Marina
Nate takes the podium to thunderous applause from the ballroom, ducking his head and smiling in a way that both he and James inherited from their dad. Next to me, Finn puts two fingers in his mouth and lets out an ear-piercing whistle that makes me jump and slosh mineral water over my hand. The rest of our table turns and glares, and I shove him, while he and James just laugh. James hands me his napkin to dry off with.
Nate adjusts the microphone. “Thank you. First I want to thank the National Committee for having me and all of you for coming. It’s your support that helped our party take back the White House, and hopefully with your continued support, we’ll soon be taking back Congress. So I sincerely hope you’re enjoying your eight-hundred-dollar piece of salmon.”
Gentle laughter ripples through the crowd. Finn looks down at his empty plate and my barely touched one in horror.
“Our political system is broken,” Nate says. “Money and special interests speak louder in D.C. than the voices of our citizens. But the beauty of our democracy is that it’s always evolving, and nothing that has been broken is ever beyond repair as long as we proceed with courage, integrity, and an eye toward our common interests as a people.”
I may not understand politics, but I understand Nate. Most of the men in this room only care about power, but when Nate talks about working for the good of all people, I know he means it. He really cares, when most of us just say we do. I glance over at James and smile at the earnest, worshipful look in his eyes as he looks up at his brother.
“It is up to us to rebuild our government and the promise of our democracy. If we don’t—”
Something explodes. A concussion rips through the air, the sound so loud that it feels more like being hit than hearing something. I discover myself hunched in my chair, hands jammed over my ears, with no memory of having moved. Around me people are screaming and scattering, some running, others falling out of their chairs and flattening themselves to the red and gold hotel carpet.
On the stage, Nate has crumpled and fallen behind the podium. I stare at him, frozen, the shouts around me going silent in my ears. He’s staring out at the crowd, his cheek pressed to the floor of the stage, and for a second I swear he’s looking right at me.
What’s going on? Why is no one helping him up?
Then I see the blood. It’s blooming from his chest the way the garish red rhododendrons in Mrs. Murphy’s yard unfurl when the sun comes out.
The world regains its speed and noise with a crack. My throat feels raw, and I realize I’m screaming.
Nate’s been shot.
James lunges toward the stage, tearing through people to get to his fallen brother. Finn, along with a half a dozen other people, turns and runs in the opposite direction, out of the ballroom. I go after James.
Secret Service agents have bundled the vice president out of the ballroom, and a line of them forms a barricade across the front of the stage, pushing back against the people who are being thrust toward them by the surge of the fleeing crowd. Behind the agents, the men who were already on the stage are clustered around Nate, including Mayor McCreedy and Senator Gaines, who’s kneeling over Nate, pressing a hand to the wound on his chest. James runs full force into the line of agents as though he doesn’t even see them. They catch him around the arm and the collar, holding him back.
“That’s my brother!” he screams, voice barely human. “That’s my brother!”
I find my voice. “He’s James Shaw, let him through!”
Thank God the mayor looks up and says, “It’s okay, gentlemen!” Otherwise I think James might have torn them apart. He’s incandescent with terror, on fire with it, and no force of nature could have held him back. He leaps onto the stage, crashing into the second layer of men between him and his brother and battering his way through. I can only watch helplessly from behind the agents’ line as he kneels at Nate’s side and clutches his hand.
Nate’s eyes roll around the scene horribly, as though he can’t focus them, and I turn and vomit all over the ballroom’s ornate carpet.
Seven
Marina
Time passes. I don’t know how much. The Secret Service herds us out of the ballroom—the crime scene—and I end up sitting on the floor in the lobby, a few feet from where the front doors open and close, sending gusts of frigid air over me, not caring about the years of embedded dirt I’m getting on my beautiful dress. Somewhere I lost one of Sophie’s shoes, and a bruise is rapidly darkening on my arm, which I don’t remember hitting. All around me people are huddled in small groups, crying or answering questions from the agents who spread out to take statements, but I don’t really see them. I know I should be finding Finn or calling Luz or hailing a cab, but all I can do is sit and stare and remember the day James put his parents in the ground.
James seemed to be carved from marble the day of the funeral. Twelve years old, dressed in a new black suit and shoes that were too big for him, with an expression like hard white stone. I stood at the back of the church with my parents on either side of me, two tall columns of black as solid as the walls of my house, and tried to see James’s face, all the way in the front pew with Nate at his side.
He was silent and still, and I kept waiting for him to cry. I would have cried.
My parents told me to give him some space, but as soon as we reached the Shaws’ reception, I ran off and left them at a buffet table collecting plates of crab puffs. I slipped through the crowds like a little fish through a school, bobbing and weaving at waist level, looking for James’s dark head and pale face. I did two laps of the first floor, but he was nowhere. Nate—who was clerking for Justice MacMillan by then and had his own place in Capitol Hill but still came home most weekends—was shaking hands and taking condolences. When he saw me, he inclined his head toward the staircase and mimed opening a book.
In the library upstairs, I found James’s suit jacket laid over the back of the sofa and his shiny leather shoes flung into a corner, but there was no sign of James. I called his name, but only silence greeted me. I stepped farther into the room and finally found him curled up in a large wing chair that faced away from the door, so folded in on himself that he was invisible until you got close. I sat down cross-legged on the floor beside him, even though I knew Mom would be mad about the wrinkles in my best navy dress.
“You okay?” I said. I knew he wasn’t, of course, but I didn’t know what else to say.
“Why did your parents name you Marina?” he asked, his voice steady and normal, like it was any other day.
His unnatural calmness unnerved me. “It was my grandmother’s idea. It’s after a character in a play.”
“Shakespeare, right? Pericles, Prince of Tyre,” he said. “Marina was born on a boat during a storm.”
“Yeah.”
“Mom and Dad named Nate after my grandfather, who was the governor of Connecticut. They never expected to have me. Mom said they argued for months over what to name me. She wanted James, and Dad wanted Michael.”
“How did your mom win?”
He finally met my gaze, and the look in his eyes was like falling and falling and never hitting the ground. “I never asked.”
My tiny heart broke, because I think, even at ten years old, I was already a little in love with him. “James—”
He jumped to his feet before I could finish my sentence, and then the lamp on the table beside him was flying into the wall and shattering into a thousand pieces.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen!” he cried, his hand bleeding from where he’d hit the lamp with the side of his fist. “How could it just happen and there’s no way to change it? One stupid second and a wet road and everything’s ruined forever?”
The table followed the lamp as he heaved it over. It fell onto its side with a crash. I clambered to my feet and away from him.
“I’m so sorry,” I said tearfully.
But James couldn’t hear me anymore. He was beyond words. He howled like a wounded animal as
he tore the library to pieces. I knew I should stop him, comfort him somehow, but I couldn’t. My best friend in the world was suddenly something alien and absent, and it frightened me. I ran from the library and back to my parents’ side, and when the sounds of James’s cries began to filter down the stairs, Nate excused himself and the staff showed us out.
I didn’t see James again for three weeks, and we never spoke about that day. I tried to forget it ever happened.
But now it’s all I can think about.
“Marina?”
I feel a hand on my shoulder and dimly realize there’s someone crouched beside me. I turn and focus my bleary eyes on him. “Finn?”
“Get up, okay?” He helps me to my feet, and I don’t resist. “God, you’re freezing. Where’s James?”
“The, uh . . . The paramedics came, and . . .” Finn’s jacket is suddenly warm on my shoulders.
“James went in the ambulance with Nate?”
The sound of Nate’s name throws the real world into sharp relief. I really see Finn for the first time, and I hit him hard in the chest with both hands.
“Where did you go?” I cry as he reels backward and crashes into a decorative end table supporting a lush flower arrangement.
“Marina—”
I hit him again, but he’s ready for it this time and catches my hands in his. “You left us! James needed us!”
“I ran after the gunman!” he shouts over my hysterics. He squeezes my hands hard, and the pressure brings me back to earth. “The shot came from behind us, and I thought—it was stupid, but I thought maybe I could catch him. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
I dissolve into sobs, and Finn’s arm comes tentatively around me. He’s practically holding me up, but I still push at him, shoving my hands between us, hitting his chest, unable to stop, and he just lets me.
“I hate you,” I say.
“I know,” he says, and he holds me until I can breathe again.
I pull away and wipe my eyes. “Sorry,” I mumble.
“It’s okay. I’m sure I’ll deserve it someday.”
“We’ve got to get to the hospital. James’ll be—” I choke and can’t finish the sentence. “He can’t be alone right now.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Finn says. “What if we’re just in the way or . . .”
“Things gotten too serious for you?” I snap. “James needs us, and we’re going. You’re the one who’s so desperate to be his friend. You’re not getting out of it now.”
“Yeah, okay.” Finn raises his hands in surrender. “Let’s find your shoe, and we’ll get a cab.”
There’s already a small crowd forming outside of the hospital. Someone is passing out candles. How do they do that so quickly? Did someone run to the CVS and clear them out? The sight almost starts me crying again, but I clench my teeth together so hard it hurts and concentrate on that instead.
I march toward the desk inside the sliding glass doors with Finn trailing me. One nurse is busy with a line of ER patients who are coughing or clutching bleeding wounds or screaming babies, and another is busy entering information into a computer. I push my way past the sick people to the front of the desk.
“I need some help,” I say.
“You’ll need to go to the back of the line, miss,” the triage nurse says, barely glancing at me.
“Hey, excuse me!” I wave my hand at the second nurse in front of the computer. “This is important. I’m looking for James Shaw, the congressman’s brother? I need to know where they’ve taken them.”
“We’re not giving out any information about the congressman,” the nurse says, “and you need to get to the back of the line.”
“Look, you don’t understand. I know Nate Shaw, okay, and his brother will want me—”
Finn pushes me aside roughly. My vision goes red, but before I can tear his head off, he’s speaking to the nurse in a smooth, calm voice. “Nurse Shapiro? I apologize for my friend. She doesn’t mean to be rude; she’s just worried. See, we’re friends of James Shaw and we were with him tonight at the Mandarin. He’s just a kid, like us, and you must know what happened to his parents. I know you’re only trying to do your job and we’ve barreled in here making demands, but isn’t there anything you could do?”
Unbelievably, the nurse’s face softens. She picks up the phone on her desk. “Just a moment.”
Finn turns to look at me and sees my openmouthed shock. “What? Some people find me charming.”
“Apparently.”
“Plus, you might find people more helpful if you don’t order them around like they work for you.”
“Well, considering how much money my family contributes to the hospitals of this city, they might as well.”
Finn rolls his eyes and turns away from me, and I watch Nurse Shapiro speak quietly with the person on the other end of the line, trying to figure out what they’re saying. After a moment, she covers the receiver with one hand. “The duty nurse upstairs has gone to speak to Mr. Shaw and the special agents on the floor. You’ll need their permission to go up.”
“Do you think—” I turn to Finn and stop when I see his expression. He’s staring into the ER waiting room, which is separated from us by a glass dividing wall. Sometime in the last thirty seconds, his face went from normal to a sick shade of gray. His focus seems to be on a white-haired woman in a wheelchair who’s playing cards with a little girl sitting beside her. “You okay?” He doesn’t hear me, so I tap his arm. “Hello?”
He turns and blinks at me, as though remembering I’m here. “Yeah.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
He looks away. “I just really hate hospitals.”
“Well, sorry I dragged you here,” I say. “Nate was only shot, after all.”
“That’s not—”
“Miss?”
I spin around to look at the nurse. “Yes?”
“An agent is coming to escort you upstairs.”
I release a breath. “Thank God.”
The nurse directs us to an elevator at the end of the hall and tells us to wait there. When the doors ding and slide open, a plainclothes agent from the Capitol Police stands inside with Mayor McCreedy. Finn does a double take that would be funny if everything weren’t so horrible.
“Oh, Marina, thank goodness you’re here. James is frantic.” The mayor turns to the agent beside him. “She’s fine, I know her. This is your friend?”
“Finn Abbott,” I say. The agent takes the ID Finn offers. “He was with us at the fund-raiser.”
“Come in, come in.” The mayor waves his hands, and we step inside the elevator. “They’re fine, right?”
The officer nods once he’s checked Finn’s ID against the list of names in his hand and presses the button for the third floor. My stomach drops as we start to rise.
“How’s Nate?” I ask.
“No word yet,” the mayor says. “But not good, I think.”
“Has someone called Vivianne?” I ask. She’s Nate’s fiancée, and she’s been in New York on business.
“She chartered a plane from JFK. She should be here soon.”
So James is alone. Enclosed in this tiny space, sandwiched between the mayor of D.C., a Capitol Police agent, and Finn Abbott, I have a sudden, wild desire to bolt. James will be a wreck; what good will I possibly be to him? God, what if Nate dies? Finn was right; we don’t belong here. I should be at home under my covers, with Luz bringing me mugs of warm milk and murmuring to me in Spanish. I can’t breathe in here.
There’s a ding, and the elevator doors open. My choking claustrophobia should get better, but it doesn’t. It gets worse. We’re here, and there’s no going back.
The floor is nearly deserted. Two nurses—a woman in peach scrubs and a man in green—sit at the nurses’ station, and there are Capitol Police in black uniforms, plainclothes special agents, and a few members of the Secret Service gathered in small groups up and down the hall, but there are no rushing doctors, no patient
s ambling along trailing IVs, no loved ones with flowers. The floor has been cleared. Everyone’s here for Nate alone.
The waiting room is across the hallway from the nurses’ station and is also walled in glass. There are several men inside—I recognize Senator Gaines—all talking together in low voices, and an officer stands beside the door. He nods at us as we approach.
James is sitting by himself in a corner of the room, hunched over in a chair with his hands clasped in front of him. For a second, he’s that little boy hiding in a library armchair again.
He looks up, and his eyes meet mine. I rush to kneel at his feet. “Oh my God, James—”
“H-he’s in surgery. They don’t know if . . . if . . .”
He crumbles forward, burying his face in the place where my shoulder meets my neck, and I feel hot tears against my skin. I glance up at Finn, who’s edged closer to us, and we exchange a helpless look. He sits beside James and puts a tentative hand on his shoulder.
“Why would someone do this?” James says between sobs. “Why Nate?”
“I don’t know,” I say helplessly.
“There’s no reason, man,” Finn says. “You can’t make sense out of this.”
“I wish my mom and dad were here,” James says.
I rub my hands across his back. “I know.”
James eventually pulls away from me, wiping his face clean with his sleeve. He leans back in his chair to rest his head against the wall, and I see for the first time that his white tuxedo shirt is stained with blood. A large red patch on his chest, where he cradled his brother, has dried and turned brown and stiff. Nate’s blood. Dry and dead on James’s shirt.
I can’t look at it.
I’m suddenly filled to the brim with can’ts. Can’t comfort James, can’t fix Nate, can’t change what’s happened.
But damn it, I can get James a clean shirt.
“I’m going to find you something else to wear, okay?” I say shakily.
James looks down at his chest and frowns, like he’s noticing his bloody shirt for the first time. He touches the stain softly, almost reverently.