“I’m sorry,” Wendy said, meaning it. He seemed so sad.
“Well, we had a good twenty years together. I try to remember that. We always talked about buying a camper, seeing the country—I’ve been tending her the past two years, and before she died, she made me promise to get out and do it, not to wait. So, I bought myself this old rig here and headed east.” He seemed pensive, and Wendy thought she saw tears in his eyes. “I learned the hard way life’s too short.”
“You’re from Arizona?”
“Phoenix. I’ve lived there my whole life.” He smiled at her again. “You probably should go on and get to those college applications. I’m just looking to work a few weeks, until the snow flies. Then I’ll be on my way.”
“I just poured myself a glass of cider. Would you like some?”
Some of the sadness went out of his face. “Why, thank you, Miss Longstreet. I’d like that.”
“You can call me Wendy.”
“And you can call me Matt. It’s a pleasure meeting you.”
But before she could run into the kitchen, her father pulled into the driveway in his state police cruiser. Matt Kelleher glanced over at her. Wendy sighed. “It’s my dad. He’s checking on me.”
“Well.” Matt grinned suddenly and winked at her. “I wouldn’t procrastinate on those college applications if my dad was a state trooper.”
Wendy laughed, but she saw her father’s frown when he got out of the car in his trooper’s uniform. She went over to him, introducing Matt, explaining that he was from Arizona and his wife had died and he was looking for a job. And although she’d done everything right and Matt was totally fine, she knew her father wasn’t going to get back in his cruiser and leave her there with him. He stayed until her uncle Sam arrived. But it was only ten minutes, so at least it didn’t seem like that big a deal to Matt and she didn’t come across as a twelve-year-old to him.
Before he left, her father pulled her aside. “A friend of mine had two tickets to the play in town tonight that he couldn’t use. I thought you might like to go.”
The local theater was performing As You Like It, and Wendy had been dying to go. She couldn’t believe her father was offering to take her. “But you hate the theater—”
“No, I hate musicals. That last play you dragged me to was a musical.” He gave her a dry smile. “I can handle Shakespeare.”
“I’d love to go. Thanks, Dad.”
He seemed almost relieved, and Wendy felt a twinge of guilt at how hard she could be on him sometimes. He was making an effort to understand her. He got back in his cruiser, promising to take her to dinner before the play.
Later that afternoon, her grandparents and uncles all decided to hire Matt, and Sam offered to let him hook his trailer up at the cabin off the dirt road by the lake. Matt snapped up the offer. Wendy joined her uncle, walking over to the cabin and getting it ready while Matt drove there, his camper grinding on rocks in the steep driveway. But he made it up the road, and he seemed grateful to have a place to park himself for the next few weeks.
He pulled Wendy aside before she left. “Didn’t get any work done on those college essays, did you?”
She shook her head. “I’ll work on them tomorrow.”
“Ah, yes. There’s always tomorrow. Sure you want to be a doctor?”
“Definitely.”
“Then I guess writing those essays should be easy.”
She didn’t respond, just pointed to the door of the small cabin. “I put a jug of cider in the refrigerator. You can put it in your camper fridge if you want. It’s not pasteurized, but none of the apples were drops.”
“I’m not an expert on apple cider. Thank you, Wendy. I appreciate your help today.”
When she got back to the house, she got ready for dinner and the play, and, for the first time since her mother had left for Nova Scotia, she didn’t feel unwanted and out of place.
The first of October had arrived in Washington, D.C., with a wave of oppressive heat and humidity that took even seasoned Beltway types by surprise.
Mia O’Farrell tried not to look as if she wanted to run back into the air-conditioned White House. She was Boston Irish. She melted in the heat.
Her boss, John Wesley Poe, the president of the United States, didn’t even seem to notice the temperature, never mind feel it. He was, Mia thought, a handsome man. She doubted she was the only one who sometimes forgot just how handsome he was, possibly because he was also so smart and charming—and powerful. It was his surroundings more than the man himself that reminded her of just how powerful he was.
She took a breath, feeling her blouse sticking to her back. But it wasn’t just the heat that had her sweating.