Archive of Our Own

If you've ever had something really, really bad happen to you, then you know what the days afterward can feel like.

I'm not talking about normal "bad", like breaking up with someone you thought would be in your life forever, or even "really bad", like your parents dying. I'm talking about terrorists taking over your high school and shooting the headmaster right in front of you. I'm talking about getting texted videos of students being executed because you weren't cooperating with the terrorists' demands fast enough. You. They're dead because of you.

I remember being debriefed by a lot of law enforcement types after the SWAT team finished its work, although that feels like a dream now. At the time, I was running on adrenaline, wobbly but determined, and when I'd finally taken care of everything I needed to do, I crashed hard.

I spent the following days feeling disconnected from everything, only half-aware of what was happening. In my head, I kept replaying the events of recent days, searching for something, anything, I could have done differently.

News coverage of the hostage crisis at Washington's elite Hardwicke School was quickly supplanted by speculation about who'd be nominated to replace Vice President Hayden, said to be stepping down to spend more time with his family. No one reported that Hayden had been forced to resign because he'd secretly negotiated with terrorists to save his daughter's life. I knew, because I'd been hiding in the library when they caught up with Anna Hayden and one of her Secret Service agents. Later, after I'd been captured myself, Senza Nome released me to convey their demands, public and private, to the outside world. While doing that, I'd seen the Vice President visiting one of their members in prison. I knew he'd secured her release, but that story would never make the news.

A lot of what I'd witnessed would never make the news.

"It wasn't your fault," Bodie told me one morning as I toyed with a half-full bowl of soggy cereal.

"What?" I said, wondering when Ivy's driver/bodyguard/personal assistant had taken up mind-reading.

"What happened at Hardwicke. You're still thinking you could have fixed it somehow."

I gave him the finger and he laughed at me.

"Kitten, you are way too much like your mother. And your grandfather. Always convinced you can control a situation. Not that one. It wasn't possible. Know how I know?"

I thought about flipping him off again, but settled for a skeptical glare.

"Because somebody else was holding all the cards," Bodie said, eyeing me steadily to make sure I was getting the message. "And all the guns. It was just your shit luck to land in the middle of it."

I could feel a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. "Well, you're right about the 'shit luck' part. That would be most of my life."

"What's this about luck?" Ivy said as she came into the kitchen.

"We're discussing the general state of the world," Bodie answered while giving me a wink. He slouched off to the coffeepot for a refill as Ivy took a seat next to me.

"Some decisions have been made," she announced. "Hardwicke will be reopening on Monday."

"Okay," I said, wondering just how much she'd contributed to those decisions. I'd assumed she'd been shut away in her office vetting VP candidates on President Nolan's behalf. Maybe that wasn't the only problem she'd been handling.

Dealing with awkward situations is what my mom does for a living. Want to know if somebody's got any dirty secrets? Need to minimize your own? Got a crisis of some sort? Call a fixer. Okay, Ivy prefers the term "consultant", but that's her job: fixing messes. Including, apparently, mine.

"They've decided to cancel final exams for the fall semester," she told me. "Grades will be based on existing assignments, although students will have next week to finish up any incomplete work."

As if I cared about my grades right now. "Fine with me," I said, "although Emilia's going to have a fit."

Bodie snorted into his coffee. He'd driven me to school often enough to have heard things about some of my classmates. Emilia Rhodes was determined to be the valedictorian of my year and get into Yale. No doubt, she'd be complaining to someone that she'd planned on using her final exams to raise some grades from A's to A-pluses.

"Next week will be a transition week and the winter semester will start the following Monday," Ivy said.

I shrugged. I knew we had an abbreviated term between the fall and spring semesters. My best friend Vivvie had told me some of the families at Hardwicke take extended vacations over the holidays. The winter semester, covering December and early January, basically exists as a glorified babysitting service for the students stuck in town.

"And there will be counseling available on campus as part of the transition process. Hardwicke is bringing in several psychologists who specialize in school violence."

"No," I said firmly.

Ivy gave me a sympathetic look. "I know. Dredging it all up for a stranger is probably the last thing you want right now, but it was something the board of trustees insisted on." She leaned over to place a hand on my forearm. "Tess, how much or little you tell them is up to you, but understand this: because the terrorists used you, the other students will be watching to see how you respond. You may feel you don't need help, but seeing that you're willing to talk to a counselor might persuade someone else who does need help to open up."

Uh huh. That was Ivy-speak for, "I want you to talk to a professional about this," and she was using the spectre of traumatized classmates to twist my arm. It was exactly the tactic I would have opted for in her place, which annoyed me even as I felt a sort of kinship with her. "I don't want to do this," I muttered.

"I know," she said softly, giving my arm a gentle squeeze, "but I'd feel better if you gave it a try. Please?"

She was asking, not telling, and I could see the strain in her face. I wasn't the only one struggling for normalcy in the aftermath of what had happened. And she was right: there probably were some kids at Hardwicke who'd shy away from seeking counseling for fear of being mocked. I couldn't do anything now for the dead students, but I could run interference for the living ones.

"Okay," I said grudgingly. "But I get to choose where we order take-out for the next week."

I eat a lot more take-out in DC than I ever did when I lived in Montana. Ivy's work keeps her constantly on the go, so she's never had time for cooking. Most nights of the week, we have take-out, but Sundays are different. On Sundays, I visit my grandfather, William Keyes.

William lives in a gated mansion in Northern Virginia. It's easily three times the size of Ivy's house and the first floor, crowded with antiques and art, looks more like a museum than a private residence. Meals with William are never Chinese straight out of the carton. He has a private chef to serve gourmet food on china with real silverware and crystal glasses. Sunday dinners tend to be a cross between an etiquette lesson and a tutorial on political gamesmanship.

On the Sunday before school started, he was full of speculation about the next Vice President. "Everett would also be a possibility, but if he gives up his committee assignments, there will be a feeding frenzy in the House… and you're not paying attention," he said, frowning.

William is a kingmaker. He's influenced the careers of a lot of powerful people in DC, and he expects to be listened to.

"Sorry," I told him. "I'm afraid I'm not very good company tonight."

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," he said. "You must have Hardwicke on your mind. I'm sure it will be good to see your friends again."

"Yes," I agreed. I'd kept in touch with Asher and Vivvie, and was worried about them. Vivvie seemed too chatty and hyper these days and Asher was far too quiet.

"I still think you should let me get you a bodyguard."

"No. Bodie or Adam are willing to drive me for now." I wasn't sure how to make him understand that being shadowed constantly by a security guard wouldn't make me feel any safer, since the terrorists had taken out Anna's Secret Service detail without breaking a sweat. "You were saying something about Everett?"

"He's an obvious choice, but pulling him from the House would cause a disruption. And I'm not sure he's capable of stepping up to the Presidency. There's something about him that's… well. You'll see him at the party next week. You can give me your impressions afterwards."

"Hmm," I murmured, wondering why I'd agreed to attend this party in the first place. William seemed determined to initiate me into his world of power-broking and political intrigue but I wasn't sure it was something I wanted.

"And then there's Christmas—" he began.

"I'm going to Boston," I reminded him sharply. Ivy and I had just gotten back from visiting Gramps for Thanksgiving and were planning to do the same at Christmas. William and I had wrangled about it even after I'd made it clear to him I wasn't going to waste any of the time I had left with Gramps. I felt a sudden stab of grief, thinking back to last Christmas. At the time, I hadn't known it would be my last one at the ranch. On good days, Gramps clearly remembered me and the ranch. On bad days… I hoped Christmas would be a good day.

"Is it truly necessary to be there on the actual day?" he persisted.

Don't, I thought. Don't you dare say that Gramps won't know what day it is. I did a quick mental calculation and decided I wouldn't need to rely on William's driver or wait for Bodie to collect me if I left now. The nearest Metro station wasn't that close, but I'd been on the track team in Montana. I could easily get there on foot. "Yes," I said, in a tone that left no room for argument.

Time for me to change the subject. "There's something I've been meaning to ask you. About power."

"Yes?" he replied, looking peevish. He knew I was dodging him.

"You've talked a lot about making the right moves. What do you do when there aren't any moves? When you don't have the power to fix something?"

"Get the power," he answered without hesitation. "Whatever it takes."

Whatever it takes. I wondered if he'd had the same mindset when dealing with his sons. It would explain why my uncle Adam rarely spoke to him. And why William had known nothing of my existence until a few months ago.

Whatever it takes. Hmph. If he thought he was going to gain significant control over my life, he was in for a bumpy ride. "Chess?" I suggested.

He gave me a sardonic grin. "Always."

He was probably thinking he'd get me to change my mind about Christmas. He really didn't know me yet.

When I got to school the next day, the main building smelled of fresh paint and we had new lockers. No more blood and bulletholes, I thought while noting with amusement that they hadn't repainted the dingy walls of the staircase I'd used to reach my locker. Apparently, even Hardwicke had budget constraints.

Walking past the library on my way to the chapel set off a jittery humming underneath my skin. For a minute, I was afraid I was going to lose it, but by the time I'd settled myself in a pew between Asher and Vivvie, I felt in control again.

We were there for an all-school assembly, which gave me the opportunity to do a discreet head count. I was a long way from knowing every one's name, but I recognized a lot of faces and had a sense that only a handful of students were missing. Good. I didn't mind that some of them looked uneasy. They were here.

"That's Mr. Latimer," Vivvie whispered as a tall man with thinning white hair stood to speak. "He must be the new head. I had him for History, freshman year. He's a real sweetheart."

Latimer introduced himself as the interim headmaster. After welcoming us back, he launched into an explanation of transition week. I let his words wash over me until I heard the phrase "Santa Camp".

I turned to Vivvie, not quite sure I'd heard him correctly. "Santa Camp?"

"Yes, you know, winter semester," Vivvie whispered. "You must have heard people talking about it. It's loads of fun; you'll see."

In fact, I had heard a few references to Santa Camp over the previous month, but I'd assumed it was the name of some dumbass holiday movie people were looking forward to. "It's a camp?" I said with a disbelieving frown.

"Not really," Asher told me, "but it's not exactly school, either. There are scheduled activities, but it's not part of your official school record. Except for the disciplinary notations."

Vivvie nodded. "It's a little different every year. We always decorate the school for the various holidays and there's usually a lot of art and fun experiments and people putting on plays and silly competitions."

"And the snowball fight," Asher added.

"Definitely the snowball fight," said Vivvie.

"What if there's no snow?" I asked.

A sharp glare from one of the teachers made me realize we'd been speaking too loudly. All three of us fell quiet for a minute until the teacher focused her displeasure on someone else, then Vivvie whispered, "They bring in a machine for the snow. One year, Asher got into it and all the snow came out purple."

"Hence the disciplinary notations," Asher said.

I wasn't surprised. Asher is Emilia's twin, but the opposite of her in some respects. He's just as intelligent as she is, but about as far as you can get from "inclined toward traditional paths to success". I guess that's something the two of us have in common.

Latimer had moved on to telling everyone about the psychologists on campus. Vivvie whispered to me, "Are you going to speak to them?"

"Mmhmm. Ivy's orders," I whispered back. "I'm supposed to set an example. Get the ball rolling, so to speak."

"I am nothing if not good with balls," Asher said with a smirk. As soon as Latimer dismissed us, he stood while telling me in a loud voice, "Well, I've got a lab writeup and that English paper to do. What about you?"

"I think I'll grab one of the head shrinkers and get it over with." I was also being louder than necessary, hoping to be heard over the general rumbling of students getting their things together. "Maybe that'll get Ivy off my back and anything's better than finishing my English paper."

"Oh, God, you too?" Vivvie nearly shouted. "Aunt Priya's been nagging me like you wouldn't believe."

"Well, if you ladies are going to brave the dragon, how can I do less?" Asher said. "Who knows, they might even turn me into a respectable member of society."

"They're therapists, not miracle workers, Asher." I gave him a friendly shove toward the door and avoided meeting anyone's gaze. Peripheral vision was enough to give me the impression we'd been overheard by several people. By lunchtime, everyone would know that Tess Kendrick Keyes was seeing a mental health professional, which would mean a field day for the school bullies.

Ah, well. I love a challenge. And if that challenge involves smacking down a bully or two, so much the better.

I never caught the name of the psychologist I was sent to, possibly because I was told to meet him in the library. "I'm surprised you're using this space," I said while taking a seat. The carpet had been replaced but I could still imagine the blood.

He gave me an assessing look. "I asked for this room. I thought it would be less intimidating than an office. Is there some reason I shouldn't use it?"

"John Thomas Wilcox was shot here. So was one of Anna's Secret Service agents."

He flipped through a sheaf of papers on a clipboard, saying, "I don't see a Wilcox on the list of victims."

"He was the first," I said. "It was before they took over the school, but he was still killed by a member of Senza Nome."

"And it bothers you, knowing someone was shot in here?"

I gave him a look that would have shriveled his brains, if he'd had any. "I was with John Thomas when he died. I was also here when Anna was taken and saw Dr. Clark murder her Secret Service agent."

"Dr. Clark?" he said vaguely.

"My Contemporary World Issues teacher." I didn't expect him to remember I'd witnessed those deaths, but he should have known where they'd happened, and who'd been responsible. "Would you like some time to read the material you've been given?"

His face flushed, but I couldn't tell whether it was from embarrassment or anger. Maybe both. "I usually don't ask patients to recall traumatic events right away. Let's go back in time," he said, clearly trying to retreat to safer ground. "Tell me about the first day of school."

"I wasn't here," I answered flatly.

"Oh?"

"I wasn't at Hardwicke then. I lived in Montana. On a ranch. With Gramps, who's now in a dementia program in Boston. The people I thought were my parents died when I was four. A few months ago I found out they're actually my grandparents, and that my sister Ivy is my mom. I never knew my father."

"Sounds like you've had an eventful semester," he said dryly.

"A lot of people have," I replied. "Not long after I came to DC, my friend Vivvie lost her father, and Henry lost his grandfather. It was on the news." The psychologist started flipping through his papers again, so I supplied, "They were the President's personal physician and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Hardwicke is Washington."

I decided not to tell him they'd been murdered by a rogue Secret Service agent who'd kidnapped me in a desperate ploy to get Ivy's help. By now, we were so far off this guy's planned script that he was going to need a shrink if I said much more.

He must have decided the same thing, because he said, "How have you been feeling since the incident? Any difficulty with daily activities? Any bad dreams?"

The incident. Did they all talk like that? "I've had bad dreams, although they're becoming less frequent. I felt a little shaky coming here today but it was easier than I thought it would be. I think I'm coming to terms with the realization that there's always going to be somebody out there thinking I'm an easy way to get to my mother or grandfather."

"Your grandfather in Boston?"

"Technically, Gramps is my great-grandfather," I said with a grimace. Why had I let Ivy talk me into this? "My grandfather is William Keyes. His son Tommy was my father. If you don't know anything about Washington, just know that William has a lot of money and political clout. Anyway, I have to accept that I'm not safe. I never have been. I never will be. No one is."

"That's a rather pessimistic way of viewing the world."

I shook my head. "That doesn't make it wrong; just depressing."

Lunch wasn't what I'd expected. On a normal day, the cafeteria's noisy but only half-full, with many students choosing to eat on the grounds or elsewhere in the main building. Today, it was quieter than usual even though everyone appeared to be here. Huddling together for safety, I supposed. A few people glanced at me as Asher and I made our way to the table Emilia and Vivvie had claimed, but no one was smirking. Maybe I'd gotten things wrong, and nobody cared whether someone else was seeking mental help. Maybe they were thinking of doing it themselves.

Even among my friends, conversation felt forced. Mostly, we complained to each other about the compare-and-contrast papers we'd been assigned. Weeks ago, our English teacher, who'd been at Hardwicke so long that Adam remembered him, had brought out a roulette wheel. "The first spin is for the Wheel of Will," Rehnquist had told us, "and the number you get will determine which Shakespearean play you have to use. Then you'll spin again, for the Wheel of Weird." The entries on the Wheel of Weird changed from year to year, according to Rehnquist's fancy.

Vivvie, who'd gotten The Tempest and Gilligan's Island, was leaning hard on the castaways theme. I'd gotten The Merchant of Venice and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and was steadfastly refusing Asher's suggestion to title my paper "So Long, and Thanks for All the Antisemitism". Asher was struggling with King Lear and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Emilia, of course, had already finished her paper, much to her brother's disgust. She was trying to convince Asher he could compare the father-son relationship in Zen with the father-daughter relationships in Lear when Nathan Westscott swaggered over to our table.

Nathan was well on his way to becoming as big a bully as his pal John Thomas had been. Like John Thomas, he'd brought an audience: one of the lacrosse players whose name I could never remember. Nathan waited a minute for a hush to fall over the tables nearest us, then delivered his big line.

"What, the men in white coats haven't come for you losers yet?"

"No, and I'm pretty pissed off about that," I said lightly while pressing down on Asher's forearm to discourage him from standing. Across the table from us, Vivvie had gone still and Emilia was shaking her head slightly at him. "I was hoping to get out of writing my English paper."

Several people laughed, and Nathan's face darkened. He liked his victims cowering and upset. Too bad I didn't feel like obliging him.

"So, what'd you tell the shrink? Did you cry? Did you tell them your friends are a bunch of wusses?"

I met his mocking stare to avoid glancing over at Vivvie's telltale reddened eyes. "I told mine about what it was like to see Mrs. Perkins shoot Headmaster Raleigh. I never liked him much but he deserved better than that."

Emilia said, "You might want to give it a try, Nathan. Mine really helped me with my feelings of powerlessness and everyone's heard about your, uh, potency problem."

"Thirty-second man," said Vivvie in a stage whisper as people around us laughed and Nathan's sidekick muttered, "Latimer's coming".

Nathan gave us a threatening look and slunk away, taking his goon with him.

"Well, that sucks," Asher complained. "I didn't get a turn!"

Asher did get his turn, although I didn't see it happen. By the following day, there was a rumor going around that Nathan had wet himself from fear during the takeover and no amount of protesting on his part convinced anyone that the damp spot on his pants had been the result of a spilled water bottle. At first, I thought Genevieve, a senior and the queen of the Mean Girls, had started the rumor, but the look of grim satisfaction on Asher's face whenever Nathan's name came up told me otherwise.

"What?" he said, when I gave him a suspicious look. "He was tormenting one of the freshmen yesterday. At least he'll shut up now."

By Friday, I'd finished all my assignments, including the thrice-damned paper, and everything was slowly returning to normal. I was in a good mood right up until I heard about the Secret Santa drawing.

I was on the verge of saying, "Have they lost their minds?!" when I saw Vivvie's face light up.

"It's one of my favorite parts of Santa Camp!" she exclaimed as we dropped by the front office to pick a name.

Okay. Some of us cope with tragedy in different ways. If Vivvie was all in on Secret Santa, I could fake it with the best of them. Or so I thought, until I drew Henry's name.

Henry Marquette. Everyone knew his grandfather had been Chief Justice and had died suddenly. A handful of his friends knew that death hadn't been accidental. What they didn't know was that Henry had briefly been a member of Senza Nome.

I knew, but hadn't told anyone, to protect Henry's family and Henry himself. Henry, who'd gotten in way over his head, partly because I hadn't told him everything I knew about his grandfather's killers. Henry, the boy I'd maybe been falling in love with and now couldn't bear to look at. Thank God he'd gone away somewhere on vacation.

"Want to swap?" I asked Vivvie. Even Nathan Westcott would be better than shopping for Henry.

"Against the rules," she said, sounding distracted. "I got Emma."

"Who?"

"Emma Richardson. You must not have any classes with her. I'll point her out the next time we're in the cafeteria. Who'd you get?"

"Henry. Is he even going to be here?" Maybe I could turn his name in as someone who shouldn't have been in the drawing.

"He should," Vivvie answered. "Seems to me his family always goes to visit his aunt around Thanksgiving, but then they're back before Christmas. What's wrong with getting Henry?"

"Nothing," I said. "I just have no idea what I'm supposed to get for him."

"Oh, don't worry about that; we can go shopping together. I'm sure we'll find something. Come on; Asher's supposed to be meeting us in the art room."

I nodded vaguely and followed her while thinking about my Henry problem. I'd been lucky, with his having been away for so long, but clearly my luck was about to run out. How was I supposed to act normal around him? And what would happen if I couldn't?

"Why are we here?" I asked Asher while trying not to think about what he'd say if he found out his best friend had been in league with terrorists.

"Vivvie didn't explain?" he said. "Decorations are always a big part of Santa camp. In addition to other decorations, each class gets a stairwell where they can put up a banner; a sort of mural. The class with the best banner gets bragging rights. We're doing the banner for the junior class."

"Why?"

"Vivvie always does the banner," Asher said, as if it were obvious.

"Not just me by myself," she clarified. "You know I'm no good at art. I mean, I'm great when it comes to ideas, but actually carrying them out? Not so much."

Asher nodded. "Vivvie's usually our ideas person and Emilia often oversees the execution, because anything worth doing is worth being anal-retentive about. Anyone who wants to work on it is welcome, of course, but we've been doing this since Lower School and people generally follow Vivvie's lead. So, fearless leader," he said, turning to her with a smile, "inspire us."

"I'm just not feeling it this year," she confessed. "Guess I'm still too angry about what happened."

She'd surprised me. "Angry?"

"Yeah," she said, giving me a challenging look. "You've only been here a couple of months, but a lot of us have been at Hardwicke since preschool. I don't even remember a time before Hardwicke was part of my life. It's like strangers broke into our house and trashed everything."

"We're still here," Asher told her in a reassuring tone. "We can make it our place again."

"How?" she said bleakly.

"I don't know, but we'll do it together. Maybe it's just a matter of time."

They fell silent, looking sad and thoughtful. Fishing for a distraction, I said, "What sort of things do you usually do for these banners?"

"Santa, elves, winter scenes… stuff like that. Oh, and reindeer," Vivvie answered. "Those are fun and a lot of people are willing to help with them."

"Reindeer?"

"Like this," she said, and took some supplies from a cabinet. "Okay, so I usually don't use yellow paint, but it's the first thing I grabbed. You'll get the idea."

Asher gave me a knowing look. "Rudolph got liver failure from drinking too much egg nog."

Vivvie rolled her eyes at him and poured a small amount of paint onto a paper plate. She painted her right hand with a brush and carefully pressed her hand down on a large sheet of paper, fingers slightly spread. "That's the head. The fingers are supposed to suggest antlers and you hold your thumb at a ninety-degree angle so you can hide it later."

She wiped her hand with a paper towel and painted the other hand. "And this is the body," she said while rotating her arm until her hand was nearly upside-down. "You line up the second hand to cover the thumbprint from your first print with the heel of your hand. The second thumbprint is the reindeer's tail and the fingers are its legs. Add a little black paint for the hooves, a googly eye for the eye, and a pompom for the nose. You can even give him a friend," she said with a grin, and quickly made a mirror image of a second reindeer touching noses with the first. "See, it's a mini-herd. Anyway, handprint reindeer are always popular because you don't have to be good at art to make them."

I stared at the reindeer for a long moment before saying, "Vivvie, does it have to be a holiday theme?"

Adam picked me up from school that afternoon. "I was expecting Bodie," I said as I slid into the passenger seat.

"He took the afternoon off since he's got a late night tonight."

I wondered if Bodie was actually spending his "afternoon off" chasing down some information for Ivy. She'd flown to California two days ago to investigate one of the VP candidates and was due back tonight. "I'm surprised Nolan hasn't picked someone by now."

"The people he's interested in don't appeal to the Party leadership, and the people the Party wants don't appeal to him. I'm staying out of it," Adam said, in a tone that hinted I should be staying out of it, too.

"I haven't done anything," I protested.

Adam gave me a jaundiced look, which I probably deserved. Strictly speaking, I hadn't done anything, but I had been pumping Vivvie and Asher for whatever they'd heard over the years about the people whose names were being bandied about in the news. Three of the possibilities had kids at Hardwicke. It wasn't anything Ivy had asked me to do, or would likely approve of, but I hated being in the dark and I'd seen just enough of DC to know that there were always schemes within schemes.

As we neared Ivy's house, Adam said, "I'll be driving you to the party tonight and picking you up afterwards."

"Why? William said his driver can take me home."

"I'll be available to pick you up whenever you want to leave."

"You think I won't want to stay?" I asked, then realized, "You don't want me to go."

Adam parked in front of the house and turned to me. "Look, if you want to spend time with William, I'm not going to get ugly about it. He's your grandfather. It's okay if you want to get to know him. It's even okay if you love him. I do. I just don't trust him, and not being around him at all is less stressful than spending time with someone I love but don't trust. You should do what feels right for you. Having said that… Tess, you should never forget that you are more important to him as his legacy, a reflection of himself, than as the person you are. That's just who he is. Accept it, believe it, and don't tie yourself up in knots trying to become what he wants to make you. Don't even try to be the opposite of what he wants to make you—that's what got Tommy killed. Just be who you are, who you were always going to be."

"What did he do to you?" I said in bewilderment. I'd known for months there was bad blood between them, but I still didn't know why.

Adam gazed off into the distance, as if remembering hurts that were older than I was. "Things he honestly believed were for my own good."

"And they weren't?"

He shook his head. "They might have been good for the person he wanted me to be. Me?" He swallowed thickly and hesitated before saying. "I'm not sure he's ever really seen me at all. When he looks at you, he sees Theresa. His granddaughter. He doesn't see Tess."

He got out of the car, saying, "Come on, I got us some sandwiches from the deli. You have time to eat before the makeup artist gets here. And William's sent over a dress for you."

"There's going to be food at the party."

"You don't want to go to one of these things on an empty stomach. Trust me."

I went upstairs to check out the dress William had sent. I'd told him I didn't need a new evening gown, but apparently he'd decided otherwise. The dress was still in the bag it had been delivered in. I didn't recognize the name of the store it had come from, but I wasn't surprised: William wouldn't have sent something from the kind of place I usually shopped.

I slipped out of my school clothes, put on the dress I'd taken from the bag, and looked at myself in the mirror. And went on looking, wondering how I was going to handle this.

The dress was crimson, and a good fit. The top was cut lower than I was comfortable with, but it was the skirt I kept staring at. If I stood completely still, it looked like an ordinary floor-length skirt. The slightest movement, however, revealed a slit on the left side that went all the way to my waist, which explained why the dress had come with a matching pair of panties.

I'd spent countless hours in skimpy shorts when I was on the track team and had never given it a second thought. Why did I feel so exposed now? Maybe it was the purpose of the garment? The shorts had been abbreviated to permit easy movement, but the dress—its purpose was clearly to put my body on display in a way I didn't like.

Was I overreacting? Maybe what seemed slutty in Montana was normal for DC? After all, the only 'labels' I'd ever worn were Wrangler and Dickies. I'd decided I didn't care what was or wasn't normal for DC when there was a tap on my door. "Come in," I said.

"Everything okay?" Adam asked, sticking his head in as I turned to face him. He saw me, then stepped fully inside the room. "You're not wearing that."

"Yeah, way ahead of you."

Tentatively, he said, "Ivy bought you a dress for the Hardwicke benefit as an early Christmas present. Would you like to try it on? There's time to find you something else for the benefit."

"Oh my God, I'm not Barbie. I don't need a new outfit for every occasion. Thanks, but I'll save it for the other party. I can wear my white dress tonight. Let me take this off and put on a robe and I'll be down in a minute."

When I came downstairs, the sandwiches were on the kitchen counter and Adam was in Ivy's office on his cell phone. He was clearly upset about something, so I grabbed a sandwich and settled in for a little eavesdropping.

"No. No way," he said angrily. "On a grown woman with actual power, maybe it says, 'I'm powerful. I'm confident.' On a teen-aged girl, it says, 'Catch me, fuck me' and you're not doing that to her." There was a pause, and he said firmly, "She'll be there, if she still wants to come, but not in that dress."

He gave his phone a savage poke to hang up, then caught sight of me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "You shouldn't be fighting with William for my sake."

Adam snorted. "I'm not sure we know how to have a conversation without fighting anymore. This isn't on you. And maybe it's not even on him. He says someone else chose the dress for him and he only saw a texted picture of it on a hanger. Maybe he didn't realize… and there's the doorbell."

He left the room and came back with the makeup artist while I was gulping down my sandwich. "This is Tess. She's a junior in high school. Glam her up, if she wants to, but I don't want her looking like a high-priced call girl."

The makeup artist didn't even blink, which made me wonder what sort of clients she dealt with on a daily basis. I led her upstairs, showed her the white evening gown Ivy had bought me several weeks earlier and the jewelry William had given to me on Sunday, then she set to work.

She was quiet but friendly, and got my hair and makeup done in far less time than I would have managed. The only thing I wasn't sure about was the false lashes. They weren't heavy enough to make me feel I was doing eyelid exercises, but I wasn't used to them and found myself blinking a little too often. After giving me a few tips about how to undo everything at the end of the evening, she left and it was time for me to go.

Adam's temper had cooled while I was getting ready. "That was my mother's favorite necklace," he said, smiling at me as he helped me into a satin wrap of Ivy's. "You look fabulous. Listen, Tess, I'm sorry you heard me going off on William like that. I don't ever want you to feel you have to choose between us."

"I don't. I'm not in middle school. It's okay if some of the people I like don't get along with other people I like." We got in his car and drove in comfortable silence. After a while, I said, "Do you know why he's doing this at a hotel in the District? I mean, with the house he has, you'd think he throw all his parties there."

"The small ones—dinner parties of twenty or so—he does do at the mansion. Don't forget to refer to it as a mansion," he said, grinning. "The big ones, it's easier to do at a hotel. At the mansion, a big party would be scattered across several rooms. At a hotel, he can rent a large ballroom where he can see who's talking to whom. And he doesn't have to worry about people grinding hors d'oeuvres into his antique carpets. You've got your phone on you?"

"Of course," I said, holding up a small evening bag, also borrowed from Ivy. "And money for the coat check or a cab."

"Call me when you're ready to leave the party, even if you decide to use William's driver. Don't take beverages from anyone except a waiter or a bartender. Don't try to juggle a drink and a plate at the same time; it's not worth the hassle. Target the smaller, less messy appetizers and only put one or two on your plate; you'll be less likely to spill something that way. Have a good night," he said, pulling up in front of the hotel.

"Thanks," I said, getting out.

"Call me," he repeated, and drove away.

I hurried out of the cold wind, trailing after other people in formal wear presumably headed to the same party. It didn't take me long to find the proper ballroom and hand my wrap to an attendant. I stepped inside and William saw me almost immediately.

He greeted me with a smile, although there was a tightness in face that told me he wasn't happy about something. He kissed me on the cheek and said, "You look lovely," in a genial voice probably meant to carry several feet. In a near-whisper, he added, "I'm sorry the dress didn't please you. I thought it was a good color. It was never my intention to make you feel uncomfortable."

"It was a pretty color," I agreed. "Just not the right cut for me, and I didn't need a new dress."

He shook his head slightly, and his voice took on a magnanimous educating-the-ignorant-peasant tone that grated on my nerves. "Your new status as my granddaughter carries certain expectations and makes you more visible. Wearing the same gown twice to important functions sends the wrong message."

"What? That I have enough brains to find a dry cleaner? That maybe it's my favorite dress? Are you really that worried someone's going to think William Keyes can't afford a new outfit for his granddaughter?"

"Of course not," he said, although his smile looked strained, "but people will notice."

"Anybody who spends that much time thinking about what a high school girl is wearing either needs a life or a jail sentence."

His eyes crinkled with amusement. "Let's get you a beverage and I'll start introducing you to some useful people."

I'm in hell, I thought, but the next two hours didn't actually suck. Little by little, William steered me gently around the room, stopping to talk for several minutes here and there with a variety of people, and I saw a side of him I hadn't previously witnessed. I'd seen him be demanding and calculating, even ruthless, but now I realized he could be charming and witty when he put his mind to it. I mostly smiled and nodded as he carried on a series of conversations that made it clear he remembered all sorts of details about people, although he was subtly gathering more information than he was imparting. Get them drunk, then get them talking, I thought as I watched and learned.

I hadn't known they were coming, but the President made a brief appearance about forty-five minutes after I arrived, with the First Lady at his side.

Georgia Nolan. William's secret love, and my secret enemy. I'd been on the dance floor when they arrived, and caught her look of surprise as I came up to William. I guess he hadn't told her I'd be there.

"And you remember Tess," William was saying. Time for me to pay attention.

"Of course," the President responded, giving me a friendly smile. "Hello again."

"That's a beautiful dress," Georgia said with a trace of a smirk. "Very memorable."

Apparently, William had been right about people noticing my clothes. "Thank you," I said, giving her my most clueless smile. "I must say, your own outfit is especially flattering." And if she took that to mean I thought she was a gargoyle who needed all the help she could get, well that was all in her head, right? Two could play at passive-aggressive compliments.

They left after saying hello to several other people and William returned to harvesting intel from the guests with me at his side. I was so entertained by watching him work that it took me a while to realize I was being introduced to a lot of fathers with sons in tow. Sons in their late teens and early twenties that I was often encouraged to dance with.

Oh, hell to the no, I thought as I was escorted to the dance floor for the fifth time. William wasn't trying to get the sons out of the way for a few minutes so he could pump their fathers; he'd begun the process of casting about for a suitable alliance, cemented by marriage.

The boy I was dancing with at the moment was a freshman at Georgetown and his father was a congressman. "Have you been in Washington for long?" I asked, relieved he wasn't stepping on my feet or tripping over his own.

"All my life," he said. "We go back to New York when it's time for Dad to campaign, but it's never been my home. And yes, I'm a Hardwicke escapee. I mean, graduate."

"You didn't like it?"

"It was claustrophobic. The same people, over and over, for years? There was no way get away from the ones who made me want to scream. Now, at least, I have a fresh set of people to make me crazy."

I chuckled and smiled at him as we jostled to one side to narrowly avoid a collision with a drunk man and his equally tipsy partner.

"But the shooting," he continued, once we'd regained our rhythm, "that really got to me. I still have friends there, and the thought of them being in danger—it made me miss the place. Even the people who used to make me crazy, isn't that ridiculous? Hardwicke was boring sometimes, but it was ours. It was supposed to be safe."

"I don't think there is such a place," I said in a low voice.

As the evening wore on, I was increasingly grateful for the sandwich I'd had at home. There was no shortage of appetizers and the ones I'd tasted were delicious, but I was so busy dancing and being introduced to people that there hadn't been much time to eat. After my sixth trip to the dance floor, I headed for a buffet table instead of returning to William's side. I'd just put a few things on a plate when Senator Clayton came up to me.

"Here," he said, offering me a glass. "I've just been to the bar and have no idea where my wife's disappeared to. Have some wine. You're William's girl, aren't you?"

"Yes." I took a step backward because Clayton was standing a little too close and staring a little too long. He clutched a tumbler of liquor in his other hand and this clearly hadn't been his first trip to the bar. Where was William when I wanted him?

I tried to sound amused and apologetic. "Sorry, but I'm underage. And I don't have enough hands to eat and drink at the same time. White dress," I added ruefully, gesturing vaguely at my gown. "Got to be careful."

"Nonsense," he said. "My son says you're very quick on your feet. You know who I am, don't you?"

How Washington, I thought. Expecting the world to recognize you. "Yes, Senator Clayton. You're Josh's father."

He edged closer and thrust out the glass again. "Go ahead, it's only wine. I'm sure William won't mind."

"You're sure William won't mind what?" said a voice behind him.

Senator Clayton turned unsteadily, nearly sloshing wine onto the carpet. "You won't mind if I offer your girl a little wine? No harm in a single glass." He gave me a speculative glance. "Perhaps she'll even grace me with a dance while I'm waiting for my wife."

William eyed him narrowly before saying, "A single glass."

"No, thank you. I don't drink." Didn't I get a say in this?

"A few sips while we're talking to Senator Clayton shouldn't do any harm," William told me with a forced smile. I'd often had a glass of wine with dinner on Sunday evenings, so he knew I did drink occasionally. Couldn't he take a hint? "I'm sure you're capable of exercising restraint."

"So much restraint that I'll give it a miss." It took some effort to make my refusal sound casual and pleasant, but I managed it. "After all, the Senator's wife is expecting him to bring her a drink."

"Theresa, there's no need to be rude," William said in his lord-of-the-manor tone, and I lost it.

"Josh Clayton's idea of a good time is putting roofies in girl's drinks," I told him bluntly. Subtle wasn't getting the job done. "I don't intend to find out the hard way that he picked up that charming habit at home. Excuse me," I said, and left the ballroom.

I didn't care whether Clayton was offended. Or William, either, for that matter. Taking a breather was the only way I was going to make it through the rest of the evening without throwing a punch. As soon as I reached the hallway outside, I paused to consider my options. Did I need to go back in there at all?

I hadn't created a scene by raising my voice or storming out of the room, so there was no need for me to return for appearances' sake. If any casual onlookers had seen me leaving at all, they'd probably assumed I was stepping out for a moment to find a ladies' room. They wouldn't realize I'd left the party for some time and wouldn't care even if they noticed. I done plenty of schmoozing for William. Enough was enough.

I texted Adam, Done Here. Requesting pickup, and got a Meet you outside ballroom in 5 within seconds. What? Had he spent the evening in the bar in the lobby?

"What was that about?" William hissed behind me. I turned, and saw him paste a bland expression on his face while glancing from side to side. There was a steady trickle of people entering and leaving the ballroom but no one seemed to be paying attention to us.

"What was I supposed to do? Take the drink? I wasn't kidding about the roofies."

"Accepting a beverage and actually drinking it are two different things," William said with barely-suppressed fury. "Accusing a senator of rape isn't smart."

"He has a seriously creepy vibe," I said. "Maybe as a man you haven't picked up on that."

"Then don't ever be alone with him," he countered. "I'm not asking you to do anything inappropriate, but you can at least be polite. It's important for you to make a good impression."

"Important for whom? Me? It's not. There's an entire country outside the Beltway full of people who don't know the difference between an Assistant Deputy Secretary and a Deputy Assistant Secretary and they don't care. They don't care about titles, they don't care about committee assignments, they don't care about who knows what, and they don't care about fancy dresses and stupid parties."

"And none of those people are running this country," he said impatiently. "Alliances are made at these parties. Enemies are made at these parties. Decisions are made at these parties."

"Decisions are made at these parties? Less than a fourth of the people in that room were elected to make decisions, and most of them are wasted. If that's where the direction of the country is coming from, no wonder things are such a mess."

In the distance, I could see Adam approaching us. I gave him a tiny shake of the head to indicate I didn't need immediate rescue. He nodded and paused, waiting for me.

"Less than a fourth of the people," William echoed with a calculating expression. "That's a fair estimate. I didn't realize you already knew so many influential people by sight. That was one of the reasons I wanted you here tonight: so you could start learning the players. Apparently, you have the instincts whether you want them or not. Theresa, I realize Washington is a very different world from Montana, but—"

"It's not. Really, it's not. It's the same amount of horseshit here. The only difference is that it's coming from bigger assholes."

I stalked past him and he said, "Where are you going? We need to fix this."

I paused and turned to face him. "I don't. In fact, I'm perfectly fine with all of Washington knowing I think he's a creepy senator with a creep for a son. That's hardly shocking. If people are as up on gossip as you always tell me, they should already know what he's like. You should know what he's like. And you should remember that my name is Tess."

William scowled, but I wasn't sure whether it was at me or because he'd just seen Adam. I didn't care. He'd either get over his disappointment or he wouldn't, and either way, I was done for the night.

Adam was surprisingly quiet on the way to the car. Apart from asking whether I was all right, he didn't seem the least bit curious as to why I'd wanted to leave early. Speaking of which…

"Were you waiting for me in the bar?" I said suspiciously as he pulled into traffic.

"Sure was. I've survived a lot of these parties with dear old Dad. Sooner or later, I always found myself looking for the escape hatch. You lasted longer than I thought you would. Your dad hated evenings like this."

"He did?"

"Oh, yeah. Once, we were at some fancy dinner and Tommy blasted out of there before we got to the entree. William didn't speak to him for days."

"What did your mother think?"

"She never said anything about it," Adam said, smiling to himself. "Mom was good at not noticing things. Oh, she wasn't afraid of William; it was more like she refused to acknowledge him at all when he was being an asshole. She'd just give him this blank look like he was the stupidest person on Earth and then go on with her life as if he didn't exist. He hates being ignored."

"I'll have to remember that. For when he's speaking to me again," I said, and Adam laughed.

When I got home, I removed my makeup and took a shower to get the gunk out of my hair before deciding to have a soak in the tub. I was still trying to make sense of William's behavior. Why hadn't he listened to me?

I thought I'd been signaling I don't want this drink pretty clearly but he hadn't picked up on that. Or had chosen not to. Maybe he didn't understand what it was like to be a young woman surrounded by a lot of older men looking at her like she was a tasty snack, a commodity provided for their personal enjoyment.

Or maybe he did, at least a little? On my way to the buffet table, I'd noticed William speaking to someone halfway across the room, yet he'd reached me pretty quickly after Clayton's appearance. Which meant he'd known Clayton was a creep. Maybe when William had told me I was capable of exercising restraint, he wasn't talking about alcohol; he'd been telling me to curb any impulse to be rude to Clayton? And saying, "a few sips while we're talking to Senator Clayton" was him signaling You don't have to dance with this guy. Appease him by talking to him for a few minutes but I'll be right here next to you?

Man, we sucked at communicating.

Even if I was right and he'd been trying to hint he'd be there to protect me, I was still not okay with the idea of being "polite" to some politician trying to get me drunk. Near the beginning of the evening, William had said he wanted to introduce me to some useful people. "Useful", not "interesting" or even "powerful". Was that how he saw everyone? Had he invited me to the party to be "useful"? Was that all I meant to him?

Ivy got home shortly after I'd finished changing for bed. I gave her a hug, then said, "I had a fight with William." Funny that I never called him grandfather. Or maybe it wasn't funny; he wasn't the sort of grandfather you could be comfortable around.

"In my world, we call that an ordinary day," Ivy said, taking a seat on my bed. "Was it serious?"

"Maybe to William," I answered with a shrug. "Drunk senator got a little creepy. I squelched him and split."

"Oh, my," she said dryly. "That's cataclysmic."

"I don't understand William. He's nothing like Adam. Was Tommy anything like him?"

She laughed as if the idea were absurd. "Not at all."

"What was he like?" She'd told me about him once, but only a little, and I wanted more.

Staring off into space with a smile, she said, "That glorious summer. I didn't think. Didn't question. I just was. That's what Tommy was like. So alive and so… uncomplicated. He didn't have a lot of plans and he was okay with that."

I thought of Asher, careening from one near-disaster to the next, never seeming too worried about consequences. Had my father been like that? Impulsive? Light-hearted? Or had that been a facade, as it sometimes was with Asher? Tommy was William's son. Could there have been another person lurking underneath?

My mother gave a half-hearted laugh. It was a sad sound tinged with bitterness and for an instant, I wondered if she'd heard my thoughts.

"Me?" she continued. "I had my future planned down to the last microsecond, or at least that's what I thought at the time. I didn't have the first clue what my life was really going to be like."

"I was a mistake," I said softly.

"No." Ivy looked at me sharply. "You were unintended. That's not the same thing as a mistake."

"But it changed your life," I said. "Upset your plans."

She gave me a watery smile. "All the best things do."

And the worst, I thought, but kept that to myself. It was rare for Ivy to tell me so much about herself and I didn't want it to stop. Hesitantly, I asked, "Did he know? About me?"

"Not at first. He left for his first tour of duty before I realized I was pregnant. As much as my heart was in love with him, my head told me I'd probably never see him again and that my baby would never be a part of his life. It was later, after I'd decided to let my parents raise you as their own, that I told him."

"What'd he say?" I asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

"He wanted you. He wanted me, too. He thought we should get married, but I told him no. Not yet. I was still in high school and he was barely out of basic training. We were just kids ourselves. After a lot of letters—a lot of letters—we agreed that we were both too young to be sure of making a successful marriage. We decided that if we were still in love when I finished college, then we'd talk about getting married."

"Did he ever see me? I mean, pictures of me?"

Ivy left my room and came back a minute later with a photograph. It was a young man in fatigues who looked a lot like Adam. He was smiling at a giggling baby he was holding high in the air.

My father. With me.

"You'd just turned one," she said. "He came to see us between his first and second tours. I wasn't notified when he was killed because I wasn't listed as his next-of-kin. One of his buddies wrote me, and sent back all the letters and pictures I'd sent to Tommy."

"Oh, mom," I said, and for once, the M word didn't feel like a snippet of foreign language passed through a translator. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and she was crying, too. "Is that when you met Adam?"

"No. I was a junior at Georgetown when he tracked me down. He'd known that Tommy was in love, but hadn't known my name or anything about you. He ran into one of Tommy's old buddies, who told him about us."

"He didn't want his family to know," I said softly.

"He didn't want William to know," Ivy corrected. "Tommy joined the Army to get away from his father's influence. It wasn't something he talked about very often, but Tommy thought the only way to keep his father from running his life was to avoid him completely."

Ivy glanced down at her hands. "To me, that seemed a little excessive, but I'd never met William. I thought maybe there was something bad about him that I'd never been told—maybe he was in prison or an addict or something and Tommy was too ashamed to talk about it. Adam swore up and down it wasn't anything like that. He told me when William thought he was right he could be pretty much unstoppable and run right over someone without even seeing them. Adam and I quickly became friends. We shared our grief for Tommy, and we shared the secret of you."

"When did you actually meet William?" I asked.

Ivy wiped her face with the back of one hand. "About a year after the first time Adam visited me. William knew Adam had been seeing me and wanted him to bring me to Sunday dinner. I think he thought we were a couple. I suppose he wanted to decide whether I was good enough for his son."

She looked directly at me. "We've never been a couple, but Adam didn't mind letting him believe that, and I didn't care one way or the other." She smiled and said, "The food was impeccable, Theresa was charming, and William was… William. I must have passed some sort of test, though, because William took me on as an intern. Taught me everything I know."

"Is that why you don't trust him?"

She shrugged and said, "We had a difference of opinion."

"About President Nolan," I said. I knew Ivy had backed Peter Nolan in the primary, and William most emphatically had not. I also knew that William had been in love with Georgia Nolan long before she'd married Peter. And long after. Ivy didn't know it, but the President's youngest son, Walker, was actually William's child. The terrorist Vice President Hayden had freed had been pregnant with Walker's baby.

Georgia Nolan knew about Henry's involvement with Senza Nome, and had threatened to reveal him if I told anyone about Walker. Could I trust her to keep her word about Henry? Was there anything I could do if she didn't?

"Peter Nolan was only part of it," Ivy said, and her face grew distant. "Let's just say that William and I disagree on how far is too far. It's late. You should get some rest."

"Can I have a copy of this picture?" I asked as she stood to leave.

"Of course," she said, and leaned over to kiss me good night.

I got into bed, but it took a long time for my thoughts to settle. My father had actually held me once, even if I didn't remember it. Even if I'd called another man father, he'd held me with joy, and I'd smiled at him. That was a good thing to hold on to.

What Ivy had said about William was far less comforting. Tommy and Ivy and Adam had believed I'd be safer if I were kept away from him. And he was unmistakably having an influence on me already. At the party, as I'd been glancing around the room a little voice inside my head had been saying things like "junior senator from Ohio" and "chair of the Ways and Means Committee".

I could be a better man. For you, he'd once told me. Part of me believed William genuinely wanted a granddaughter to love and cherish and was determined not to repeat the mistakes he'd made with his sons. Part of me believed he would manipulate me to do what he wanted. If both of those things were true, which was more important to him? Should I sacrifice the possibility of a relationship with him to protect myself? Would I regret it if I did?

And even if William's intentions were entirely pure, would he be able to put aside the habits of the past? He'd spent his life bending the world to his will. Could he bend himself? And how much should I bend?

I slept in the next morning. Ivy woke me, saying that William's driver had come to collect the red dress and deliver a note from him. The note stiffly informed me that I would be making a written apology to Senator Clayton. I scrawled "not happening" across the bottom, and Ivy handed it and the dress to the driver.

The driver didn't return the next day to take me to William's for Sunday dinner. Maybe William thought he was punishing me, but I didn't feel punished. I was his granddaughter, not his puppet, and I wasn't going to apologize for speaking the truth.

Santa Camp officially began, and was more fun than I'd expected, although it was strange to have an all-day hot chocolate station set up in the cafeteria. By Wednesday morning, I was chocolated out and we'd finalized plans for the banner. Each class had a room dedicated to banner prep that was off-limits to students in other years. Emilia and Vivvie got some strange looks from people who saw them carrying the paper rolls, since they were only eighteen inches wide, but we didn't need a big banner for what we'd planned.

"Okay, let's get this measured out, and then I want to do some tests before we start grabbing people," Emilia said, taking her laptop out of its bag to consult her notes. Asher hadn't been kidding about the anal-retentive part, but her planning probably meant we'd have a much cleaner-looking result than if we'd winged it.

We'd already set up several long tables. As Emilia called out the measurements, we cut the heavy cream-colored paper into lengths, used brown paper to carefully mask off a strip along the bottom of each piece, and then weighted down the edges to help the paper relax.

"I'm still not sure about the red," I said after we'd finished setting things up.

"We can do that part last," Emilia answered. "Come over here, Asher, so we can do a test strip. I want to see how much the paints bleed into each other when they're wet." She used a narrow roller to paint Asher's hands blue. "Okay, so you want to put your hands down a little above the line where we masked off the banner. That'll give us the same amount of space above and below the prints."

Instead of making a reindeer, Asher put down a set of ordinary handprints, thumbs touching, fingers spread.

I painted Vivvie's hands orange and she made her prints with one pinky finger crossing over one of Asher's at the first joint.

Vivvie smiled at him. "It's like we're holding hands."

Asher scowled and said, "You are not putting little heart stickers above the V made by our pinkies."

"Spoilsport."

On Friday, I skipped going to Hardwicke so Bodie could take me Christmas shopping with Vivvie and her bodyguard. It was a little strange, walking around a mall with bodyguards trailing us. I wondered how long it had taken Anna to get used to it.

"Have you thought about what you want to get for Henry?" Vivvie asked.

"I don't even know where to start." Asher had told me Henry would be back on Monday, and I wasn't sure how I was going to deal with that.

"Well, you know the price limit and basic guidelines: No booze, no drugs, no tobacco, no weapons, no porn, nothing that breathes, and nothing that needs refrigeration. And it has to fit in one of the white bags."

"You've got to wonder what happened to inspire some of those," I remarked.

"Well, there's always gift cards, if you really get stuck. Emma's into plushies, so I thought I'd get her one."

"What if she already has it?" I said.

"Then she'll have two. Besides, I've got intel. Emma's little sister is a freshman, and I got her to text me pics of her collection. Why don't we take care of that first? You might see something there that makes you think of Henry."

I had a feeling I'd end up buying him a gift card, but her suggestion made sense, so we headed for the toy store. Vivvie began the process of comparing what was on the shelves to the pics on her phone, with her bodyguard shadowing her. I saw a woman eyeing him uneasily, so I said, "He's a bodyguard."

"He is?" she said, clearing wondering why Vivvie needed one. "And him?" she asked, gesturing at Bodie, who'd been hovering near me, "Is he your bodyguard?"

Bodie hardly looked the part in his scruffy jeans and old sweatshirt, but he liked keeping a low profile. "Nope," I said. "Deadbeat dad. Mom doesn't know I'm seeing him."

I glanced over to smirk at Bodie and that was when I saw them. On the shelf just beyond him, in bin of plushies, were several hedgehogs.

"Hedgehog" had been Vivvie's idea. After John Thomas was shot, we'd been trying to find his killer and Vivvie had pointed out that we didn't want people overhearing us talking about killers. Instead, we'd talked about hedgehogs.

All of us had been scared then—Vivvie, myself, Asher, Henry, even Emilia—but there had been a sense of closeness. Whatever bad thing we were facing we were in it together. Surely I wasn't the only one who'd felt that way?

On impulse, I grabbed one of the hedgehogs and said, "Look."

Vivvie turned and saw the plushie in my hand. "For Henry? That's perfect!"

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was cruel to give him something that might remind him of the worst decision he'd ever made and part of me meant it to be cruel. I was still angry about what he'd done and even angrier that I couldn't simply cut him out of my life. But I also wanted him to remember he'd been part of us. Was part of us.

Sunday came and went, with no word from William. "This is normal for him," Adam reassured me. "He either blows up or gives you the silent treatment for ages, then all of sudden he's back, acting as if nothing's happened. I've never understood it, but that's how he is."

I spent the evening in my room, wrapping all the stuff I'd gotten on Friday, except for Henry's present. I was supposed to put it and a slip of paper with his name on it in a brown paper sack, then drop off the bag, stapled shut. A group of parent volunteers would check each present to weed out inappropriate items, then transfer the present to a gift bag.

The gift bags were large white paper sacks we'd decorated during Santa Camp. Each of us had done the bag we'd be receiving our gift in. The rules were simple: put your name on the bag, no porn, no profanity, no glitter. It had been fun watching people making their bags, although it took some of us longer than others. Most of us had used paint and stamps to put things like snowmen and reindeer and gingerbread men on our bags, but Emilia had spent hours drawing intricate geometric designs on hers. One of the freshman boys had simply used paint to put fingerprints all over his bag, which read, "Keep your dirty hands off my present!" A senior, talented at art, had drawn a holiday tableau of flying spaghetti monsters using their noodly appendages to hurl snowballs at one another.

"Henry's back!" Vivvie said the next day before I'd even had a chance to take off my coat.

"Great," I lied. "Let me get rid of my coat and this Secret Santa present and we'll say hello."

We found him talking to Asher and Emilia, who were eager to show off the junior stairwell. They'd put up the banners on Friday while Vivvie and I were shopping.

Henry stiffened when he saw me, but he forced a laugh and said, "Let me guess… no, wait, I have a vision coming to me… could it be reindeer?"

"No!" Vivvie said triumphantly. "It was Tess' idea."

"It was a group effort," I said hastily when Henry looked at me. "Vivvie gave me the inspiration and we owe a lot to Emilia's planning."

"And my general awesomeness," Asher declared.

"We've missed you," Emilia said, rolling her eyes at Asher as she took Henry's arm. "Really missed you."

Even though I'd known what to expect, seeing the banner got to me. We entered the stairwell on the first floor and I heard Henry's breath catch. The concept was simple: each junior's handprints, thumbs lightly touching and pinkies overlapping with the next set of handprints, wrapping around the outer walls of the staircase at eye level. Every junior still on campus had taken part, and Emilia had found someone good at calligraphy to pen our names underneath our handprints. On the center landing halfway between the first and second floors, there was a second banner above the handprints reading, "We Are Hardwicke". It brought tears to my eyes, even though I'd only been part of Hardwicke for a brief time.

I watched Henry slowly climb the stairs, looking at the names of people he'd known since early childhood. He came to a sudden stop at the door for the second floor. I knew what he was staring at: a small piece of banner paper containing a single red handprint with "John Thomas Wilcox" written underneath. Below it and to either side, were handprints representing some of the security guards we'd lost to Senza Nome. We'd reserved the red paint for the handprints of the dead.

"He wasn't here," Henry said, his voice barely above a whisper. "He was already gone."

"He was still their victim," Asher replied. "He was one of us, even if we didn't like him."

Henry nodded silently and continued climbing. The landing banner between the second and third floors read, "Hardwicke Is Ours". When we got to the top, Vivvie said, "There's room for us to add you. Okay?"

"Okay," Henry said uncertainly. Asher and Vivvie hurried off to get the art supplies and Emilia said she'd find the calligrapher. Suddenly, I was standing alone with Henry, staring at the door for the third floor. It held symbolic handprints for more victims, including the headmaster. There were black handprints for Dr. Clark and Mrs. Perkins, Hardwicke staff who'd secretly been members of Senza Nome. They'd been Hardwicke, too.

"I should use black paint," Henry said in a defeated whisper.

"You don't get to make that choice," I whispered back. Voices carried in this stairwell; we needed to be careful. "You don't get to wallow in your guilt; that would hurt too many innocent people."

A door banged open below us. "I can't do this. I can't act like nothing happened," he said.

"You don't get that choice," I repeated as Vivvie and Asher headed up the stairs with the paint.

We drifted apart after Henry added his prints to the banner. Several small groups of students were involved in a role-playing game called "Winter's Quest" and Asher took Henry with him to join the group he was leading. Emilia was taking part in a production of Twelfth Night for the closing week of Santa Camp. Vivvie and I opted for a cooking lesson.

Cookie decorating was on the schedule of activities for tomorrow so I wasn't surprised to learn we'd be making gingerbread men and sugar cookies today. Vivvie and I chatted about nothing of consequence and I found myself relaxing as the morning wore on. We got so much baking done that the instructor showed us how to make icing in the afternoon and let us practice on scraps of parchment.

I ran into Henry and Asher as I was leaving.

"Good day campaigning in the wild?" I asked them, keeping my focus on Asher. Somehow, it was easier to be around Henry when I didn't have to look him in the eye.

"How would you feel about being lost in a blizzard?" Henry asked.

Asher protested, "We're not actually lost."

"Just directionally challenged?" I suggested.

"Not even that," Asher said as Emilia joined us. "I'm getting Henry toughened up for the snowball fight he will inevitably lose on Wednesday."

"They won't need a snow machine this year," I said, eyeing the milky-white sky, heavy with the promise of snow. It made me think of Montana. I'd considered asking Ivy to take me to the ranch after Christmas, but wasn't sure I should go. I was afraid it wouldn't fit me anymore. The person I'd been a few months ago was slipping away from me and I didn't think I could get her back. I wasn't even sure I should try. I didn't know who I was becoming, or how to make it stop.

"The forecast is only for a half-inch," Emilia said doubtfully.

I shook my head. "They won't need a machine."

It snowed eight inches.

The Federal government was closed for the day, so there was no school. "Give it a day," Ivy said. "The plows will catch up. We just don't have the kind of snow removal equipment here that you're used to because it doesn't snow that much or that often, compared to Montana."

I spent most of the day lazing in front of the fire in the living room while Ivy worked in her office. I had a vague sense that the back-and-forth maneuvering over the VP pick was entering its final stages, but no one was telling me anything. I decided not to pry, since I already had enough to brood about.

How much time did Gramps have left? The inevitability of losing him tore at me. He'd been the dominant figure of my childhood for almost as long as I could remember. In his gruff way, he'd demonstrated the principles that ruled his life: Work Hard. Deal fair. Stand up to bullies. Practice compassion.

He'd taken in abused and neglected horses and done his best to heal them with patient persistence, just as he'd taken an orphaned child and raised her to be strong. He'd taught me a different kind of power than William knew, a power based on an unwavering internal compass, not on secrets and brokered deals and manipulation. DC seemed to run on an entirely different set of rules. Should I adapt to them?

Gramps wouldn't, I thought. He'd spit in their eye.

Spitting. He'd taught me that, too, and I was good at at.

Bodie took me to Hardwicke the following day, saying he intended to pick me up an hour early. "The roads may re-freeze as it gets dark, and too many people in this town have no clue about winter driving."

I was wearing jeans and my heavy winter boots. My ordinary school clothes were rolled up in my backpack. Hardwicke had reminded us to bring dry clothes and shoes to put on after the snowball fight.

After the first bell, the teachers let us go outside. Part of the grounds had been set aside for sledding on plastic disks, and part for snow sculptures, but the rest was fair game for the snow battle. We were given some time to build our fortifications and weapons stockpiles and forbidden from throwing any snowballs until the official start of the fight. A few sharp whistle blasts told me someone had been unable to resist temptation. After a while, one of the teachers told us to take our positions. There was a long, loud whistle blast, then the fight was on.

I'd been afraid the absolute chaos of an all-school snowball fight would make me think of the terrorists, but it didn't. It was like being a little kid again, enjoying the first snowfall of the year. I ran and threw and ducked until I was breathless and laughing. From the amount of snow on Henry, Asher had apparently won their private battle.

After the fight, Vivvie and I went inside to warm up with some hot chocolate, then headed back out for sledding and snowman building. By lunch, we were exhausted but smiling.

After lunch, people scattered for various activities. A few of the hardier souls went back out into the snow, but Vivvie and I decorated cookies and helped paint a backdrop for Twelfth Night.

Vivvie had been right: Santa Camp was loads of fun.

"You look like you had a good day," Ivy said that evening. "What's up for tomorrow? Anything you'd mind missing?"

"Not really. We've got indoor games in the morning, and popcorn and movies in the afternoon. Not a bad way to spend the day, but not a must-do, either. You have something else in mind?"

"I'd like to get a new dress for the Hardwicke party. Why don't you come with me? We can get you something, too, then go out for lunch."

"Lunch is fine, but I don't need another evening gown." Was all of Washington this clothes-obsessed? What was I thinking? This was Washington, where appearances meant everything.

"Not something for the party," Ivy clarified. "I was thinking of a cocktail dress, something simple but elegant, in black? It's a wardrobe staple."

I groaned. One way or another, I was doomed to Barbie-dom.

Bodie drove us, dropping us off in front of a boutique. I experienced a small shock when I saw the sign on the door and realized the red dress had come from here.

"Georgia told me about this place," Ivy said. "I've only been here a few times because it's a little pricey, but they have some unusual things and I'm in the mood for a splurge."

"Georgia Nolan suggested this place," I repeated while opening the door.

"Yes. Gets most of her things here. Oh, look, what do you think of this one?" she asked, pulling out a dark green dress for a closer look.

"It's nice," I replied, mind racing. William hadn't chosen the ill-fated red dress. Someone had done it for him. I'd assumed he'd used a personal shopper, but what if that person had been Georgia?

I'd thought she'd been surprised to see me at William's party, but maybe she'd been surprised I wasn't wearing the red dress. But why do it? Sheer pettiness, because she'd guessed the dress would make me uncomfortable? That seemed like a weak motive. What else?

I'd tried on the dress, and Adam had quarreled with William. That wouldn't have been a motive, though, because they didn't get along at the best of times. I'd had my own quarrel with William, but it hadn't been about the dress. It had been about my reaction to Senator Clayton's inebriated behavior... which would have been worse if I'd been wearing the red dress. Adam was right; it was bait.

But why would Georgia care if I had a fight with William? I worked through it slowly, occasionally making appreciative noises about the dresses Ivy was showing me. William and I have a fight—maybe it's a bad one—I decide to back out of his life forever—and William, who wants a legacy more than anything, loses his grandchild.

His first grandchild, but another was due any day now. And taking me out of the picture would only increase William's determination to find and acquire that grandchild, who was also Georgia's. Maybe he had resources she didn't. He was certainly under less scrutiny than the First Lady.

It seemed pretty convoluted, but all she'd had to do was choose a dress. Unpredictable reward, but no risk. She'd arranged her own husband's shooting to boost his sagging poll numbers and score a win for his party in the midterm elections. Picking out a provocative dress was nothing compared to that.

"Tess? Earth to Tess."

"Sorry," I told Ivy. "I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"Enemies."

No one I asked seemed to know how the tradition had started, but we had an all-school snack break on the afternoon of the Hardwicke benefit. In addition to the usual hot chocolate, there was also hot cider and an endless supply of fresh crullers.

"Carbo loading for the party," Asher confided as I looked around the cafeteria for Vivvie. "I think they do it on purpose, so we won't get cranky before the party starts."

While we ate, four students in elf costumes went around delivering the Secret Santa presents. And there was Vivvie, smiling broadly, dressed as one of Santa's helpers. Of course.

"We'll wait for you," I told her as she handed me my bag.

"We will?" Asher said.

"Have another doughnut, Carbo Man," said Henry. "You can wait a few minutes to open your present."

After Vivvie joined us, we opened our bags. Apparently, the parent volunteers had done their jobs well because none of us received booze, drugs, tobacco, weapons, porn, anything breathing, or anything needing refrigeration.

I received a gift card with a typed note reading, "Thank you for coming back for us." I shut my eyes briefly, trying not to think about how scared I'd been when I'd followed the terrorists' orders and returned to Hardwicke. I hadn't expected to live, but I'd known others would die if I saved myself by staying away.

I opened my eyes and saw Henry's startled face, across the table. He was holding the hedgehog, which had come with a note reading, "We're all hedgehogs sometimes." He knew the hedgehog must have been a present from one of us.

Vivvie was smiling broadly at him, so he looked to her first. She nodded sideways at me without saying anything.

Henry met my eyes for a minute. I think he realized then, for the first time, that I also felt responsible for the deaths that had happened that day. You don't get to wallow in your guilt. You don't get to make that choice.

Blinking rapidly, he excused himself and left the cafeteria.

"What's wrong?" Vivvie asked.

"Nothing," I said while thinking, Everything.

"You've been awfully quiet today," Ivy said as we got into Adam's car to go to the party.

I was thinking about Henry, but couldn't tell her that. "They stuffed us full of crullers at school. Carbo coma."

Adam chuckled. "They still do that?"

"Yes, and they were delicious. The cooking teacher promised to teach us how to make them before Santa Camp is over."

"Ohhhh," Adam said. "I like the sound of that."

I stifled a yawn. "So, tell me about this party."

"Officially, it's called a benefit but it's just a big party," Adam said. "Sort of like a homecoming event, but they have it in late December, when out-of-town alums are more likely to have some time off if they want to come. Hardwicke welcomes everyone home and shakes them down for a donation."

"Will William be there?" I asked.

"Probably?" Adam guessed. "He usually comes. You two still on the outs?"

"That would be a yes," Ivy said, sounding amused.

"It's survivable," Adam told me. "Believe me, I've spend more time on his shit list than off it."

When Adam had called it a "big party", he hadn't been joking. The hotel had combined all of the ballrooms along one side of a hallway into an enormous room with a modest dance floor at one end. A normal-sized ballroom across the hall had been dedicated to dancing, but since the music over there was loud and geared toward the students' preferences, it was probably a good thing it was separate.

Unlike William's party, I didn't have any social obligations, so I didn't need to be alert and clever. Various people stopped by our table to say hello to Adam or Ivy and I let my myself drift and enjoy the food. After a while, I decided to go across the hall to dance and talk to my friends, assuming conversation was possible. I stepped out into the hall and immediately came face to face with Henry.

"You've been avoiding me," he said.

"I have. And you've been avoiding me. I lied to you."

"Excuse me?"

"At the hospital, right after the takeover," I explained. "I said I don't forgive you for what you did, but I do. Sort of. I mean, I want to, but I'm not sure I can. But I kind of think it's either that or stop hanging out with Vivvie and Asher and Emilia and I'm not giving them up."

Henry gave me a sly smile. "Oh, I think you could probably give up Emilia without too much heartbreak."

I snorted and said, "It's different now. I understand her a little more."

Henry glanced down at the carpet and said, "I understand myself a little more now. And I do not like what I see. I don't like being the villain."

"You were never villainous," I told him. "You were stupid. That's what you don't like seeing."

Surprised, he said, "That was vicious."

"And true."

"And true," he admitted, nodding his head. "I used to think I was so on top of things, so good at steering Asher away from disaster, so accomplished at hiding my feelings about my father's death. I thought I could handle anything, and then I got played, just like anyone else. That's the really dumb part: I wanted to be normal, but the notion that I could be manipulated just like anyone else was somehow insulting. People are stupid."

"People are hedgehogs."

"People are hedgehogs," he agreed.

"So," I said, taking a deep breath before meeting his eyes, "if I try to forgive you, will you try to forgive yourself?"

"That isn't easy."

"Don't I know it," I said with a grimace.

"We can't go back."

"No, we can't," I agreed, wishing I were wrong.

"Then we'll need another lie," he said. "Despite outward appearances, Asher is not an idiot. Even if you and I can become friends again, he'll pick up on the difference. With your consent, I'll tell him I kissed you while the school was being held hostage, and it was a bad move on my part. A failed attempt at seduction should be enough to explain away any awkwardness between us, don't you think?"

I remembered that kiss, and how much it had meant to me in the moment. It hurt to remember it now. Henry wasn't the only one having difficulty forgiving himself for being stupid. That was part of why I'd been so angry with him. "Yes," I said slowly. "That will do."

I danced for a long time with my classmates, feeling lightened by my conversation with Henry. I needed to keep my friends, but so did he. It wouldn't be easy to be around him, but maybe, in time, the two of us could work through the guilt we still felt. I was thinking about heading back to the big ballroom for some dessert when Emilia and Vivvie swooped down on me.

"Come on, we need to talk, and it's hard to hear anything in here," Vivvie said, pulling on my arm.

The three of us went out into the hall and Emilia said, "We've been talking to some people about the banner."

"Emilia, it's fine; I don't mind that we lost," I said, and I didn't. The freshman class banner had been adorable: a winter scene full of penguins, where each penguin had a tiny photograph of one of the freshman as its head. Whoever had done the drawing on that banner had serious talent and they'd taken pains to get the angles of the heads just right.

"It's not about that," Vivvie said. "Latimer wants us to do the banner again. In paint."

"It's already in paint," I said, confused.

Emilia shook her head at me. "The stairwells are going to be painted over Christmas. They didn't do it when they re-did the rest of the school because they ran out of time. Latimer wants us to re-create a permanent banner by painting directly on the wall."

"It gets better," Vivvie added. "We've talked to people in the other years and they want do to their own banners, just like ours. Even the teachers want to participate."

We are Hardwicke, I thought.

"I think we can make a better job of it the second time around," Emilia said. "If we get everyone to do their handprints on a piece of paper and then measure the width of those prints, I should be able to calculate the minimum and maximum possible width for each set of prints, depending on how much the fingers are spread. I mean, they should all be spread a little, to look similar, but they don't have to be exactly alike. Once I do that, I can put them in order so the handprints will go all the way to each corner but still be barely touching in the corners. It will be a truly unbroken chain, not what we have now, which only suggests that we're all connected. All we need to do is—"

"Emilia," I said, trying not to laugh. "I get it. That's a great idea, but we don't have to work out all the details tonight."

"But I want it to be right," she said. "It's going to be there forever."

"It's going to be there until the next time they paint the stairwells," I corrected.

"Same thing," Vivvie said with a grin.

I was at the dessert table when William found me. I was surprised to see him as he hadn't been at the party earlier, but perhaps he always arrived late when he wasn't hosting the party.

"I've been looking for you everywhere," he said, sounding annoyed.

"I was dancing in the other ballroom. Adam or Ivy could have told you that."

Adam had once told me William would reappear someday and behave as if nothing had happened. Was that what he was doing now? I didn't think much of that approach to dealing with conflict. It wouldn't solve any underlying problems and felt like a way to dodge responsibility for bad behavior.

"I want to speak to you. Not here," he said, and walked away, assuming I would follow. Once again, I found myself talking to someone in the hallway and wished I'd picked up a dessert first.

Abruptly, he said, "I'd still like you to come to the mansion for Christmas. It can be on your terms. I won't even invite anyone else if you prefer it. I am, after all, the only grandfather you have."

"Gramps—"

"Is your great-grandfather. If he's still alive next Christmas, will he even know who you are? Don't you think it's time you got to know your real grandfather?"

I looked at him sadly and said, "The problem is that I already do."

"So quickly? You haven't really given us a chance to get acquainted."

"I've already explained why I'm going to Boston," I said, struggling to keep a rein on my temper. "You only seem to listen to me when I'm saying things you want to hear. We made a deal: I take your name, you get to show me off as your granddaughter, I come to dinner on Sundays, and you have a say in my education. A say, not complete control. I'll honor that agreement. I'll even do some events with you."

"But not Christmas?" he pressed.

"Seriously? After completely ignoring me for two weeks, you want me to drop my Christmas plans to accommodate some happy-family holiday fantasy?" I shook my head. "You can have the pound of flesh nearest my heart, but the heart I'll keep for myself. I'll see you on Sunday."

I turned to go but he put out a hand to stop me. "Theresa—Tess—it doesn't have to be like this."

"Do you think I want it to be like this?" I said, turning back to face him. "I don't. I'd like to be able to come to your house because I want to be there, not because I've received a summons I can't refuse. I didn't take your name for the sake of a trust fund or because I had a burning desire to become a Keyes. I did it to save Ivy's life, because that was part of our agreement. Has there been anyone in your life who was more than a transaction to you? Ever? I'm not for sale, and I don't want to be treated like a pawn."

"Money is what I have," he said, looking frustrated. "Power is what I have, and understand. I'm trying to give you my world."

"I don't want my grandfather's world. I want my grandfather."

"You want a cuddly teddy bear," he said dismissively. "I don't know how to do that."

"Learn. I'm worth the effort," I said, and walked away.

After the party, Adam dropped us back at the house and said good night. As she was unlocking the door, Ivy said, "I saw you talking to William. Did you have another fight?"

"Sort of? I don't know where I stand with him. I don't know where I want to stand with him. Why do people have to be so confusing?"

She gave me a rueful smile. "We'd all like our lives to be simple: for our friends to be our friends and our enemies to be our enemies. But sometimes you're stuck with people who are neither. People you want to like and trust, but they've shown you something ugly about themselves that puts you on your guard. People you'd like to dismiss and ignore, but they've shown themselves to be more worthwhile than you believed at first."

"You don't trust him," I said.

"That's my choice, based on my experiences with him. You're an entirely different person. Your relationship with him is different, too. Your choice should be yours, not mine."

"He has a lot of power," I said slowly.

"He does."

"And he likes it too much."

"Sometimes," she agreed.

"What do you do when you don't have the power to fix something?" I asked suddenly, thinking of William, of Henry, of Georgia Nolan.

"Admit it, and sit on your hands."

"What?" I'd half-expected her to give me the same answer William had.

"When you feel powerless is when you're most likely to do something foolish," she explained. "Resist the impulse to lash out. Wait. Think. Plan. Decide if winning is really worth it. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's better to ignore your wounded pride, to do damage control and wait for a better opportunity."

"A better opportunity," I echoed, wondering if I would ever be able to go up against Georgia Nolan and win.

"You might get a better shot at your target someday. Or someone else might take care of them for you. If it's someone with self-destructive tendencies, they might even do it themselves, with a little help."

"You sound like an assassin," I said.

"I'm not. I'm much worse. I kill reputations, and if you don't think that's worse, you haven't spent enough time in DC."

On Sunday, William sent his driver for me. I was dressed for dinner, as I had been the past two Sundays, even though I'd assumed it would be a waste of time.

It was a miserable evening. William was very formal, almost cold, and it was more awkward than the first Sunday I'd spent with him. In a way, it was worse than not having come at all. I couldn't tell whether he was angry or hurt or frustrated or something else altogether.

As I was leaving, I hesitated a moment before reaching into my backpack. "This is for you. For Christmas."

"Thank you," he said stiffly, without looking down at the present I'd just handed him. "Most thoughtful."

"Go ahead. Open it," I urged. "It's not much."

With a slight frown, he tore the paper, opened the shallow box, and stared at the contents. It was a photograph, and although the frame was cheap by his standards, the contents were priceless: it was a copy of the picture of me with Tommy.

He made a choking noise and gave me a quick glance of disbelief. "This. This is you?"

"Yes."

He was looking at the picture with a longing so intense, so personal, that I felt like an intruder. "I should have been there," he said in an unsteady voice. "I should have been there."

Was he talking to himself or to me? I didn't know how to respond. "I thought you might want it, to remember him."

"Yes," he said, and suddenly the mask of distant politeness slammed back into place. "Yes. Thank you."

"How'd it go?" Ivy asked when I got home.

"He liked the photograph. Everything else was pretty crappy."

"He still giving you the cold shoulder?"

"He wasn't hostile," I said slowly, still puzzled by his behavior. "Just very distant. As if I were a total stranger."

Ivy nodded. "That's one of his signature moves. You'd be surprised how often it works. He's a powerful man, so most people want him to like them."

Wait, he did this all the time? Suddenly, I felt less guilty about some of the things I'd said at the Hardwicke party. I liked William and wanted him to like me. I just wasn't sure how far I should go to make that happen.

Hardwicke closed the week of Christmas so the staff could have some time off. On the day before Christmas Eve, we were packing for Boston when William's driver dropped off a gift for me.

"Well, at least he listens to me some of the time," I said, looking at the large flattish box. Clothing, I deduced. I hoped it wasn't the red dress.

"Hmm?" Adam said. He'd come over so we could do an early Christmas together before Ivy and I went to visit Gramps.

"A month ago, he wanted to give me a car for Christmas. Or a skiing vacation in Switzerland. Or… you get the idea. I told him I wanted a normal present."

Ivy said gently, "Those are normal presents for some of your classmates."

"I know, but I'm not them." I opened the box. It was flannel pajamas, thick and soft, and a pair of fuzzy slippers. And next to the slippers, a small teddy bear, wearing matching pajamas and slippers. My eyes filled with tears.

Adam said, "Are you all right?"

"Yes," I said, staring at the note I'd found sticking out of a tiny pocket on the bear's pajama top. "Yes."

The note read, "I'm willing to try."