“I don't care what they think, I'm not doing it,” she said firmly.

“You have to,” he snapped at her, “we have a contract.”

“You make me sick,” she said, turning away from him, and the next day, when they came, she refused to see them. She wouldn't see the hairdresser, or the makeup man, and she never came out of her room in the wheelchair. The press thought they were playing games with them, and Andy held a press conference in the lobby without her. He explained about the trauma she'd been through, and the guilt of being one of the few survivors. He said he was suffering from it too, but it was hard to believe Andy Thatcher was suffering from anything, except an overwhelming desire for the White House, no matter what it cost him. But he wasn't about to lose this opportunity, and the next day, he let three reporters into her room himself. And when she looked up and saw them, Olivia looked pathetically frail, and desperately frightened. She started to cry, and a nurse and two orderlies forced them to leave her. But they'd man-aged to get half a dozen photographs of her before they left the room, and congregated together back in the hallway where they chatted with Andy. And when he returned, after the reporters left the hospital, she came out of her bed and flailed at him with a vengeance.

“How could you do that to me? Edwin's whole family just died, and I'm not even out of the hospital.” She was sobbing as she pounded her hands against his chest, overwhelmed by a sense of violation. But he had needed to prove to them that she was alive and well, and that she hadn't snapped, as they were beginning to suspect, since she seemed to them to be hiding. What she was trying to preserve was her dignity, but Andy couldn't have cared less. What he was protecting was his political survival.

Peter saw the photographs of her on the news that night, and his heart went out to her. She looked frightened and frail as she lay in bed, and cried. The abandoned look in her eyes tore his heart out. She had a hospital nightgown on, and she had intravenous tubes in both arms, and one of the reporters said she was still suffering from pneumonia. It was a dramatic glimpse of her, and sure to arouse a lot of sympathy, which was exactly what her husband had wanted. And Peter could think only of her after he turned the set off.

But Olivia surprised Andy when the hospital told her they were willing to release her at the end of the week, she said she wasn't going home with him. She had already spoken to her mother about it. She was going home to her parents. They needed her. And she was going to the Douglas house in Boston.

“That's ridiculous, Olivia,” Andy complained when she told him over the phone what she was doing, “you're not a little girl, you belong in Virginia with me.”

”Why?' she asked him bluntly, “so you can let reporters into my room every morning? My family has been through a terrible ordeal, and I want to be with them.” She didn't blame him for the accident. The storm hadn't been his fault, but the way it had all been handled since certainly lacked dignity or compassion, or even decency, and she knew she would never forgive him. He had exploited all of them. And he did it again, when she found a fleet of reporters waiting for her in the hospital lobby when she left Addison Gilbert. Andy was the only one who knew when she was getting out, he was the only one who could have told them. And they appeared at her parents' house too, and this time her father put his foot down.

”We need some privacy here,” he explained, and as the governor, people listened. He gave a few select interviews, but he explained that neither his wife, nor his daughter, and certainly not his son, were in any condition to entertain members of the press at the moment. “I'm sure you understand,” he said graciously, posing for a single picture. And he said he had no further explanation for Mrs. Thatcher's presence in his home, except that she wanted to be with her mother, and brother, who was also staying with them. Edwin Douglas couldn't bring himself to stay at his own house yet, let alone begin to sort through it.

“Have the Thatchers been estranged since the accident?” One of the reporters shouted at him and he looked surprised by the question. It hadn't even occurred to him, and he asked his wife the same thing that night, wondering if she knew something he didn't.

“I don't think so.” Janet Douglas frowned at him. “Olivia hasn't said anything,” but they both knew she kept a lot to herself. She had been through a great deal in the past few years, and she liked to keep her own counsel.

But Andy was quick to complain to her when he heard about the question. He told her that if she didn't come home soon, she would start rumors.

“I'll come home when I'm well enough to leave here,” she said coldly.

“When will that be?” He was going back to California in two weeks, and he wanted her with him.

She was actually planning to go back to Virginia in a few days, but his pushing her only made her want to stay away longer, and after she'd been there a week, her mother finally questioned her about it.

”What's happening?” she asked gently, as Olivia sat in her mother's bedroom. Her mother got migraines regularly, and she was just recovering from one, while wearing an ice pack. “Is everything all right with you and Andy?”

“That depends on your definition of 'all right.“ Olivia said coolly. “Nothing's any worse than usual. He's just annoyed that I'm not letting the press beat me to death, or reenacting the accident for them on tabloid TV. But give him a day or two, Mom, I'm sure hell arrange it.”

“Politics does strange things to men,” her mother said wisely. She knew better than anyone what it was like, and how much it had cost them. Even her recent mastectomy had been announced on TV, with diagrams and an interview with her doctor. But she was the governor's wife, and she knew she had to expect it. She had been in the public eye for most of her adult life, and it had taken a lot from her. And she could see now that it had already taken something from her daughter. One paid dearly for winning, or even losing, elections.

And then Olivia looked at her quietly, and wondered what her mother would say if she told her the truth. She had been thinking for days. And she knew what she had to do now. “I'm leaving him, Mom. I can't do this. I tried to leave him in June, but he wanted the presidency so badly, I agreed to do the campaign with him, and stay for the first four years if he won.” She looked at her mother unhappily. The crassness of what she'd done sounded awful in the telling. “He's paying me a million dollars a year to do it. And the funny thing is I didn't even care. It sounded like play money when he offered it to me. I did it for him because I used to love him. But I guess I didn't love him enough, even way back in the beginning. I really know now I can't do it.” She didn't owe this to anyone, not even Andy.

“Then don't,” Janet Douglas said bluntly. “Even a million dollars a year wouldn't be enough. Ten wouldn't either. No amount is worth ruining your life for. Get out while you can, Olivia. I should have done it years ago. It's too late now. It drove me to drink, it ruined my health, it destroyed our marriage, it kept me from doing everything I wanted to do, it hurt our family and made life hard for all of you. Olivia, if this isn't what you want, if you yourself don't want this desperately, get out now, while you still can. Please honey,” her eyes filled with tears as she squeezed her daughter's hand, “I beg you. And no matter what your father says, I'm one hundred percent behind you.” And then she looked at her even more seriously. It was one thing to abandon politics, another to abandon a marriage that might still be worth saving. “What about him? What about Andy?”

“It's been over for a long time, Mom.”

Janet nodded again. It didn't really surprise her. “I thought so. But I wasn't sure.” And then she smiled slowly. “Your father is going to think I lied to him the other day. He asked me if everything was all right with you, and I said it was. But I wasn't sure then.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Olivia said, putting her arms around her. “I love you.” Her mother had just given her the greatest gift of all, her blessing.

“I love you too, sweetheart,” she said as she held her daughter. “Do whatever you have to do, and don't worry about what your father says. He'll be fine. He and Andy will make some noise for a while, but they'll get over it. And Andy's young. He can always get remarried and do it next time. They haven't seen the last of him in Washington. Don't let him bully you into coming back, Olivia, unless you want to.” What she really wanted for her daughter was to be far from here. She wanted her freedom.

“I don't want to go back, Mom. I never will. I should have left him years ago …before Alex was born, or at least after he died.”

“You're young, you'll make a life for yourself,” she said wistfully. She never had. She had given up her own life, her career, her friends, her dreams. Every ounce of energy she'd had had gone into her husband's political career, and she wanted something very different for her daughter. “What are you going to do now?”

“I want to write.” She smiled shyly and her mother laughed.

“It all comes full circle, doesn't it? Do it then, and don't let anyone stop you.”

They sat and talked all afternoon, and they made lunch together in the kitchen. Olivia even thought of telling her about Peter, but in the end she didn't. She did say that she thought she'd probably go back to France, to the fishing village she loved so much. It was a good place to write, a good place to hide, but her mother warned her about that too.

“You cannot hide forever.'