This aspect of the trip had not crossed Cleo’s mind, but the brain of a lusty teenager never ceased to surprise her.

“If . . . that’s what you want, I’m sure we could make that happen. This whole experience is your call,” Cleo said, and she smiled at Georgie, whose joy was practically bursting through the camera. They had discussed, leading up to the conversation, that this one time in Lucas’s life needed to be about him. Not about her needs, not about her job, not about her issues or regrets. Just . . . him. Lucas hadn’t quite forgiven her for her years of mistruths, and Cleo knew it would be a long time before she earned back his complete trust. That was fair. They had a lifetime together, and she also believed they could get there. Peas in a pod. They had to.

“Yes,” Lucas said. “That’s the one I choose.”

Cleo disconnected with Georgie and called Arianna at the office and asked her to book two tickets for the next day.

“Should I let Gaby know?” Arianna asked.

Cleo and Gaby had settled their differences, though it would take a while for the feelings to subside entirely. But that’s not why Cleo said what she said next.

“It’s OK,” Cleo said. “This isn’t a work trip. This one is for family.”

Gaby, of course, wanted to come. Likely to see Oliver Patel but also, Cleo surmised, to make sure that nothing more could go awry. The hashtag protesters had cooled off; their office hallways were no longer clogged with angry, often pimply men and the confused women who ran behind them; the phone lines were starting to quiet too. The Dancing with the Stars video was still hot as ever, but Cleo never expected to get through life in politics as a woman without being laughed at once or twice. It would pass. And the regrets list? Well, Cleo had personally written a press release about it. And she knew that it had landed and made its mark when she watched Bowen read it on-air.

(Incidentally, he still hadn’t replied to her email in which Cleo proposed a drink [her treat].)

The gist of it was that of course she had regrets. That made her human. She didn’t think that it made her less of a senator or less presidential, she’d said. If anything, she’d written, it made her a better one. She had thought that the list was her form of confession—to jot down the error of her ways and be absolved simply by acknowledging her mistakes. But that wasn’t restitution; that wasn’t taking a wrong and making it right. And over these past few weeks, she said, she’d learned the difference between recognizing that she could be fallible and accepting ownership of it. And wasn’t that, after all, what the point of this whole thing was? Not governing, she noted. But living. The point of all this was to try to be as good as you can while you can. And she had regrets, but who didn’t? All she could do now was apologize, sincerely, to those she had aggrieved and try to hold herself accountable for the future.

Bowen held his breath for a moment when he finished reading it, and then he smiled and looked into the camera and said, “That, my friends, is the most we can ask of anyone.”

Cleo told Gaby that she wanted her to stay in DC, that this trip was just for the two of them, mother and son. Gaby looked a little disappointed and asked Cleo again, as she had done all week, if she really wasn’t still angry over the list leak.

Cleo wasn’t. And she told her as much. She called Veronica Kaye instead and told her that she welcomed her endorsement, but not if it meant that she or someone on her staff was willing to sell her out. Gaby had relayed Cleo’s distress, so Veronica was not put off by Cleo’s bluntness.

Veronica quieted on the other end of the line, then pressed a button, and Cleo heard her call Topher, the man who always lingered one step away from her, into her office.

“Topher,” Veronica said into the speakerphone. “Did you leak the confidential information about Senator McDougal’s list to the media?”

“No,” Topher said.

“Topher,” Veronica repeated with seemingly significantly less patience. “I spoke with the editors at two sites, and they forwarded your email that you sent to them, explicitly leaking said information.”

Cleo did not hear Topher reply because Topher had not, in fact, thought of something to say.

“You’re fired,” Veronica said, and Cleo slapped her hand to her mouth in disbelief.

“Ms. Kaye,” Topher started to protest. “Her regrets and behavior made her a liability. You couldn’t see that! The intentions behind my actions were to protect you.”

“Oh, Topher,” Veronica said with even less patience than before. “Only a man would think that regrets were a liability.”

“Ms. Kaye—”

Veronica cut him off. “I don’t like telling anyone something twice.”

Cleo, a little bit reverent, didn’t dare to speak until Veronica took the phone off speaker.

“Veronica,” she said. “I . . . I didn’t ask for that.”

“No,” Veronica agreed. “But you and I both know that an office with one less duplicitous prick is already a better place of work.”

Cleo laughed. Then Veronica said: “Oh, fuck him.” And Cleo laughed harder.

Gaby did drive them to the airport on Saturday morning, just to be there for support.

“I know I didn’t get to all five regrets,” Cleo said on the sidewalk outside departures. “I think this is a first—you and me not crossing a finish line.” She pulled her into an embrace. “But thank you for pushing me into the others. And thanks for understanding why I’m doing this one without you.”

They disentangled, and Gaby actually looked a little moved.

“And if I see Oliver, I’ll tell him hello,” Cleo added.

“Oh God,” Gaby groaned. “I like him too much.”

“Fine, can I also tell him that I know you have FaceTime sex nightly or is that overstepping?”

“Jesus Christ, Mom!” Lucas shrieked from the sidewalk at Dulles. “I mean, seriously!”

The doctors had cleared Lucas for flying, but Cleo was nervous and doting anyway. She insisted on checking both bags because she didn’t want him carrying his duffel, and she indulged him and bought him two scones and a vanilla Frappuccino at Starbucks, which reminded her of Bowen. She checked her email again, but there was no reply, and she assumed that maybe that was just how it was going to be. Bowen had twenty-four-year-olds throwing themselves at him, for God’s sake. He certainly didn’t need to sign up for the mess that Cleo dragged along with her. And she wasn’t going to chase him. Cleo was a thirty-seven-year-old single mom, likely candidate for the president of the United States. Her story wasn’t going to begin and end and hang the moon on a man.

Still, though, they were boarding the plane in search of a different boy, and Cleo didn’t know how to feel about that. Doug Smith was as much of a stranger as the person sitting in the aisle seat next to her, and she had no way of knowing how he’d react, if he was married, if he had children, if he’d want another one. If he’d be angry, if he’d be resentful, if he’d be happy. She and Lucas had discussed all this, and he was still OK flying, literally, into the unknown. Her boy was braver than she was, but then she reconsidered and thought of how far she’d come from the seventeen-year-old girl who had been orphaned, and she gave herself credit because she was pretty brave too. Not perfect. But brave and perfect didn’t have to be synonymous.

Matty picked them up at the airport, which was sweet of him, because, well, Matty was still Matty, and too good in some ways for her. Cleo could see how wrong she’d gotten that. Lucas FaceTimed Esme the whole ride to the hotel, and they made plans to meet later at the same coffee shop of their first date later that night.

“So you chose Esme?” Cleo asked, because she couldn’t help herself. “I mean, not Marley?”

Lucas rolled his eyes. “God, Mom, I told you. We don’t have labels.”

“I know, but—”

“Why can’t it just be that we are happy in the moment, and as long as no one is being dishonest, that’s what it is?”

Matty reached over and squeezed her leg, a grin on both their faces, as if the notion were both completely preposterous and ridiculously endearing.

“OK,” Cleo said. “I won’t ask again.”

“Thank you.” Lucas sighed, but Cleo suspected that it was better to ask too many questions of your child than not ask enough.

Matty helped them with their bags and lingered after they checked in to the Sheraton (again).

“Want to grab a bite?” he proposed.

“How don’t you have plans for the night? I saw those photos at Snoqualmie Falls and the Coldplay concert. Doesn’t your girlfriend want you to herself?”

Matty turned a shade that looked familiar because he was often turning such a shade—deep scarlet—in high school.

“Oh!” he said. “You go on Facebook now?”

Cleo smiled. “Not really. But I had to see what else MaryAnne was saying about me. And I had to verify that this so-called girlfriend was real. I mean . . . twenty-seven? You?”

Matty laughed. “I know. Who’d have thought?”

Cleo hugged him. “I bet a lot of people did, Matty. I wish I had too.”