First Daughter

'You saw the snake?'

'I heard it.'

'I didn't realize.'

'You were busy.'

The words stung him, though that was hardly her intent. The wound his inattention had inflicted was still as raw as on the day he'd held Emma's lifeless body in his arms. There wasn't anything that could prepare you for the death of your child. It was unnatural, and therefore incomprehensible. There was no solace. In that light, perhaps Sharon's turning to the Church was understandable. There came a time when the pain you carried inside you was insupportable. One way or another you needed to grope your way toward help.

They had reached the heart of the maze, a small square space with a stone bench. They sat in silence. Jack watched the shadows creeping over the lawns and gardens. The treetops seemed to be on fire.

'I felt her,' Alli said at last. 'Emma was there with us in that horrible house.'

And it was at that moment, with the utterance of those words, that Jack felt them both brushed by the feathers of a mystery of infinite proportions. He felt in that moment that in entering the boxwood maze, in finding their way to its center, they had both touched a wisdom beyond human understanding, and in so doing were bound together in the same mysterious way, for the rest of their lives.

'But how is that possible?' He spoke as much to himself as he did to her.

She shrugged. 'Why do I like Coke and not root beer?' she said. 'Why do I like blue more than red?'

'Some things just are.'

She nodded. 'There you go.'

'But this is different.'

'Why is it different?' Alli said.

'Because Emma's dead.'

'Honestly, I don't know what that means.'

Jack pondered this a moment, then shook his head. 'I don't either.'

'Then there's no reason why we shouldn't feel Emma's presence,' she said.

'When you put it that way…'

With the absolute surety of youth, she said, 'How else can it be put?'

Jack could think of any number of alternatives, but they all fell within the strict beliefs of the skeptics, scientific and religious alike.

And because he felt the wingtips of mystery still fluttering about them, he told her what he'd never been able to tell anyone else. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, his fingers knit together, he said, 'After Sharon and I broke up, I started to wonder: Is this all there is? I mean life, the world that we can see, hear, smell, touch.'

'Why did it come up then?' Alli asked.

Jack groped for an answer. 'Because without her, I became-I don't know-unmoored.'

'I've been unmoored all my life.' Alli sat forward herself. 'Sometimes I think I was born asking, Is this all there is? But for me the answer was always, No, the world is out there beyond the bars of your cage.'

Jack turned to her. 'Do you really think of your world as a cage?'

She nodded. 'It's small enough, Jack. You've been in it, you ought to know.'

'Then I'm glad Emma came into it.'

'For such a short time!'

The genuine lamentation broke Jack's heart all over again. 'And she had you, Alli, though it was only for a short time.'

It was growing cooler as the shadows extended their reach across the vast lawns, hedges, and flower beds. Alli shivered, but when Jack asked her whether she wanted to go back inside, she shook her head.

'I don't want to go back there,' she whispered. 'I couldn't bear it.'

Without thinking, Jack put a protective arm around her, and to his slight surprise, she moved closer to him.

'I want to tell you about Emma,' she said at last.

Jack, stunned, said nothing.

Alli turned her face to him. 'I think that's why she's still here. I think she wants me to tell you now. She wants you to know all about her.'

THIRTY — EIGHT

IT TOOK the better part of an hour for Jack to convince Dr. Saunderson and the powers that be at Emily House that Alli wasn't joking when she said she couldn't spend another night there. In the end, though, he was obliged to call in the big gun.

'She'll be with me, sir,' Jack said to the president-elect.

'That's what she wants, Jack?'

'It is, sir.' Jack moved away from where Dr. Sanderson sat in a pool of lamplight behind her enormous ornate desk. 'Frankly, I don't see any other way to get through to her. Every other avenue has been exhausted.'

'So I understand,' Edward Carson said gloomily. 'All right, then. You have until noon tomorrow.'

'But, sir, that's hardly any time at all.'

'Jack, the inauguration is the day after tomorrow. No less than three top shrinks have evaluated her without coming to any conclusion except that she hasn't been harmed. Thank God for that.'

'Sir, it's imperative we find who abducted her.'

'I applaud your impulse as a lawman, Jack, but this is nonnegotiable. Alli has a duty to be at my and my wife's side at the ceremony. We didn't go through all this secrecy only for her to miss the most important photo op of her life. And after all, what's important is that Alli's safe and sound. I don't care to know about what happened to her, and frankly I'm not surprised she doesn't want to relive it. I sure as hell wouldn't.'

It must be single-mindedness, Jack thought, that put such a hard, shiny shell around all politicians, conservative, liberal, or independent. He knew the president-elect's mind was set. No argument would sway him. 'All right, sir. I'll deliver Alli tomorrow at noon.'

'Good,' Carson said. 'One more thing. I must insist on a Secret Service detail.'

'I understand how you feel, sir,' Jack said, thinking their presence might not be a big problem, but it would have to be dealt with. 'Just so you know, right now seeing a detail isn't going to be good for Alli. I need her to open up about what happened while she was in captivity. Feeling hemmed in is going to make that job more difficult than it already is.'

There was silence on the other end of the line while Carson mulled this over. 'All right, a compromise, then. I want them on the roads with you. They'll exit their vehicle only in case of an emergency.'

'And then, sir, I'd like to pick her permanent detail. I've a couple of people in mind. I don't want a repeat of what happened at Langley Fields.'

'You've got it, Jack, we're on the same page there,' Carson said. 'Now let me settle matters with Dr. Saunderson.'

ALLI TURNED when Jack emerged from Emily House. She'd been standing on the veranda, watching the guards crisscross the lawns at random intervals. He saw the anticipation in her face, but also the fear.

'Well?'

Jack nodded, and immediately relief flooded her face.

On the way to his car, she said, 'I want to sit in the backseat.'

Jack understood immediately. On the way back to Washington, he kept one eye on the road, one on the rearview mirror, checking on the vehicle carrying the two-man Secret Service detail, and on Alli.

'Tell me where she was sitting,' Alli said.

He knew she meant Emma. 'To your right, just a little more. Okay, right there.'

Alli spent the rest of the drive in that position, her eyes closed. A certain peacefulness settled over her, as if she had been transported out of time and place. Then, with a jolt, he realized that her near trance-like state reminded him of what had stolen over him after he'd killed Andre in the library. And he wondered whether he and