Exclusive

“SIDS,” the President replied.

* * *

Barrie was positively giddy. Her words gushed out like water from a broken fire plug.

“I was going through the receiving line with my date. Don’t get excited. He’s a gay friend who’s still in the closet. We scratched each other’s back, so to speak. He had an invitation to the reception and needed a female date, and I had an opportunity to speak directly to the President and First Lady.

“Anyhow, I’m gliding along the receiving line, acting real cool and blasé, and when I get to the President, he clasps my hand between his, swear to God, and says, ‘Miss Travis, thank you so much for coming. It’s always a pleasure to have you at the White House. You look radiant tonight.’

“Actually, I don’t remember his exact words, but suffice it to say that I wasn’t treated like a stranger, or a passing acquaintance, or even an ordinary reporter. Barbara Walters couldn’t have been more warmly greeted.”

Cronkite yawned and made himself more comfortable in the center of her bed.

“Am I boring you?” Barrie asked, pausing for breath. “You don’t seem to realize the importance of my getting the first exclusive interview with the First Lady since th

e death of her child.

“Actually the President mentioned it before I did. He said Mrs. Merritt had informed him of my SIDS series. He thinks it’s an excellent idea and said that he urged the First Lady to participate. He commended me for raising public awareness on this heartbreaking phenomenon. Then he said that he and Mrs. Merritt would extend me their full cooperation. I was… Well, let me put it this way. If it had been sex, I would have been having multiple orgasms.”

She climbed in with Cronkite, who took up two thirds of the bed and wouldn’t budge an inch. Balancing on the edge of the mattress, she added, “I only wish Howie had been there to see it.”

Chapter Four

He was aware that the television was on, but it was only background noise until he heard the familiar voice. It brought his head up out of the bathroom sink, where he’d been sluicing cold water over his face. Grabbing a hand towel, he stepped around the corner into the bedroom.

“… which, unfortunately, you and President Merritt share with thousands of other couples.”

He didn’t recognize the reporter. She was thirtyish, maybe older. Shoulder-length auburn hair. Wide eyes and bee-stung lips that promised a good time, although both eyes and lips were unsmiling now. Distinctive, husky voice, unusual for a broadcast journalist; most of them sounded as though they’d graduated from the same school of sterile diction. Her name was superimposed at the bottom of the TV screen. Barrie Travis. It rang no bells.

“The President and I were astounded to learn the number of families who experience this tragedy,” Vanessa Merritt was saying. “Five thousand annually in our country alone.”

This face and voice Gray Bondurant recognized and knew well, even though it was instantly apparent to him that she’d been coached on how to conduct herself during the interview. She held her hands demurely in her lap, no gestures allowed. Facial expressions carefully schooled.

The interviewer segued into a sound bite from Dr. George Allan, the Merritts’ personal physician, who’d had the unpleasant task of pronouncing Robert Rushton Merritt dead in the White House nursery. Dr. Allan explained that medical science is still trying to isolate causes and preventatives of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Then the interview became more personal. “Mrs. Merritt, we all witnessed your and President Merritt’s grief during your son’s funeral.” Scenes from the funeral were edited in. “You’ve had three months’ distance from it. The wounds must surely still be tender, but I know our viewers would be interested in hearing any reflections you might wish to express.”

Vanessa took a moment. “My father has a saying: ‘Adversity is a great opportunity in disguise.’ As always, Daddy’s right,” she said with a fleeting smile. “David and I feel that we’ve become stronger, as a couple and as individuals, because we’ve been tested to the limit of our endurance, and we’ve survived.”

“Bullshit.” He balled up the hand towel and hurled it across the bedroom, then picked up the remote control, unwilling to listen to any more.

But he paused. Vanessa was saying, “The President and I hope that others who experience a similar tragedy can draw courage and comfort from survivors like us. Life does go on.”

Swearing, Bondurant hit the Off button.

Scripted responses, signed, sealed, and delivered to Vanessa to memorize and parrot. Words composed by Dalton Neely. Maybe her father, Clete Armbruster. Possibly even the President, with final approval by Spencer Martin.

However they’d been rehearsed and revised in advance of the interview, they weren’t Vanessa’s words. She had spoken them, but not spontaneously and not from her heart. He doubted that the reporter with the sexy voice was aware that she’d been duped. Vanessa had been as well programmed as a talking doll with a computer chip in her head. Revealing her inner feelings wouldn’t be seemly. It damn sure wouldn’t be politic.

Feeling that the walls of the bedroom were closing in on him, Bondurant stalked to the kitchen to get a beer, then went out onto his front porch. Ten feet deep and shaded by an overhang, the porch extended the width of the house. He flung himself into his rush-seated rocking chair and tipped the beer to his mouth. The muscles of his tanned throat worked as he drank half the can in one long swallow.

He looked like a beer commercial. Pictures of him drinking it bare-chested in these rustic surroundings could have sold millions of cans of any brand-name brew, but he didn’t realize that, or care. He knew he made an impact on people, but he had never bothered to analyze why. Vanity wasn’t in his nature, certainly not during the past year, when weeks would pass without his seeing another living soul. If he drove into Jackson Hole, he might shave. Or he might not.

He was as he was. Take him or leave him. That was, and always had been, his attitude, and he silently communicated it to everyone he met, which was one of the reasons why he hadn’t blended in well with the Washington scene. He was glad to be out of it. A certain amount of conformity was required of presidential confidants; Gray Bondurant was a nonconformist.

His blue eyes as hard and cold as a glacier, he stared at the jagged snow-capped peaks of the Tetons. Actually miles away, they looked close enough to touch. Purple mountains’ majesty. In his front yard. Imagine that.

He crushed the empty beer can as though it were a foil gum wrapper. He wished he could take back the last ten minutes. Why hadn’t he stayed outside a little longer before going in to wash up? What quirk of fate had made him tune his TV to that particular channel at that particular time?