DUTCH AND GINA: AFTER THE FALL (15 page)

“I’m no longer a general prac

oner,” she said to

the driver, whom she didn’t recognize.

The driver, a Secret Service agent, stepped out of the truck. Sam backed up slightly. “Are you Samantha Redding?”

“I’m Dr. Redding, yes. Who are you?”

The agent opened the back door of the well- nted truck, as if he was invi ng her to get inside. She, instead, merely peeped in. And there they were, the President and his wife, staring back at her. Although Sam was as adept as Dutch at publicly hiding her true emo ons, she nearly buckled with shock when she saw them sitting there.

“This is President Har--,” the agent started.

“I know who he is,” Sam finished.

“And the First Lady--”

“I know who they are,” Sam said irritably, looking at the agent. “Are you daft?”

Dutch inwardly smiled. She had aged, beau fully he would add, but she was s ll that small, feisty Sam he remembered. “Hello, Sam,” he said.

Dutch Harber, she thought when he spoke to her.

Not that she didn’t know it right away. Every me he was on television, and she happened to be watching, she stared.

“Hello, Rookie.”

Dutch smiled.

“Mrs. Harber,” Sam said, nodding toward Gina.

“Hi,” Gina said, now seated beside Dutch. She’d met a lot of Dutch’s ex-girlfriends/bed partners since their union, but this one had every one of them beat in the looks department. And the fact that she was so petite made her stand out too.

“You know why I’m here,” Dutch said.

“I could venture an excellent guess, but I would rather not assume.”

“My daughter,” Dutch said, and the young man in the seat behind him, looked up in what Sam could only describe as shock.
What daughter
, the puzzled look on his innocent face seemed to ask.

“I would like a moment of your me,” Dutch went on.

“I’ll be late for work. I’m never late for work.” Gina was astounded by her comment. Here was the President of the United States on her driveway, asking President of the United States on her driveway, asking about a daughter he just found out a few days ago even existed, and she was worried about ge ng to work on time? But then again, Gina thought, Dutch did warn that she was an oddball.

“Surely you can make an excep on in this case,” Gina said to her.

It was obvious that Sam didn’t appreciate making an excep on, but she was no idiot, either. She knew this couldn’t wait.

She stood erect, looked around at her neighborhood.

She understood the delicacy. “Pull into the garage,” she said, “to avoid, as I presume you wish to avoid, prying eyes.”

Gina smiled. She was a sharp lady. “Thank-you,” she said.

The agent jumped back behind the wheel of the SUV

just as another agent jumped out and began walking behind Sam.

She looked at him. “Yes?” she said.

“I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t need an escort into my own home.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said again undeterred.

Sam wanted to argue the point more, but knew she would lose.

He went with her.

“She’s turning back around,” Sam said as she stood in the middle of her spacious living room and flipped shut her cell phone. “She was on her way to work, which is only a few blocks from here, so she shouldn’t be long. But she’s not a happy camper. She doesn’t like to be late, either.”

Dutch was seated on the sofa that faced the front bay window, one arm on the arm of the sofa, the other across the back. Gina was seated beside him. Close beside him, Sam no ced, like some clinging child. The media always pegged her as some bossy, domineering First Lady who wore the pants in the Harber household almost as frequently as the president. But she didn’t come across that way to Sam at all. Dutch ran that show, Sam thought. The trauma of that kidnapping a few weeks ago, and Dutch’s collapse, may be the reason, but Sam found it curious nonetheless.

“What’s her name?” Dutch found the strength to ask her. He’d never felt so helpless, so unsure in his life.

Sam considered him. “Jade,” she said.
Like the
color of your eyes
, she wanted to add. “Jade Redding,” she added instead.

Jade, Dutch thought.
Jade
.

“You never married?” he then asked her.

“I married,” Sam admi ed. “I’m divorced now, but I married when she was a couple months old. To another med student, a really good guy at the me.

But we didn’t pretend that he was her father or anything like that.”

“What did she know of her father?” Dutch asked, and Gina could feel his pain when he said those words.

“Of me.”

Sam felt it too. She hesitated. “I told her that her father was dead,” she said, staring him dead in the eyes.

Dutch swallowed hard. Fought back tears, anger, hatred, every emo on imaginable. “Why?” he found the strength to ask her.

“ That’s a loaded ques on,” Sam answered. And because she was still that oddball, that was all, for now anyway, that she intended to say about it.

Dutch didn’t push the issue, either. He was a man who knew not to push the issue. Not when he was this close to mee ng his own flesh and blood, a child as much his as Li le Walt was his. He knew, and Gina much his as Li le Walt was his. He knew, and Gina had already insisted, that he would have to submit to a DNA test to confirm it, but it would only confirm it for others. Because if that child had any iota of a chance of not being his, he just knew that Sam, being Sam, would have made that perfectly clear in the driveway.

So he just sat there, studying her, wondering what kind of mother she had been to his daughter, and then feeling a twinge of guilt for even a emp ng to judge her.

“So you became a doctor a er all?” Gina finally asked when it was obvious that neither Sam nor Dutch wanted to pursue the previous line of inquiry. “Dutch had mentioned that you were a pre-med major.”

“Oh,” Sam said, not expec ng such a ques on.

“Yes. I mean I was a general prac oner for years.

But I gave it up, too depressing, and opened up my own bookstore instead.”

“A bookstore?” Gina said with a li in her voice.

What an interes ng person, she thought. A li le strange, for sure. Rarely did doctors give up their lucra ve prac ces to open some risky bookstore in this economy, but it seemed to fit with the kind of woman Dutch said he remembered her as. Different. Her own person. An oddball.

“ That’s very nice,” Gina con nued. “A bookstore.

Chris an received his bachelor’s in Literature and he still has a love for books. Don’t you, Chris?” Chris an cleared his throat and sat erect, clearly uncomfortable with all the eyes on him. He was seated on the opposite end of the sofa, kind of off to himself and out of the way. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Although he had been introduced as an assistant to the First Lady, that blonde hair stacked up on his head and those big, bewildered blue eyes gave him an almost

too-young-to-be-anybody’s-assistant

vibe.

Especially at such a high level. Sam suspected that it was his loyalty more than his ability that got him ahead or, for all she knew, he could be the First Lady’s boy toy.

But then again, she thought, she was being too much of the shrink, and sat down in one of the flanking chairs.

“Would you folks care for any coffee or tea, or anything to drink?”

“No, we’re fine, thank-you,” Gina spoke for all of them. Chris an seemed to smile and agree with the First Lady.

Sam looked at Dutch. Or Mister Cool President as they called him around these parts. But this morning he was anything but. Sam could see the tenseness all over his muscular body, and the way he kept running his hand across his mouth as if he had a mustache he was smoothing down gave him a nervous, broodingly though ull look. Nothing like the tough-as-nails, take no prisoners image he projected on television. But completely like the young man she once knew, and slept with, all those years ago.

As if clairvoyantly, they exchanged a glance as soon as she thought about that night, as if he was thinking about the same thing. She even saw his intense green eyes trail down the length of her body the way he used to do when she was trying to teach him Calculus, and he was trying to teach her fellacio. She looked away from him.

But as usual when Dutch Harber was in a room, it was his mood that set the tone. That was why they soon fell into a kind of quiet desperation, with no words being spoken but plenty being thought. Sam had already informed them that she would tell her story only once, and only a er her daughter, who hadn’t heard it, could hear it too.

heard it, could hear it too.

“It’s a story that’s never been told,” she had said to Dutch. “Not ever. The thought of repea ng it would be a bit much to ask.”

She believed Dutch understood, it was hard to tell behind that brooding look of his, but his wife seemed to get it. Sam found that she liked his wife. Surprisingly.

Everything about that morning, in fact, was surprising to Sam. Although the Secret Service had been all over her home to ensure that she was home alone as she claimed, and were now securing the perimeter in that clandes ne way she’d only seen in movies, it s ll didn’t feel surreal to her. The president was here, the First Lady was here, the Secret Service was here, there, and everywhere. But it s ll didn’t seem surreal.

It didn’t hit her, in fact, un ll she heard her daughter’s Jeep pull into the driveway. And although the hit was outwardly subtle, it was enough that even Dutch noticed it.

And when the door opened, and a voice could be heard, the mood in the room quickly changed from quiet despera on to an almost animated surge of panic.

“Ma,” the voice of a young woman yelled out as soon as the door was closed, “I’m going to be late for work. What couldn’t wait until I got--” When she turned the corner, entered the living room, and saw whom she immediately recognized as the president and First Lady, she stopped in her tracks.

The world, in that room, stopped too.

Dutch and Gina stared at the young lady in front of them for very different reasons than she was staring at them. She was five-two, pe te like her mother, with long, brown hair that beau fully framed her light-brown face. With the contrast of those dark green eyes against her brown skin, she was an undeniable looker.

So much so that to see her standing there, so beau ful, was startling.

“She’s stunning,” Gina found herself saying in a voice barely heard.

Chris an, however, heard it. “Yes,” he replied, with his own dead stare.

Dutch was too emo onal to speak. All he could do was stare at this young woman, this remarkable young lady, who he knew instinctively belonged to him.

“What’s going on?” she asked her mother, although she was still staring at the First Couple.

“Come in and sit down, dear,” Sam said, determined to keep it together. This mee ng was a long me coming and she wasn’t about to muck it up with emotionalism. She created this mess, it was up to her to smooth it over.

Jade, in her dress slacks and tucked-in silk blouse, walked over to the only other available chair, and sat down, her eyes still riveted on Dutch and Gina.

“I wish I could tell you,” Sam said with a smile she didn’t mean, “that seeing the president and the First Lady will be the bigger shock. But I doubt it.” Chris an looked at Sam. How could she be so cavalier at a me like this, he wondered. And it angered him. Her daughter obviously was a frail li le thing. She should be beside her daughter, holding her, protecting her, not cracking jokes.

“Hi,” Gina said to her with a smile. “You were on your way to work?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jade said with the sweetest smile Gina had ever seen. Dutch, too, noticed it.

“What kind of work do you do?” Gina asked her.

“I’m a schoolteacher,” Jade said proudly, but Christian, to Gina’s shock, seemed alarmed.

“A schoolteacher?” he asked with surprise in his

“A schoolteacher?” he asked with surprise in his voice, causing both the First Lady and Sam to look at him. The president couldn’t take his eyes off of Jade.

“Yes,” Jade said to Chris an, surprised by his surprise, “I’m a schoolteacher.”

“But you’re such a li le thing,” Chris an replied.

“How can you teach school? You can’t be much bigger than the students.”

“You wouldn’t exactly tower over them, either,” Sam said to Christian, embarrassing him.

Jade looked at the young man who appeared to be right around her twenty-three years. “I teach First Grade,” she assured him. And it worked. They exchanged a smile.

Then Jade looked at her mother, as if her response to Chris an spurred some other thought. “Is it,” she started, but then stopped when she realized how badly her mother would excoriate her if she was wrong.

“Is it what?” Sam asked her.

Jade looked at the president. “Is that why you’re here?” she asked him. “Is it because you plan to make mom your surgeon general or something?”

“Oh, honestly!” Sam shot out before Dutch could say a word. “You are so dense, Jade, I declare you are. I don’t know how Henry puts up with you. Of course he’s not here to make me his surgeon general. I’m not even a surgeon for crying out loud! And sit up straight, why are you so slumped down in front of these people?” Dutch looked at his daughter, as her small body literally backed up as she sat up straight. And already he was beginning to realize what kind of mother Sam had been to his child. An odd wolf like Sam rarely made a good parent.

“It’s not about me,” Sam con nued, “he’s here because of you.”

“
Me
?” Jade said, her big eyes filled with confusion.

“Yes, you. It’s about you. He’s your father.” Dutch and Gina both were horrified. She blurted it out. She just sat there and blurted it out. They immediately looked from Sam to Jade. Jade seemed more disbelieving than shocked.

“My. . . father?” she asked her mother.

“Your real one, yes.”

“But I thought. . . I thought you said my father, my real father, was dead. You told me over and over that my real father was dead.” Jade was staring at her mother with a kind of searing indictment in her eyes.

She seemed certain this was some joke, some cruel hoax her mother was playing on her. But, Dutch also no ced, staring at Jade, she didn’t seem the least surprised that her mother could be cruel like that.