her. She worked with him on a few cases. Cases they were both passionate about winning. Long evenings together, head to head, arguing. Pretty soon they were having dinner together so they could go on talking.”
“So far, it sounds as common as cheese,” Elnora said, sweeping his dishes into the sink.
“I never said they rewrote the book on romance, but Jim and Maggie had drifted apart. She wasn’t interested in what he was doing. She was tied up with the kids and with her status as an ‘important wife,’ and then along comes Lila. Everything that mattered to him mattered to her. It would have been hard for him not to fall in love. Even then, Maggie was sour and critical, while Lila was smart as a whip, energetic, bursting with enthusiasm, and incredibly warm. People brightened up whenever she was around. She was a magnet for good.”
Elnora studied him with narrowed eyes. “You make her sound like a saint. Were you in love with her, too?”
“I was always waiting for you.” He saw a smile beginning as she turned away.
“So Jim fell in love with Lila, and?”
“And just when he’d decided to leave Maggie for Lila, he was tapped to fill Fuller’s vacant seat.”
“And he couldn’t expect to succeed as a divorced man, so he rode off into the sunset, leaving Lila behind?”
“Unless she left him behind. The point is, Lila didn’t mind.”
“How could she not mind? She loved him. She was having his child.”
“Because she was as ambitious for Jim as he was for himself, and the least possessive woman I’ve ever known.” He studied the cup some more. ‘I’m not saying she wasn’t sad, or that she didn’t feel pain, Nora. I’m just saying she had the generosity to put his needs, and the needs of her home state, before her own.”
Elnora shook her head. “If you say so. Well, Jim’s in for a hell of a shock, learning he’s got a daughter he never knew about and then learning she’s dead.”
“This will hurt him a lot,” her husband said. “But I have to tell him. The risk it will come out is just too great. If we can see it, other people can, and Jim doesn’t like surprises.”
“You mean, Frank and Maggie don’t like surprises,” she said. “Anyway, that’s not why we’re telling him, is it?” She swiped at her already clean counter with a sponge and set it on the sink.
He reached for the phone. “Hi, Jim. Woody. Look, something’s come up. Something we need to discuss right away.” He listened. “Yes, I know you’re supposed to lunch with the ladies. Stop here on the way. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.” He listened again. “I’m not telling you over the phone. It’s sensitive. We could talk on the plane, but there isn’t a lot of privacy. Right. See you.”
“Well, that was cryptic. Now he won’t even be able to tie his tie straight. When’s he coming?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Better rewind that tape then. He won’t have much time.”
Twenty minutes later, Buxton was sitting in their den, watching a tape of a high school graduation. The young woman giving the valedictory speech was a small, attractive brunette with a heart-shaped face, long hair, strong eyebrows, and startlingly blue eyes. He turned to Woody. “What am I supposed to see here? Who is this girl?”
“Just look at her, Jim. That’s Lila Friedman’s daughter, Jenny Cates.”
The Senator went back to the screen; Woody and Elnora to watching the Senator. Waiting for the camera to zoom in for that close-up, and fill the entire screen with Jenny Cates’ face and Jim Buxton’s eyes. He couldn’t help but see it. It jumped right off the screen. They watched his skin grow pale, saw him shake his head in astonishment. “My God! We have a child. Why didn’t she tell me? How could she not tell me?”
Woody shut off the tape. “She’s dead, Jim. Run off the road last night. Witnesses say it was intentional. First Lila, then Billy, now the girl. Now, your daughter.” He handed the Senator the folded newspaper with the article about Jenny’s accident.
“Lila’s not dead,” Buxton said. “And that bastard Billy. He’s the one who taped…” The Senator snapped his mouth shut.
Woody pounced. “The one who what, Jim?”
Buxton looked like he’d jump out the window if he could.
“The one who what?”
The silence lay heavily on all of them. “Made a video of me and Lila,” the Senator said in a strangled voice. “He said he’d destroyed it.”
“Maybe that’s what they were looking for when they tore Lila’s office apart. And it would explain this.” He handed Buxton a copy of a letter to Governor Alfonso.
Buxton scanned it. “Jesus, Woody! Where the heck did you get this?”
“It just popped out of my fax machine one day, Jim.”
“And I was born yesterday.” Buxton stared at the newspaper again. “Are you sure the girl… Jenny… is dead?”
Woody shook his head. “I thought so when I read the article but we should send some of our people to check. Late night accident. Early deadline for the paper. Maybe they ran with unsubstantiated facts. It seems undisputed that Jenny Cates was driving the car, and that someone deliberately drove her off the road. Here’s what worries me, Jim. Alfonso has no reason to want her dead. He has every reason to want her alive, staring out at the voters with those blue Buxton eyes, while the Buxton campaign…” He trailed off.
Buxton shook his head. “Oh, no. Oh, no, Woody, I don’t think so. You’re not suggesting that I? That we? No. I swear. Until today, I had no idea that girl even existed.”
Woody put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Not you, Jim. But sometimes people get overzealous. I’m suggesting we have a little talk with Frank. And I’m suggesting—I hope this won’t offend you—that we have Ken do some sniffing around. Maybe make some discreet FBI inquiries.”
Buxton slumped in his chair, his handsome face showing its age. “Hell of a way to start the day, Woody. I found a daughter. Maybe I lost a daughter. And the whole package comes with a big load of shit.” Then he shook himself. “Get Kenny. Get Whitehead from the FBI. Call Burrage. We’ll talk on the way to the airport. See Frank on the plane.”
He stopped at the mirror, checked his tie, and left.
Buxton got in his car thinking why had she never told him? He knew the answer. To protect him from an impulsive act that would have ended his career. Because Lila had had more faith in him, and higher expectations, than he’d had for himself. She’d married her devoted school teacher without a backward glance. Did the teacher know? Had he raised the child as his own or kept her at a distance?
He thought about the confidence with which he’d assured Frank that there were no more skeletons in his closet. No more skeletons! This was a full-fledged human. Perhaps she wasn’t dead. He wondered what she was like and suddenly he wanted to know the details, the story of this blue-eyed girl’s life. Then, with a shudder, he thought about Maggie. Maggie would run down Jenny Cates with a steamroller and not bat an eye. Maggie must never know.