Long May She Reign (60 page)

He nodded.

“Has Neal noticed?” she asked.

He looked at her with true scorn. “Neal notices
everything
. He only pretends not to, because it makes his stomach hurt.”

Oh. Sometimes, Neal was sort of trapped in her mind as being younger than he actually was—and he would be quite justified if he found that insulting. “Is he doing okay?” she asked.

“I don't know, I guess.” He threw the ball, and the wall actually shook this time. Somewhere, the head usher was cringing. “He still talks to that lady. Says he likes her.”

After—everything, her parents had brought in various therapists for the three of them, although Neal was the only one who had been cooperative. In her case, a series of psychologists and psychiatrists had “stopped by to say hello,” mostly while she was still in the hospital, or at physical therapy sessions, but also during and after interviews with the FBI, and twice when she was downstairs having checkups with Dr. Brooks. Each time, she had been disinterested to the point of nearly being impolite. She knew that Steven had been forced to go to at least one appointment, with three different psychologists so far, but had hated every second.

“What do you think they talk about?” she asked.

Steven snagged the ball one-handed, and then looked over at her. “You really asking, or you trying to figure out what
I
would maybe be talking about?”

Too often, Steven was so busy acting like a jock—or a jerk—that he didn't get enough credit for being unusually intelligent. “Both, I guess,” Meg said. “Are you still going?”

He made a face. “I said, no way, but they say it seems like I'm maybe, you know, depressed, and that I have to go for a while, so it really sucks. I mean,
you
don't have to, and it
happened
to you. It's totally not fair.”

Her parents weren't happy about her refusal to participate in any form of mental health rehabilitation, but the difference was, that she could get away with saying no—and Steven couldn't. “No, it isn't,” she said. “But at least I abuse Beth and Preston's goodwill by talking to them a lot about stuff.”

Steven shrugged and threw his ball.

“Steven, you don't even talk to me anymore,” Meg said. Despite the fact that, for most of their lives, they had been nearly inseparable. “So, I kind of figure you're not saying much to Vinnie or Jim or anyone, either.”

“We're not
supposed
to talk to you,” Steven said, “because you might get upset, and like, cry or something.”

And now, yet again, they found themselves mired on that hellish good intentions road. Meg shook her head. “You can always talk to me, about anything you want. And even if I got upset, what's the big deal? We
should
be upset, so we might as well quit acting like we aren't.”

Steven shrugged, not looking at her.

Great. Half the time, it almost felt as though, privately, they all hated her for having had—bad luck. Like it was her damn fault or something. “I didn't do anything wrong,” Meg said stiffly. “And I'm getting really tired of you—I don't know—
blaming
me for it. I'm sorry I got kidnapped, okay? I'm sorry I ended up crippled. I'm sorry it's been
inconvenient
for you, all right?”

Steven threw the ball so hard that it bounced all the way out into the room and crashed against his dresser.

Meg got up. “Fine. Just—do what you want. If you want to hate me, go right ahead. And—go to hell, while you're at it.”

“You want to know what I think?” he asked, as she limped towards his door. “What I think is, fuck you for almost getting killed.”

What? Like that was fair? She resisted the urge to slug him with her cane. Aim for his pitching arm, maybe, and see how he liked it. “Yeah, well, fuck you for being
mad
at me for almost getting killed.”

She was furious, and he was probably even more pissed off and they stared at each other, but then, suddenly, they both laughed.

“Please pretend you're happy to see me, okay?” she asked. “And come up and watch a movie with us.”

Steven nodded, but stayed on his bed, his shoulders slumping.

“Come on,” she said.

He shrugged.

Talk about one step forward and two steps back. “What?” she asked.

He looked at her unhappily. “They almost got you again this week.”

It hadn't even crossed her mind that he might know about the latest spate of threats—and maybe be obsessing about them. “I didn't know they told you guys about that,” she said.

“Well, yeah,” he said, looking at her as though she had an IQ of about twelve. “I mean, we suddenly have a whole bunch more agents with us, and we're not supposed to think something's going on? And Mom and Dad were all flippo, and we had to come home right after school, even though I had practice.”

Was he mad that he'd had to miss practice, or had he been worried about her? “It was just some guys your age screwing around,” she said. “It wasn't any big deal.”

Steven scowled. “Turned
out
that way, that's all. It might not have.”

Yeah, but there wasn't a single god-damn thing in the world she could do about that, one way or the other.

“Next time, it might be real,” he said.

And the time after that, and the time after that, and the time after
that
. So, what else was new? “Yeah,” she said. “Come up and watch a movie, anyway.”

She thought he was going to get mad again, but he just sighed and stood up.

“It better not be the damn
Sound of Music
,” he said.

What an excellent idea; she should have thought of it herself. “It will
definitely
be
The Sound of Music
,” she said.

He groaned, but followed her out to the elevator, anyway.

*   *   *

THE MOVIE NEAL
picked out was supposed to be a comedy, but mainly, it was profane and scatological. Her brothers
loved
it. Her father and Trudy both came up at different points, were disgusted, and left after about ten minutes of puerility each.

When the movie ended, Trudy appeared again to haul Neal downstairs to get ready for bed, and to warn Steven that he could only stay up for another hour and a half.

“I'm going to watch
The Sound of Music
now,” Meg said, when Neal started complaining that it wasn't fair that he had to go to bed so soon.

“Yuck,” he said, and followed Trudy without any further argument.

“How many times you seen this movie?” Steven asked, as it started.

A couple of hundred, maybe? “Not nearly enough times,” she said.

He laughed, and went into the little kitchen to fix some more popcorn, also bringing back a Coke for her and some orange juice for himself.

While Maria was running into the abbey at top speed, disgracefully late for evening prayer or vespers or whatever it was that she had been missing while cavorting in the Alps, Meg glanced over at him.

“How's baseball?” she asked.

“Okay.” He drank some orange juice. “We're kind of not as good as I thought we'd be.”

Steven had won his first start, but they'd gotten blown out in their other scrimmage—by a notoriously weak team. She was pretty sure his ERA was in the 1.30 range—although if she asked, he'd be mad that she hadn't committed the exact number to memory. “Are they being okay about you playing?” she asked.

Steven shook his head. “They're all uptight and stuff. Like someone's going to show up and grab me right off the ballfield, or something. I mean, they might, you know,
shoot
me, but they might do that any time, so why's baseball any worse?”

Because, more often than not, he was standing out there all by himself on the mound, a perfect target. The Secret Service hated having to try and protect a large open field, especially at away games, where, no matter how much advance work they did, they just weren't as familiar with the surrounding area.

“I mean, you were coming home from school,” he said. “And Mom was just, you know, going to some dumb speech. If something bad's going to happen, anyway, I'd way rather be playing ball and having fun and stuff, you know?”

Made sense to her. But, it still sucked beyond belief that a ninth grader had to spend time worrying about whether a maniac was going to kill him someday, just to make a political point.

“Dad says he's coming to all my games,” Steven said, “and he was maybe going to come to the practices, too, but that was getting—it was screwing me up at the plate and all.”

Meg nodded. They were so used to their parents
not
being able to show up for things regularly, that it seemed kind of unfamiliar when one of them did.

Steven glanced over at her tentatively. “I'm supposed to think he just wants to see me play. But he's figuring that like, if he's there, they'll decide to shoot
him
, instead of me.”

Yes, that was the way her father's mind would be working. For that matter, it was also probably exactly how hate-crazed terrorists would react, if confronted with the situation. Knocking off the First Gentleman would be far more of a thrill than going after his son.

Steven looked guilty. “So, if something bad happens to him, it's going to be my fault.”

Meg shook her head. “No way. If something bad happens, it'll be
their
fault. The terrorists, I mean—not Mom and Dad.” Which maybe wasn't terribly helpful. “I mean, nothing's going to happen, but, at least if he comes, he gets to feel like he can protect you a little, and you get to have him at your games, so that's good.”

“I guess,” Steven said, without much conviction.

They were getting along so well that she hated to start trouble, but— “Do you, um, tell any of this stuff to the person they're having you talk to?” she asked.

Steven shook his head. “Hell, no. But, the guy they found this time, like, works with baseball players, when they're in slumps and everything.
Real
baseball players, I mean. You know, with visualization, and all.”

Her parents were not fools; a professional sports psychologist was a clever choice. “That's cool,” Meg said. “Has he ever done anything for the Red Sox?”

Steven nodded with actual enthusiasm. “Yeah. Even though he's not allowed to tell me their names or anything. Mostly, I guess, he hangs out near here, but he travels around, too. Like, at spring training, and during the off-season. I don't talk to him, you know, about our
family
, but the sports stuff is excellent.” He grinned at her. “I might still be, you know,
sad
, but I swear I'm locating the ball better.”

Well, okay, as long as he had his priorities straight. Meg grinned back at him.

“Do we
really
have to watch this stupid movie?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “We do.”

35

THE PLAN WAS
for her to check into the hospital after lunch on Sunday, and have her operation first thing Monday morning. Or, operations, if they decided to do some more work on her hand. So, she was either going to feel terrible when the anesthesia wore off—or
really
terrible.

To her amazement, Neal and her parents, and Trudy, went off, bright and early, to mass at St. John's Church, across Lafayette Park, without even having brunch, first. She had assumed that they were only doing it to make Trudy happy—or, possibly, that the President was trying to play up her spiritual bona fides in an attempt to soothe the rarely-dormant uneasiness of a fairly large percentage of the voting public, but it turned out that about a month earlier, Neal had asked them if bad things would stop happening, if they started going more often. According to Steven—who had outright refused to participate in any form of religious exploration whatsoever—neither of her parents had had a satisfactory answer to that question, but had told Neal that the three of them could go together, whenever he wanted, presumably hoping that familiarity with the concept of God might, in this case, breed
less
contempt.

Not bloody likely, was Meg's feeling, but she was sensible enough to keep this opinion to herself.

After they were gone, she stayed in bed, watching the Sunday political shows, and napping on and off. Beth had called the night before, to wish her luck, and she was pleased—and slightly discomfitted—when Jack called, too. She was very drowsy, from having taken a pain pill, so the conversation was pretty short, but she hadn't really expected him to call at all during their break—and in this particular case, it was pleasant to be wrong.

She and her parents rode over to Bethesda on Marine One and transferred to a small motorcade for the ridiculously short trip from the helipad to the main entrance. There was a wheelchair waiting for her inside, along with the rear admiral who was the hospital commander, the deputy commander, and master chief commander; a bunch of doctors, nurses, and corpsmen—most of whom were in full uniform, except for a couple of the civilian surgeons; a good-sized group of agents and aides and assistants and advisors; and the White House press pool, complete with television cameras and boom mikes.

“Damn it, Kate,” her father said in a low voice.

Her mother sighed. “Russ, she's so quotable that
I
want to interview her, too.” She glanced at Meg. “By the way, start being a little less quotable, okay?”

Christ, were they all going to have a big fight on live television? “Don't you think that's going to backfire, and only make me want to be
more
quotable?” Meg asked.

Her mother frowned. “Yes, you make a good point.”

“And I'm not riding in the wheelchair, either,” Meg said.