“I'll find something to do,” he smiled. “Six years in Washington is a long time. I think it's enough now.”

“Will you come back?” she asked sadly. “Will we come back?”

“Maybe. I doubt it. The price is too high for some of us. Some people get away with it quietly forever. But we didn't. There was too much in your past, too many people were jealous of us. I think just the relationship we have and the kids get plenty of people riled. There are a lot of miserably envious, unhappy people in the world. You can't worry about it all the time. But you can't fight it forever either. I'm fifty-nine years old, and I'm tired, Grace. It's time to fold up our tents and go home.” He had already called a press conference for the next day, while she was threatening to kill Marcus Anders. The irony of it was amazing.

They told the children that night, and they were all disappointed. They were used to his being in politics, and they didn't want to go back to Connecticut full time. They all said it was boring, except in summer.

“Actually,” he admitted for the first time, “I've been thinking that a change of scene might do us all good for a while. Like maybe Europe. London, or France, or maybe even Switzerland for a year or two.”

Abby looked horrified and Matthew looked cautious. “What do they have in Switzerland, Dad?”

“Cows,” Abby said in disgust. “And chocolate.”

“That's good. I like cows and chocolate. Can we take Kisses?”

“Yes, except if we go to England.”

“Then we can't go to London,” Matthew said mat-ter-of-factly.

They all knew Andrew's vote would have been France since his girlfriend was going back to Paris for two years. Her father was being transferred to their home office on the Quai d'Orsay, and she had told him all about it.

“I can work in the Paris branch of our law firm, or our London branch, if I go back to the firm, or we can live cheaply and grow our own vegetables in a farmhouse somewhere. We have a lot of options.” He smiled at them. He'd been thinking about making a change ever since the attacks by the tabloids. But whatever they did after that, it was time for them to leave Washington, and they all knew it. It was just too high a price to pay for any man, or any family that stood behind him.

He had called Roger Marshall and apologized, and Roger said he understood completely. He thought there might be some other interesting opportunities in the near future, but it was too soon for Charles even to want to hear them.

The next morning, Charles was gracious and honorable and he looked relieved when he told the gathered members of the press that he was retiring from the senatorial race for personal reasons.

“Does this have to do with the photographs your wife posed for years ago, Congressman? Or is it because of her prison record coming out last June?” They were all such bastards. A new era had come to journalism, and it was not a pretty one. There had been a time when none of this would have happened. It was all muckraking and lies and maliciousness, actual or otherwise, provable or not. They went for the gut every time with a stiletto, and they didn't even care whose gut it was, as long as the stiletto came back with blood and guts on it. They had the mistaken impression that that was what their readers wanted.

“To the best of my knowledge,” Charles looked them in the eye, “my wife never posed for any photographs, sir.”

“What about the abortion? Was that true? … Will you be going back to Congress in two years? … Do you have any other political goals in mind? … What about a cabinet post? Has the President said anything if he gets reelected? … Is it true that she was in porno films in Chicago? …”

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for all your kindness and courtesy over the past six years. Goodbye, and thank you.” He ended like the perfect gentleman he had always been, and he left the room without ever looking back. And in two more months, at the end of his congressional term, he would be gone, and it would be all over.





Chapter 16

The last photograph was released in Thrill two weeks after Charles resigned, and it was an anticlimax then, even to Grace. Marcus had sold it to them a month before, and he couldn't withdraw it, even with all his whining. A deal was a deal, and he had sold it and spent the money. But he was terrified that Grace would come back with the gun again, and this time maybe she'd get him. He was afraid to leave the studio, and he decided to leave town. He decided not to sell them the photograph of her with the guy that he'd spoken of. It was a great shot too, and they really looked like they were doing it. But she'd shoot him for sure over that one, and Thrill didn't really care anymore. Mackenzie had resigned and he was old news. Who cared about his old lady?

But three days after the picture came out, the wire services got a call. It was from a man in New York, he ran a photo lab, and Marcus Anders had burned him for a lot of money. Anders had made half a million bucks thanks to him, and he'd put it all up his nose and cheated the man who was calling. And besides, the lab man knew there was something rotten about what Anders was doing. At first, it had seemed all right, but then the photographs had just kept on coming. They had beaten her to death, and then the poor guy quit. It wasn't right, for a lot of reasons. So he blew the whistle.

His name was Jose Cervantes, and he was the best trick man in New York, probably in the business. He did beautiful retouching for respectable photographers, and some funny stuff when he was paid enough by guys like Marcus Anders. He could take Margaret Thatcher's head and put her on Arnold Schwarzenegger's body. All he needed was one single tiny seam, and you had it. Presto! Magic! All he'd needed for Grace's photos, he explained, was the tiny black ribbon he'd added at her neck and he could join her head to any body. He had chosen some really luscious ones, in some fairly exotic positions, but at first Marcus had told him it was for fun. It was only when he'd seen them printed in Thrill that he really knew what the photographer was doing. He could have come forward then, but he didn't want to get involved. He could have been charged with fraud, but there was nothing illegal about tricking photographs. It was done constantly for ads, for jokes, for greeting cards, for layouts. It was only when you did what Marcus had done that it became illegal. Therein lay the malicious intent, the actual malice everyone looked for and never found. But they had it this time.

Marcus Anders had set out to ruin her. He had had nothing to do with exposing her prison record, he hadn't even known about it, and he had forgotten his pictures of her completely. But once he saw the pieces on her in Thrill, about killing her father and going to jail, he unearthed his old pictures of her and set Jose working on them. Jose hadn't even recognized her till he read the first article in Thrill, and realized what Marcus was doing. But Marcus had all his work by then. And they were entirely faked. The original photographs were as she had remembered them, in Marcus's white shirt, many of them even in blue jeans. What had worked so well for their purposes was the expression on her face, as she lay back against the fur, drugged and only semiconscious. It made her look as though she were having sex at the time they were taken.

The story made a lot of news, and Thrill was wide-open for a major lawsuit. Mr. Goldsmith, the attorney, was delighted, and charges of fraud and malicious mischief were brought against Marcus, but he had disappeared by then, and word was he'd gone to Europe.

Marcus and Thrill had done it for fun, and for profit, and just to prove they could, each one not really caring, not taking responsibility, the artist, the photographer, the forger, the editor, and in the end, the Mac-kenzies were the victims.

But they all looked whole in body and soul again, as they packed their house in Washington, and went to spend Christmas in Connecticut. And then they went back to close the house on R Street. It had sold immediately to a brand-new congressman from Alabama.

“Will you miss Washington?” Grace asked, as they lay in bed on their last night in the house in Georgetown. He wasn't sure if she was sorry to leave or not. In some ways, she wasn't. In others she would miss it. She worried that Charles would always feel that he had left unfinished business. But he said he wouldn't. He had accomplished a lot in Congress in six years, and learned innumerable important lessons. The most important one he'd learned was that his family meant a lot more to him than his job. He knew he had made the right decision. They'd been through enough pain to last a lifetime. It had made the children stronger too, and brought them all closer together.

He had had other offers too, from corporations in the private sector, an important foundation or two, and of course they wanted him back at the law firm, but he hadn't made up his mind yet. And they were going to do exactly what he'd said. They were going to spend six or eight months in Europe. They were going to Switzerland, France, and England. He had already made arrangements with two schools while they were there, in Geneva and Paris. And Kisses was going to stay with friends in Greenwich until they came home for the summer. He'd have made his mind up by then about their future. And maybe, if she was up to it, Grace might have another baby. And if not, they were happy as they were. For Charles, all the doors were open.

The next day Grace was already in the car with the kids when the phone rang. Charles was making a last check of the house to make sure they hadn't left anything behind, but he had only found Matt's football, and a pair of old sneakers under the back porch, otherwise everything was gone. The house was empty.