The Fixer

 

I’d expected the crowd inside to have thinned, but if anything, it had gotten bigger. I found Ivy in the kitchen.

 

“Everything okay?” she asked me.

 

“Fine.”

 

“Bodie can drive you home,” Ivy offered. “I’ll stay through cleanup, but there’s no reason you have to.”

 

I nodded. Ivy might have needed me this morning, but now that she had a mission, she was fine. Within seconds, she had her cell in her hand, calling Bodie to pick me up. I made my way to the front door. When I opened it, I caught sight of a man on the front porch, clothed in formal military dress.

 

“Don’t. Embarrass. Me.” The man’s words weren’t meant for my ears. They were meant for the teenage girl standing next to him.

 

Vivvie.

 

She looked smaller, somehow, than she had the last time I’d seen her. Her eyes were bloodshot, her shoulders hunched, like her body was trying its best to collapse in on itself.

 

“Vivvie?” I said.

 

Her eyes—and the man’s—snapped up to mine. His face changed utterly, morphing into a solemn mix of sympathy and kindness.

 

Bedside manner, I thought, recognizing him from the news and remembering that he was a doctor—the White House physician. The man who’d treated Justice Marquette.

 

“Tess.” Vivvie struggled to smile. On anyone else, the expression might have looked natural, but Vivvie’s features weren’t made for small smiles. “Dad,” Vivvie continued, “this is Tess Kendrick. I told you about her. Tess, this is my father.”

 

Major Bharani gave me a quick once-over. “Of course,” he said smoothly. “It’s nice to meet you, Tess, though, of course, I wish the circumstances were better.”

 

Major Bharani told me good-bye and slipped inside. Vivvie started to follow him, but I stopped her.

 

“Are you okay?” I asked her quietly.

 

“That’s my line.” She managed another weak smile.

 

“Where were you this week?” I asked.

 

Vivvie looked down, then away. “I’ve been a little under the weather.”

 

Too sick to come to school, but not too sick to attend a wake? And not too sick for her father to order her not to embarrass him, like Vivvie was some kind of liability. Like she was something to be embarrassed about.

 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked Vivvie.

 

“I should go.” She couldn’t meet my eyes. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

 

All I could think as she disappeared into the house was that Vivvie was a miserable liar.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 20

 

That night, I did an internet search on Vivvie’s father. He was a decorated soldier, a former trauma surgeon in Afghanistan and Iraq. From what I could tell, he’d been the head of the White House medical clinic—and the president’s personal physician—for just over two years. Unable to get the image of Vivvie’s haunted expression out of my mind, I clicked on the video of Major Bharani’s statement to the press.

 

“It is with great sadness that I inform you that Chief Justice Theodore Marquette died on the table a little over an hour ago.” Now that I knew to look for it, I could see a resemblance—a faint one—between Vivvie and her father. “This was our second attempt to fix a blockage in the justice’s heart, and there were unforeseen complications with surgery. This country has lost a great man today. We ask that you respect his family’s privacy in this time of grief.”

 

Nothing in the twenty-second clip told me what was wrong with Vivvie. I thought back to World Issues, when I’d seen the clip for the first time—the stares directed at Vivvie, the way she’d gone stiff in her seat.

 

Her father had operated on one of our classmates’ relatives, and now Henry Marquette’s grandfather was dead. Did she think people would blame her?

 

Don’t. Embarrass. Me. The words Major Bharani had hissed at Vivvie echoed in my mind.

 

“Everything okay in here?” Ivy poked her head into my room.

 

“You’re home,” I said.

 

“I am.” She paused. “I wanted to say thank you. For coming today.”

 

I looked down at my keyboard. “No big deal.”

 

I could feel her wanting to make it a big deal, wanting to take the fact that I’d gone with her as an indication that the two of us were going to be okay.

 

“I sent you an e-mail,” she said, instead of pressing the topic further. “With treatment options.”

 

For Gramps. I weathered the impact of that blow.

 

“There’s a chance we could get home care, hire nurses either here or in Montana.” Ivy presented the option calmly and neutrally. “Or there’s a clinical trial. He’d stay in Boston, but they have an assisted living facility, so it wouldn’t be inpatient exactly.”

 

She was waiting for me to say something. I’d asked to be involved, but now that the information was in my inbox, my mouth was dry. It wasn’t a good day today. I willed my eyes to stop stinging.

 

“Thanks,” I said, staring holes in my keyboard.

 

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