Cleo clicked the top of her pen up and down, admonishing herself. Frankly, the list should probably be double what it was. She checked the dates next to each regret—she hadn’t updated it in some time; the last entry was from January.

She rolled her shoulders forward, then back, trying to assess how best to narrow down two decades’ worth of missteps. It was really something to read through them all, to wonder what could have been if she hadn’t, say, weaseled out of her required art credit at Northwestern (she had signed up for dance, thinking maybe she had underestimated herself and had a twinge of her mother’s talent, but then sprained her ankle on the steps of her dorm one week into school and had happily used the injury and the accompanying doctor’s note to get out of the class). Maybe she would have fallen in love, as her mom had, with the movements of Martha Graham or Alvin Ailey, and even if it hadn’t changed, say, her trajectory toward law school and politics, maybe it would have made her more comfortable with her body, gotten her on the dance floor at those rare parties she attended, challenged her to take up more space in the world. Maybe she’d have Gaby’s posture and her stomach wouldn’t sag over her waistband, which it had ever since she gave birth. Or maybe taking that dance class would have given her more confidence in herself—not her intellect, not her drive, just . . . herself, because those were different things—and she would have been someone else entirely. She wouldn’t have gotten too drunk at that party her senior year and forgotten to use a condom and gotten pregnant, and Lucas wouldn’t be here and everything would have shifted. Maybe she wouldn’t have made dumb decisions with Alexander Nobells; maybe she would have stood her ground when she lost her summer position; maybe she would have confronted him and who knows what would have happened from that.

She threw her pen across the room, startled at this realization. It was just a thread she was pulling, an imaginary thread at that, starting with a stupid interpretive dance class. She didn’t regret Lucas (of course!) or any of the struggle that came with him. And most of the time, Cleo genuinely loved her life, and she was proud of it. But still. It was easy to see how this list could go sideways. How looking back started to make you question the way forward. And, as her campaign slogan intended to convey, Cleo McDougal preferred to only look forward.

She stood, retrieved the pen from the floor by her office door, then swung the door open and listened for Lucas. It was still early Seattle time. Maybe he was talking with Esme?

“Luc?” she yelled down the hall. “Lucas?”

She heard her phone buzz in her office, so scampered back.

Emily: Town crier knows all. Penny confirms L is “with” Marley Jacobson.

Cleo : What does “with” mean?

Emily: . . .

. . .

Emily: (Checking)

. . .

Emily: She says it means they are “together.” I realize this is not more helpful.

Cleo searched for the miserable-face emoji but found it took too long to find and gave up.

Cleo: OK. Ugh. Thanks.

She settled back at her desk, trying to reorient herself and focus. She’d intended to cull the list, and cull it she would. Dealing with Lucas’s love triangle could wait. She knew she wasn’t the best one to give advice on romance, and she further knew that he would pounce on this weakness immediately. He was her son, after all. He could nearly out-debate her now, if and when he chose to string more than three words together consecutively, which was not often. (So in some ways, also a blessing.)

Cleo flipped the yellow papers. She resolved to cross out any items that were nonsensical to her now—vague, in-the-moment regrets that she couldn’t possibly fix or redo because she had no idea what they meant all these years later. She clicked the top of the pen, swiped through a couple dozen this way, easy. What did steps!!! or too many mushrooms mean after all these years anyway? It didn’t matter. She axed through seventy-two of these.

Next she thought she’d categorize the remaining. There were regrets, and then there were regrets like Alexander Nobells, among others. He wasn’t even the gravest. Those were regrets that were no one’s business but her own. She eased back in her chair, squeezed her eyes closed, pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d never intended for some of them to fester as they had. Sometimes an act or a lie or a misdeed started out simply as an in-the-moment impulse. No one ever really thought that they would follow you around, potentially haunt you forever.

Cleo opened her eyes, tore off a sheet of clean paper, and removed a ruler from her top drawer. She drew three parallel lines down the page, then inked a perpendicular line on top. Three columns. The first: Stupid Things. The second: Possible Fixers. The third: Off-Limits.

Cleo figured perhaps she could take a few from the first column, a handful from the second, and keep the third at bay. This should satisfy Gaby and hopefully please Veronica Kaye too, who, according to Gaby, loved the spunk she was seeing from Cleo without—Gaby promised—knowing the impetus (the list!) behind it.

She started scribbling, filling in the lines. She’d gotten only four deep when Lucas stuck his head through the door.

“Hey.”

Cleo jolted. She hadn’t ever told Lucas about the list and certainly didn’t need him reading it. Couldn’t have him reading it. When do parents grow to be OK with their kids knowing they are fallible? That they tell half-truths to protect their children or sometimes also, yes, themselves? That they do the best they can, which often isn’t good at all. She opened her drawer quickly, dropping the papers and pen and ruler inside. She shoved it closed.

“What’s up?”

Lucas glanced suspiciously toward the drawer. “What’s that?”

“Just a draft of a speech I’m working on.”

“You have a speechwriter.”

Cleo nodded. She did. “I know. But you know how I micromanage.”

Lucas made a face as if this were likely. She did micromanage. It wasn’t too far-fetched.

“So listen,” he said. “I don’t want to alarm you—”

“Oh my God, is this about Marley Jacobson?” Cleo interrupted, though there was no reason to think it was about Marley Jacobson. She realized this as soon as she said it.

“What?” Lucas soured. “Who told you about Marley?”

“No one.”

He stared at her, his cheeks basically quivering in what she knew was rage.

“Can’t you stay out of my business?”

“Hey, you came in here.” Cleo stood, walked around her desk, and leaned against the front of it. “Also, since we’re on the subject . . .”

“We weren’t on the subject.” Lucas crossed his arms, just like he used to as a toddler whenever he was gearing up for a fight.

“Fine, well, we are now, and I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t be ‘with,’ or whatever, two girls, Lucas. You just can’t.”

“God, you are so lame.”

“I have never pretended otherwise.”

“If I had a dad around, I could ask him.” Lucas’s hands moved to his hips, even more defiant now.

It had been percolating since MaryAnne’s op-ed, this rebuke, the sting of how maybe Cleo fucked up and it could have been different with his dad, but still, it smacked her across the face. It was his default way of fighting, going right for her most vulnerable part, and he wasn’t wrong: she saw his dad’s name there, on the list, a reminder. Cleo tried to spend every moment she had while not working (and, admittedly, much of her time was spent working) with Lucas, putting Band-Aids on scrapes, reading bedtime stories before she returned to her office to review drafts of legislation, attending as many soccer games as she possibly could (so most, though not all), and, until a few years ago, he’d taken her at her word: that it had always been just the two of them, and they didn’t need anything, anyone else. He had been curious, sure, about why other kids had present fathers, but he hadn’t been pushy and he hadn’t been bothered. That changed around twelve, right about when puberty set in, and Cleo had to talk to him about all sorts of things that neither of them particularly wanted to discuss but discussed anyway. Body hair. Erections. She even broached masturbation once, but it was a bridge too far and ended quickly.

But she told him, clearly and with some finality over dinner one night—Cleo knew they were going to get into the heart of it, so she came home early to cook spaghetti and fresh marinara (his favorite and really one of the few things Cleo knew how to make)—that his dad didn’t want to play a part. The same line she used when the press had raised it in her first congressional run. And because Cleo took people at their words, she said to Lucas, she had honored what his dad said and reminded him that impregnating someone is not the same thing as being a father. Besides, she added, both when he was twelve and anytime he raised it after that, we are not the type of people who chase down others who spurn us. We never will be.