Balance of Power

    Her arm linked with Mary's, Lara stood beside her husband, watching the three caskets descend into a common grave. As the last dirt was scattered, it began to rain. Only then did Lara take Kerry's hand.

* * *

Their day was far from done. Before the funeral, Lara had called grieving parents in Illinois, whose nineteen-year-old daughter had flown to San Francisco to begin her sophomore year at Stanford; now they drove to the Richmond District, where one of the two security guards had lived with his family.

    His widow was puffy-eyed with grief. "This is the President," Felice Serrano told her twelve-year-old son.

    Manfully, he shook Kerry's hand as Felice expressed sadness for Lara's loss. "Tell me about Henry," Lara requested softly.

    Felice glanced at her younger children, two dark-haired girls ages seven and four, as though to pluck a detail from memories too copious to summarize, emotions too complex to express. "Every night," she answered, "Henry read to the children. He wanted them all to go to college."

    "Like my mother," Lara answered. "And so we did."

    Felice nodded, less from conviction, Kerry thought, than from the hope of reviving her own shattered dreams. Then, as though concerned for him, she told her son, "Maybe you could show the President your father's wood shop."

    "Could you?" Kerry asked the boy.

    Self-consciously, George Serrano led Kerry to the garage, leaving the others behind.

    The workbench was immaculate, the implements neatly put away, the signposts of a man who taught his son order, responsibility, and a respect for one's possessions. Their current project had been a bookshelf: to Kerry, there was something desolate about the shelfless frame, a symbol of a life which would never be completed.

    "What part did you make?" Kerry asked.

    The boy touched a wooden board, leaning against a wall, which would have become a shelf. "Everything," he answered. "This time, Dad let me use the saw."

    "Show me," Kerry requested. "My father could never find the time."

    For the next half hour, talking as needed, the President and George Serrano sawed and inserted the wooden shelves. When at last Felice and Lara came for them, conversing quietly between themselves, the bookshelf was complete except for varnish.

    At the door, Lara clasped Felice's hands. "Thank you," Lara said. "This can't have been for nothing. None of us will let it be."

* * *

In the limousine, Kerry turned to Lara. Her face was etched with sadness.

    "All day," he told her, "I've been watching you pay tribute to your family, comfort Mary, and give Felice Serrano at least a measure of peace. The word that comes to me is 'grace,' in all its meanings."

    As if exhausted, she rested her shoulder against his. In quiet despair, she answered, "In the end, being with them helped me. But what do we do now?"

* * *

The next morning, Kit Pace announced that the President and First Lady would return to Martha's Vineyard, for several days of rest and seclusion. Among the staff, the decision was controversial, though none had a voice. But Kit was more than satisfied. Lara's eulogy, widely reprinted, had touched the vast public which wished to mourn with her, as had her calls and visits to the victims' families who, when asked, had remarked on her kindness and concern. As for their planned retreat to Martha's Vineyard, Americans would admire a man, even a President, who subordinates all else to supporting his wife in her time of loss. If the country waited a few more days, Kit believed, the Kilcannons' reentry into public life would be all the more compelling. She wondered if they understood this perfectly.

SIX

On CNN, James Kilcannon lay on his back, a pool of blood beneath his head, dying as the crowd around him screamed its horror and grief. And then he vanished, replaced by a percussive pop as Inez Costello fell.

    In the wake of the Costello murders,

Bill Schneider reported, support for stricter gun laws has swollen to over ninety percent . . .

    As Marie Bowden toppled backward, Kerry hit the remote.

    In numb silence, he and Clayton gazed at the darkened screen. Lara had vanished upstairs: the two men sat alone. Quietly, Clayton asked, "Will Martha's Vineyard help, I wonder?"

    "I don't know." Kerry's tone commingled irony and sorrow. "I have to comfort her—if I can—and be seen as comforting her. It feels like I'm trapped in a silent movie, as Lara's husband and as President."

    Clayton narrowed his eyes in thought. "The husband part may be beyond me. But the politics of this won't keep."

    Kerry turned to him. "I have to do something, Clayton. You know that."

    "Because of Lara?"

    "Because of me. Because it's time." Kerry stood, hands jammed in his pockets. "Standing up to the SSA is part of what I ran on. First I lost a brother. Now guns have decimated Lara's family. What's the point of becoming President if I don't use the office to accomplish what I've fought for ever since Jamie died."