Wilkie shook his head. “You’re the best we have, and the problems are getting worse. In the past ten years, more heads of state have been assassinated than at any other time in history.”
Nathaniel stalked to the window, clenching his fists as he stared at the White House directly across the street. He didn’t want to be a bodyguard. He couldn’t be a bodyguard. The last time he’d been entrusted to protect someone, she ended up dead, and it still haunted him. The nightmares had finally eased, but the thought of being responsible for another life made his stomach clench.
“I track down counterfeit. I am trained as an engraver and got a degree in art history, all so that I could spot forgeries. I’m not going to be a bodyguard. Why don’t you assign Sullivan to the job?”
“Sullivan doesn’t have your eye, and you’re not going to be a bodyguard.”
As Wilkie outlined what the position would entail, Nathaniel had to admit that it didn’t sound like a bodyguard so much as a detective on the lookout for security flaws inside the White House, just as Wilkie claimed.
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t know you were the best man for the job,” Wilkie said. “McKinley will be an easy man to work for. Everyone likes him. Spend the next four months observing activities in the White House and designing an improved security plan. After the election in November, I’ll find you an assignment more to your liking.”
“Only four months?”
“Four months,” Wilkie confirmed. “Design a new security plan, then you’re free.”
Nathaniel paced, thinking. Four months wouldn’t be too horrible, and it was true that presidential security was appalling. It was also true that he was the best man for the job, and it was impossible for him to turn his back on duty.
He would do it. The job meant living in a shared dormitory on the top floor of the White House. It meant almost constant vigilance during his waking hours, seven days a week, until the November elections. It would be a challenge, but perhaps it could also be a way to prove himself worthy and absolve himself of the failures in his past.
That night the old dream came back. Nathaniel picked up Molly’s body, sopping wet and broken by the rushing current, her eyes staring blankly at nothing.
“Please, Molly,” he sobbed, but she was already gone and her flesh was cold. He carried her home, riding the streetcar through downtown Chicago with a dead child draped across his lap. People stared, but he didn’t care. His soul was vacant.
Nathaniel snapped awake, the sheets soaked in sweat. It had been years since this nightmare tormented him, but it had come roaring back as vivid as ever. To this day he remembered the feel of Molly’s sodden gown dampening his shirt.
He shouldn’t have agreed to the White House assignment. With all his heart, he wished he could turn away from it, but he’d given his word.
He began the next morning on his knees at the chapel near his boardinghouse. It had been twenty years since Molly died, but her ghost haunted him still. The mistake he’d made at eighteen was a scar that would never fully heal, but he couldn’t let it cripple him for the rest of his life. It was time to let it go. He leaned his forehead against the pew in front of him.
“Oh, Molly, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I should have protected you better. I will honor your memory by carrying out this assignment with complete diligence, with no stone left unturned.”
For the thousandth time, he wondered why God had taken an innocent child. To punish him for putting his love of art above his duty to family? After two decades of wondering, he still had no satisfactory answer.
Jesus, I know there is a reason for this, but I don’t understand it. Can it be so that I won’t let my guard falter this time? Every day I will do my best to serve my country and honor Molly’s memory. I am praying for guidance. If you send me a sign, I will follow.
He listened, hoping for a sign that would let him escape the assignment, but he heard nothing.
And that was his sign. He had his marching orders, and it was time to go to work.
Three
Privacy was nonexistent for staff who lived at the White House. Caroline had never shared a bedroom before accepting this position, but now she slept in a dormitory alongside nine other women. Two cooks, two telephone operators, three maids, a seamstress, and a laundress all slept in this long, narrow room on the top floor of the building, with beds lined up like sardines in a tin.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon, so most of the women were downstairs, but Caroline had a rare moment of privacy with Ludmila Vuković, a young woman from Croatia who worked in the laundry. Ludmila was smart, ambitious, and only twenty-six. She wanted more from life than washing and ironing other people’s sheets, and Caroline wanted to help.
“The school is going to open in two months,” Caroline said, sitting on the end of her bed as Ludmila returned freshly laundered undergarments. There wasn’t even enough room for proper wardrobes or closets in the dormitory, only a long bank of open shelves for each woman to store basic belongings. Ludmila said nothing as she went about putting the clothes away, so Caroline kept talking. “We expect the school to fill up right away, but I can save a spot for you. There will be classes in typing and bookkeeping and translation work. You can have your choice.”
“I don’t have the time,” Ludmila said, reaching for another stack of laundry.
“The classes will be at night, and there’s no reason you can’t take a streetcar to the school three nights a week. It will be a challenge, but over time those three nights a week will change your entire world.”
How different Caroline’s own education had been. Fancy boarding schools in Boston, and then a year in Paris and a year in Rome for finishing school. She came back to Virginia when she was eighteen, but that hadn’t worked out so well. She and Luke had gotten into such trouble together, which prompted her father to send her to Switzerland, far enough away that her rebellious behavior couldn’t permanently tarnish her reputation in America. She resented the banishment at the time, but her father had been right. The two years in Switzerland tamed most of her wild streak, allowing her to step back into respectability in Virginia.
Ludmila finished shelving the laundry, and Caroline joined her alongside the clothing shelves.
“An education will buy you freedom,” she said, covering Ludmila’s chapped, work-roughened hand with her own. She looked away, embarrassed at the difference in their skin. Ludmila was two years younger than Caroline, and yet the laundress’s hands looked like an old woman’s.
“You can become anything you want,” Caroline continued. “A typist. A translator. I know the two extra hours each night will be hard, but it will be worth it.”
“Man on the floor!”
The loud voice echoing down the hallway was a rude interruption. Caroline sighed as a brisk knock on the door was followed by a senior White House usher tipping his head inside.
“Meeting downstairs in the assembly room.” A scowl of disapproval darkened the usher’s face. “There’s a new man in charge of security, and all staff are required to be there.”
Even Ludmila noticed the resentment in his tone. “What’s wrong with him?”