“Oh, but I know you wanted to go up there, and I have all this stuff for the picnic in the car. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine!” He flashed a bright smile at her and stood up.

She stayed on the couch.

“You’re doing it again. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me what’s up, but don’t pretend to me, okay?”

He dropped back down next to her.

“I’m sorry. It’s just been . . . a tough day today, for some unexpected reasons. I didn’t want to burden you with all of that.”

She slid her hand in his.

“I have an idea. How about you go back to the car and get all of that picnic stuff, and bring it right in here, and I can open up that bottle of wine without having to pay for it, and we can sit here and have our picnic and relax.” Her eyes twinkled at him. “Plus, your hair still has that Ken doll look; you might get recognized at the Getty.”

He brushed his hand over his stiff hair, and shook his head.

“I can’t believe I forgot about that. You sure that’s okay?” he asked.

She stood up.

“I’ll open the wine right now.”

He went out to the car for the picnic supplies, and by the time he got back inside, she’d moved the coffee table to the far side of the living room and had spread a big blanket out on the floor, with the bottle of wine and two glasses in the middle of it.

“See what a good picnic we can have indoors?” she said when he came inside.

He dropped the bag down onto the blanket and unloaded it.

“And we don’t have to worry about the wind coming up and blowing the blanket away, or ants,” she said. She uncorked the wine bottle and poured wine for both of them.

“And we can use actual wineglasses instead of plastic,” he said. He touched his glass to hers.

She set to unwrapping all the food he’d brought.

“Ooh, you got some good stuff. I’m going to pretend I don’t see that pie until later, but I’m very excited about it. And this cheese looks oozy and perfect. I’m starving.”

He tore off an end of the baguette and handed it to her.

“Me, too.”

He hadn’t realized that until now.

She looked at him, and her expression softened.

“When did you eat last?” she asked. “Do they feed you at those things?”

When had he eaten last? That half a bagel he’d downed for breakfast while he read a stack of memos and briefing papers.

“Technically, yes, there’s usually food at these things—there was today. But the problem—and the thing I still forget, even though I’ve been in this job for going on two years now—is that even when there’s food I almost never get the opportunity to actually eat it.” He laughed. “Today wasn’t so bad, because the food was just things like sandwiches and vegetables and dip, but a few months ago I went to something in the Central Valley and there was all of this amazing Mexican food and I kept putting food on a plate and taking one bite and then having to shake someone’s hand or take a picture with someone else and my plate would disappear and I would get a new one and it would happen all over again. I think I gave up after my fifth plate and just made my staff go out to an enormous Mexican meal with me after we left.”

Olivia handed him a piece of baguette, covered in that good, oozy cheese.

“Here, eat this. I can’t have a senator faint from hunger in my living room. That feels like a felony of some sort.”

He looked away from her and pretended to check the bag to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He’d briefly forgotten why they were here on her living room floor instead of on their way to the Getty, but those jokey words of hers brought everything back.

He cleared his throat.

“I . . . the reason I was upset this afternoon . . .” He put his wineglass down and rubbed his temples. “It’s kind of a long story, we don’t have to go into all of that.”

She touched his arm gently.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I don’t mind long stories.”

He looked into her eyes and could tell she meant it.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “You know I was a prosecutor before I was in the Senate, right? Well, I had this mentor early in my career, a family friend; he was the whole reason I became a prosecutor in the first place. He was an old-school prosecutor, very hard-line, all about safety and how kids especially need to learn what they did was wrong, and I listened to him. Far too much. People talk about prosecutorial discretion; well, at first, mine went in the ‘more jail, more punishment’ direction. This isn’t a defense, but I floated through most of my life as a privileged trust fund kid, not really paying attention to politics and all of the bad things that could happen to people—sure, I volunteered some in school, but I guess I bought into that whole ‘they didn’t work hard enough’ bullshit.” He sighed. “That job made me wake up. After a few years in, and a few years of seeing the hard situations these kids lived in, and the racism they dealt with every day, and listening to advocates who somehow never gave up on me, I realized how much I didn’t want to keep being that kind of prosecutor. Hell, that I didn’t want to be that kind of person. Throwing kids behind bars could, and often did, ruin their futures and cause so much harm to their families. I was the one causing that harm. I came very close to quitting my job then.”

He looked at the floor. He still remembered how angry at himself he’d been then, how he’d realized how wrong he’d been, how much pain he’d caused.

“Why didn’t you?” Olivia asked.

He looked at her, for the first time since he’d started this story. She was giving him that look again, like she really cared about the answer. Like she really cared about him.

“My friend Wes. I called him and told him I was going to quit and why, and he yelled at me.” Max smiled to himself. “I’d never heard him like that. He told me he was glad I’d finally woken up, but what a damn waste it would be if I woke up just in time to hand over the job to another clueless trust fund baby. He said we needed good prosecutors, that those kids needed me, now more than ever.” He looked down. “Until then, I think I really believed I deserved everything I got in life. That job made me realize . . . so much. About everything. Among other things, I still can’t believe my eyes were so closed to the way racism infects every part of the criminal justice system. There were just so many little things that I just didn’t see. Or worse, ignored.” He shook his head. “I listened to Wes. I stayed at that job, eventually I even became the DA. I’ve worked hard for years now to help kids like the defendants I saw, so they can change their lives, and stay in school, and so one mistake won’t follow them forever.”

He looked down at his piece of baguette covered in cheese. He’d somehow lost his appetite.

“But?” Olivia said.

He sighed.

“But today, at the event this afternoon, I saw a kid there. He’s not a kid anymore, he must be in his early twenties now. His brother was one of those defendants who I worked hard to toss in jail in those early years of my career. The kid seems like he’s doing well, but when I asked him about his brother, he told me he’s back inside.” He shook his head. “And that’s my fault. All of it. I could have helped his brother. He wasn’t a bad kid; most of them aren’t. I could have gotten him into programs to rehabilitate him, made it easy to wipe his record, gotten him back to school, to his family, to people and places that keep kids—and the adults they become—out of prison. But I did the opposite, and here we are.”