“Explain it to me,” Cleo said to Gaby. “Other than Lucas, you’re just about the only person I trust, and with this . . .” She shook her head and shrugged. She didn’t think she needed to elaborate. “I believe you, Gabs, but the math here doesn’t add up. So please, before I say something I’ll regret . . .” Regret.

Gaby sighed. “Veronica called me. She was happy with the press you were getting with, you know, the hashtag. And she knew you were doing the benefit, the . . . dancing thing. But she was worried. Not about that—”

“You specifically told me to do it because she wanted me to,” Cleo interrupted.

“No, she did. She does.” Gaby regrouped. “Her people were starting to get concerned that with all of your recent press—MaryAnne, the two lawsuits . . . that one more misstep would make you a liability.”

“You told me she loved all the recent press!”

“No, Cleo, she—yes, she does. But you know that Veronica Kaye is bigger than just . . . Veronica Kaye. She has a board and a team, double the size of yours, and the whole thing . . . Look, I step in a ton of shit to keep your feet clean.”

Cleo narrowed her eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means that I make bargains all the time with people to get you checks or endorsements or . . . whatever. It’s my job, and I am happy to do it. But this time, when Veronica called and expressed that a few people on her team were starting to worry, I only wanted to reassure her. They had watched my interview on Bowen’s show, when we discussed regrets—I mean, I didn’t even want to do the show in the first place, but I was trying to take one for the team!”

Gaby stopped and waited as if she expected Cleo to thank her, but Cleo did not, so she continued. “Anyway, she kept circling back to how he and I had touched on ‘regrets,’ which I didn’t think was a big deal at the time on the show—at the end of the day, it’s just a word! And really . . . I don’t know. I got nervous that she was going to second-guess her support—which we have pinned your whole presidential launch on—so I told her. As a way to explain why you were doing some of the things you were doing and that you were coming to grips with some laments from your past, and how that actually made you a stronger candidate, not a weaker one.”

“Well, don’t do me any favors,” Cleo said, which was petty and she regretted as soon as it was out of her mouth because she wanted to do this honestly.

“It wasn’t a favor; come on. Cleo, I’ve been on your side since the beginning. I told her it was confidential, and she promised that it was. I don’t know, maybe someone in her office overheard. And I’m sorry that Lucas got hurt, and I’m sorry that you feel exposed and betrayed. I did what I thought was right because I thought playing the long game mattered more than the immediate consequences.”

Cleo knew all about playing the long game. She also knew how it could backfire.

Her phone buzzed in her briefcase, and she ignored it.

“Look,” Gaby said, her eyes pleading now. “She kept asking me, and I didn’t know what to do.”

“What, specifically, was she asking you?”

“She said that you seemed different—not just because of the ‘gumption’ but also a little more open, I guess a little wilder, but . . . that’s not the right word. Unpredictable, that’s what it was, which, by the way, is a good thing for you. Not just in your polling but for you, Cleo McDougal.” Gaby sighed, looked genuinely pained, which Cleo knew was rare for her. “Anyway, she wanted to know what had changed, what caused you to go from a little sassy to a little volatile. She wanted to be sure that she was backing the right horse.”

Cleo’s phone buzzed again, and she reached for it. It could be Lucas, and she wasn’t willing to risk missing any more of his calls.

“Before you take that,” Gaby said, as close to tears as Cleo had ever seen her. “Cleo, just know I really am sorry. I should have protected you, and I thought that I was, but I can see now why I wasn’t.”

Cleo stared at her best friend, who had had her back for so many battles, who had never asked her to change, who had never demanded an apology from her, even when she was in the wrong. And Cleo knew that she had been in the wrong plenty of times.

It was so rare to offer a truthful naked expression of apology, Cleo thought. Not with any motivation, not with any edge or angle or motive. Gaby had hurt her, and she had acknowledged it and made amends. Cleo didn’t want to be like MaryAnne, who held a grudge like a lifeline, or like the person who had wronged MaryAnne—her teenage self and maybe her adult self too—who deserved that grudge in the first place.

It was the least she could do, Cleo realized, to accept her friend’s grace with the same amount of generosity. And so she did.

It was easier to do than she ever would have thought.

Matty had found Doug Smith.

He was pretty surprised himself, he told Cleo once Gaby had left her office and Cleo had shut her door. She had meant it—that this was personal, that Lucas deserved to know his story before anyone else, even before her best friend, and she intended to honor that.

Matty sounded like he was on his bike again.

“Have you turned into a cycling enthusiast?” Cleo asked. She never envisioned Matty, who had managed to be both skinny and doughy in high school, ending up as a jock.

“What? No, I just commute to work this way,” he said. “I’ve really gone full-blown Seattle, I guess.” He took a breath. “Anyway, so there’s a reason you couldn’t track him down on Google.”

“Because there are fourteen thousand Doug Smiths in the United States?”

“Well, that,” Matty said. “But also, he’s a computer privacy expert. He’s the one Doug Smith who would never show up on Google even if you wanted him to.”

“Well, fuck,” Cleo said.

“Nah.” Matty laughed. “Not fuck. You have me, and it turns out not only did I find him, I have his place of business.”

“You do?” Cleo had never really loved Matty enough in high school, but she was finding that she was a little bit in love with him now.

“It’s a pretty small world,” he said. “He’s here. In Seattle. He works on our campus—Microsoft, I mean. A different division, I mean, of course, because I’m not cool enough to be black ops. I just do the programming, but—”

“Hey, Matty, stop being so self-deprecating. You’re a hero.”

He laughed into his headpiece. “No one ever calls my department ‘heroes,’ so thank you. Anyway, it all checks out. That’s him. Doug Smith. In Seattle.” He paused, and it sounded like he was slowing down, and Cleo pictured him pulling in to work. She didn’t want to take up more of his time. “So now what?” he asked.

Cleo stared out her window of the Russell Senate Office Building at the dogwoods in full bloom. She thought about her regrets and how they shadowed not just her life but Lucas’s now as well. She thought about what parents pass on to their children: their burdens, their traumas, their complications. She knew her dad wouldn’t want her to be weighed down with his own stuff forever. She knew also that the gift she could pass along to Lucas was lightening her own load too.

“Now, I guess,” she said to Matty, “I’m coming home.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Cleo and Georgie texted all week about how best to approach Doug. Cleo wanted to call him before their trip, but Georgie felt that Lucas should have the chance to introduce himself without her baggage. That this was her mess, but it was his future, and she shouldn’t fuck it up any more than she already had.

Finally, they asked Lucas. Georgie was on FaceTime, and the twins waved on their way to soccer practice, and Georgie ran out of frame for a second to hand them organic protein bars before they left. It was funny, Cleo thought, how food really was a symbol for a nourished soul. She herself had eaten eggs every morning that week for breakfast, and it was a start.

“OK, I’m back, sorry,” Georgie said. She was out on her deck in the Los Angeles sunshine, and Cleo had a flash of a whole different life she could have had. If she and Georgie had found a way to be closer through her childhood, been in better touch once they were grown. Maybe she would have been an entertainment lawyer and lived around the corner and dated broody celebrities and Lucas would be best friends with his cousins. Cleo loved her life, was proud of her choices, but now that she had opened new doors, she did from time to time catch herself envisioning what would have happened if she walked through them.

“So, Lucas, you break the standoff,” Cleo said. “Do you want me to call Doug, um, your dad, and ask if we should come? Or . . . do you want to go out there and meet him and just see what happens?”

“Wait, we could go to Seattle?” Lucas asked. He hadn’t been paying attention, evidently, when Cleo had proposed it.

“Yes, if that’s what you want.”

“So, like, I could see Esme?”