“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.