Hood tried not to blame his wife for being disappointed. How could he? She didn't know he'd lost Martha in the field. He wasn't permitted to discuss Op-Center matters with anyone over an open line. Anyway, Sharon was more upset for the two kids than for herself. She said that even though it was spring vacation, eleven-year-old Alexander had gotten up early and set up his new scanner by himself. He was burning to show his father some of the computer-morphs he'd created. By the time Hood got home most nights, Alexander was too drowsy to boot the system and talk him through the steps of whatever he'd been working on, which was what the boy liked to do. Thirteen-year-old Harleigh practiced her violin for an hour after dinner each night. Sharon said that for the past few days, ever since she'd mastered her Tchaikovsky piece, the house at sunset had been a magical place to be. Sharon said it would be more magical for them all if Paul were there once in a while.

A part of Hood felt guilty. Sharon and also Madison Avenue were responsible for that. Family-first was the advertising mantra of the nineties. But Pennsylvania Avenue made him feel guilty too. He had a responsibility to the President and to the nation. He had a responsibility to the people whose lives and livelihoods depended upon his industry, his judgment. His focus.

He and Sharon both knew what the rules were when he took this job. Wasn't it she who had wanted him to get out of politics? Wasn't she the one who had hated the fact that being the family of the mayor of Los Angeles had entitled them to zero privacy even when they were together? But the truth was, whatever he did Hood wasn't a high school principal with summers off like her father. He wasn't a banker anymore, who worked from eight-thirty to five-thirty with the occasional client dinner. Or an independently wealthy yachtsman like that rugged, self-impressed Italian winemaker Stefano Renaldo with whom she'd sailed the world before marrying Hood.

Paul Hood was a man who enjoyed his work and the responsibility of it. And he enjoyed the rewards, too. Each morning he woke up in the quiet house and went downstairs to make his coffee and sat there drinking it in the den and looking around and thinking, I did this.

They all enjoyed the rewards. There wouldn't be a computer or violin lessons or a nice house for them to miss him at if he didn't work hard. Sharon would have to work full-time instead of being able to appear semiregularly on a cable TV cooking show. She didn't have to thank him but did she have to damn him? She didn't have to enjoy his absence-he didn't-but she could make it easier.