Zoe stood as she walked to the witness table. Frieda’s almond brown eyes lit up. “My dear Zoe, such a joy to finally meet you.”
Although they had exchanged emails and spoken once over Skype, Zoe was unprepared for the hug that followed Frieda’s greeting.
“Looks like the sharks have gathered,” Frieda whispered. “Are you ready for this?”
Zoe watched the cameramen take their positions in the space between the dais and the witness table. Behind them Senators shuffled papers importantly, but their eyes strayed toward the actress, revealing their true interest. Only one seat had yet to be filled—her father’s.
“It’s a bit of a circus,” Zoe replied, trying to affect a nonchalance she didn’t feel.
“Ignore it,” Frieda replied. “The only thing that matters is what we’re here to talk about.”
Zoe took her seat again as Frieda shook hands with the other witnesses at the table: Bob Tiller, computer mogul, philanthropist, and masthead of the largest foundation in the world; and Susan Moore, chairwoman of the Organization for International Development, a global NGO. It was a star-studded panel. In a presidential election year, Hartman had pulled off a coup.
Zoe looked down at her notes, then back at her father’s chair. She checked her watch. It was four minutes past two o’clock: the scheduled start-time for the hearing. If he didn’t show up, the dilemma would resolve itself and the truth that had defined her life since she was seventeen would stay buried. She felt a sudden sense of relief. At moments she had convinced herself that the truth needed to come out. Yet the prospect of actually speaking it filled her with unease.
She glanced at her older brother, Trevor, sitting in the reserved seats. He nodded at her, a vision of ambivalence. She turned back to the dais and felt the guilt churning in her stomach. Trevor was one of her favorite people in the world and, until recently, the only man whose motives she trusted implicitly. Only a year apart in age, they understood each other as no one else did. In the years when they were raised by nannies—Jack off conquering Wall Street and Catherine gallivanting across the globe—Trevor had been her shelter. But he didn’t know about the ghost that lived at the Vineyard house. He had left for Harvard, and she had never told him.
Zoe focused on Senator Hartman as he rapped his gavel, bringing the hearing to order. Suddenly, a door opened in the paneling behind him and Jack Fleming appeared, flanked by senior aides. Zoe took a sharp breath, barely conscious of the buzz rippling through the gallery or the cameras swiveling to capture an image of the candidate, fresh off the stump in Ohio. She hadn’t seen her father in eight months. He looked older now, his hair grayer, his face fleshier, and his trademark pinstripe suit too tight around the midsection. He had always prided himself on his fitness, but the endless campaigning seemed to have weathered him.
He leaned down and whispered something into Hartman’s ear—an apology, Zoe guessed—then took a seat on the left side of the dais without so much as a pad of paper in front of him. In spite of herself, Zoe almost smiled. When she and Trevor were children, he had sometimes allowed them to attend board meetings at Fleming Randall, the investment firm he had built into a Wall Street giant. Though they had been excluded from anything confidential, she had seen enough to understand the reasons for her father’s success. Along with a dynamo personality and unshakable self-confidence, he had a photographic memory.
“Many thanks to Senator Fleming for his attendance,” Hartman began, silencing the spectators. “I know his schedule is demanding. We have a distinguished panel to hear from, but before we give them the floor I’d like to say a few words about what brings us together today.”
He looked at Zoe, then at Frieda, and commenced his remarks. “In the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt articulated a vision of American society that has defined us for generations. ‘The test of our progress,’ he said, ‘is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.’ Now, in the midst of what some have called the Great Recession, that vision is in peril.”