A flurry of activity descended on the Milburn house as members of the cabinet began assembling in Buffalo. Caroline made arrangements at local homes for their accommodation and hired carriage drivers to transport the men to and from the president’s sickbed each day. George was a constant presence, carefully monitoring the president’s energy and allowing a few visitors, but most of the work went on in the parlor. Cabinet members advanced plans, and clerks drafted articles to be released to the press.

Ida had been relocated to the Milburn house, and Caroline’s time was split between sitting with Ida in an upstairs bedroom and attending George’s business meetings in the downstairs parlor. It had been five days since the president was shot, surely the oddest five days of her life. While the mood upstairs with Ida was tense and teetered on the edge of a nervous collapse, downstairs was different. Caroline had a front-row seat as George cleared the way for a vote on the president’s proposal to end American isolationism. Sven was there as well. He met with cabinet officials and congressional leaders, searching for pockets of resistance to the president’s agenda and devising plans to counter it.

The Secretary of the Treasury wanted to move quickly. “No one can sell this proposal better than the president himself,” he said. “Get him to Washington now, while sympathy is still high.”

“Not until he is ready to travel,” George said.

“But you said he is on the mend,” the secretary blustered.

George remained implacable. “He is, but sticking him on a train for two days could jeopardize that.”

The bickering continued, and Caroline lost interest in the quagmire of congressional maneuvering, reconciliation bills, and procedural motions. She hadn’t taken this job out of political motivation. She’d stupidly accepted the job because she thought it would be fun.

Her gaze strayed out the window, where a delivery boy rode past on his bicycle, tossing several copies of this afternoon’s newspaper toward the house. Normally he would have ridden up to the front porch, but the soldiers standing guard in the front yard made it impossible for anyone to get close.

She excused herself from the discussion of international tariffs and went to collect the newspapers. She was only yards away from the president’s sickroom, but she was entirely dependent on the newspaper to track the ongoing investigation into the shooting.

She nodded to the pair of army guards sitting on the front porch. One of them had already snatched a copy of the paper and had opened it wide, his nose buried deeply in the interior. It was a little disconcerting. Shouldn’t he be guarding the house rather than engrossed in the newspaper?

“Any news?” she asked.

He startled and closed the paper. “Just checking up on the world, ma’am.”

She took an educated guess. “And what vital events have occurred in the world of baseball?”