“I’d rather wait, but Sam is locking up commitments, and I’ve been getting calls. I haven’t told anyone yet but M. T. and Dan—and now you.”

“And Jack?”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Did M. T. tell you about—”

“Yes, she did. All about it.”

Addis wanted to be certain that O’Connor had fully relayed his conversation with Hynes-Pierce.

“So, then, you don’t care about Hynes-Pierce and his boss’s offer?”

“Oh, I care. Very much. But I’m not going to allow them to blackmail me.”

“You’re prepared to deal with the story about you and … Bob benefiting from a rigged land deal? I’m not saying that’s what happened. But that’s how it will be portrayed—and that your father was a part of it. So they’re going to accuse you of being a liar, a hypocrite, or a fraud. Probably all three.”

“They don’t really have any hard proof, do they?”

“I’m not sure.”

“No one who will come forward and say anything—”

“I’m not sure. There’s one person, Harris—”

“I’m not worried,” she interrupted.

What does she know?

Margaret grasped Addis’s hand.

“I’m going to do this, Nick. I’ve thought about it. Sam is a pig. He’ll open the troughs for the other pigs. The good Bob did will be washed away. Sam’s budget will be the same as Wynn Gravitt’s. They’ll dump the education loan expansions, the low-income tax credits. This stuff does matter to people, doesn’t it? Don’t we owe it to them to try? Sam won’t take up the second-term agenda, the pension protections, the Medi-kids program, public school revitalization. Bob’s promise will never be realized. I can’t let that happen. I just can’t. No matter what … I won’t.”

Margaret, Addis thought, would never acknowledge that Hanover’s first three years in office had been disappointing. To her, the best would always have been to come. But the mythical second term had been stolen from her husband—and from her. Unless she claimed it for herself.

“And,” Margaret continued, “he’s so …” She searched for the word. Then her eyes narrowed: “Distasteful … So distasteful.”

“You’re right about Mumfries,” Addis said. “But he’s not the issue.”

She raised an eyebrow. The gesture reminded him of a magazine cover that had depicted Margaret as a schoolmarm.

“You are,” he continued. “Forget about the question, ‘Is America ready for a woman president?’ Is the public willing to see you as a bona fide candidate and not a grieving widow who’s gone around the bend? A wife who can’t let go. A woman mourning by running for president. Do you want to suffer through all the comparisons to Evita Perón?”

She placed both hands on her lap.

“Don’t tell me about suffering,” she said.