Zoe felt suddenly anxious. “Is something wrong with my father?”
Sylvia laughed. “No. He’s as indefatigable as ever. But my visit does relate to him. Please, Zoe. I know we’ve had our disagreements. I’m only asking for an hour of your time.”
Zoe was ambivalent, but she didn’t have it in her to be cruel. “Okay.”
She grabbed her backpack from inside the office and followed Sylvia to a waiting SUV. A Zambian driver opened the door for them and they climbed in. Ten minutes later, they entered Rhapsody’s, a trendy South African import with electric-blue mood lighting. The hostess greeted them and showed them to a table.
“Is the steak good?” Sylvia inquired, scanning the menu.
“Yes,” Zoe replied evenly. “But I want an answer to my question.”
Sylvia gave her an inscrutable look. “Will there ever be peace between us?”
Zoe met her eyes. “Peace without reconciliation is a lie.”
“Okay, then tell me about reconciliation.”
“It starts with the truth.”
Sylvia looked puzzled. “What truth are you talking about?”
“You were raised Catholic,” Zoe said, keeping her expression neutral. “You remember the thirty pieces of silver.”
Sylvia frowned. “Come now. Must you be so melodramatic?”
A dozen responses came to Zoe’s mind, but she held her tongue, staring at Sylvia until the silence became uncomfortable.
At last Sylvia spoke again. “You know how committed Jack is to winning the election. He’s the right man for the job. Our country desperately needs his leadership.”
Zoe nodded. “I’m well aware of his ambitions. And yours.”
Sylvia softened her tone. “It doesn’t matter what you think of me. I never tried to fill your mother’s shoes. I couldn’t have, anyway.” She gave a little laugh. “But Jack loves you. He’s your father. He’s made mistakes and he regrets them. He’d really like your support.”
Zoe shook her head. “I can’t support him. His solution to the budget crisis is to gut the programs that benefit the people I work with every day.”
“That’s hardly true. You know better than I do how much Jack cares about the poor. He gives generously to your mother’s foundation. In times of crisis, everyone has to cut back.”
Zoe’s eyes flashed. “You take a billion or two from the Pentagon, and people will complain, but they’ll get over it. You take that money from AIDS relief and thousands of Africans will die. There’s a difference between cutting and killing.”
Sylvia put up her hands. “Look, I didn’t come here to talk about policy. I came because Jack is going to win the New Hampshire primary. It would mean the world to him to have you on stage with Trevor when he gives his victory speech.”
Zoe considered this, knowing Sylvia was right. In the end, however, her conscience wielded an absolute veto. “I can’t do it. Tell him I’m very sorry.”
Sylvia raised her eyebrows. “Even if it means he won’t make the call to Atticus?”
Zoe felt as if she had been sucker-punched. “He gave me his word.”
Sylvia shrugged, allowing the silence to inspire doubt.
Zoe stood up. “I have nothing more to say to you.”
“Wait,” Sylvia protested. “Please don’t go.”
But it was too late for rapprochement. Zoe walked out of the restaurant, ignoring the waiter who was bringing them bread. She thought of her father as he was before her mother died—the Harvard-educated child of a Midwestern insurance salesman; the savant who ascended to the pinnacle of Wall Street but never lost the middle-class chip on his shoulder; the sailor who taught her how to hoist the jib on his yacht and rescued her from drowning when she fell overboard in a squall; the husband whose love for Catherine Sorensen-Fleming sent him into clinical depression when she died. Why didn’t you find another woman like her, Dad? Why did you have to marry Sylvia?
She placed a call to Joseph and asked for a ride. Then she took a seat in a small plaza and listened to the bubbling fountain behind her. The sky was mostly clear, and the sun was hot upon her skin. Distracted by unwanted memories, she barely noticed when a group of business-people approached the hostess at Rhapsody’s. It was the voice that caught her attention, the booming basso profundo that carried such gravity in the courtroom.
She looked across the plaza and saw him—Flexon Mubita. With him were two Zambians, a tall man in a dark suit and a handsome woman in chitenge. The man she didn’t recognize. But she remembered the woman well. Her stomach clenched involuntarily.
It was Patricia Nyambo.