The pale blue walls were closing in on her. “I buried my husband less than eight hours ago. I won’t discuss this now.”

“Of course, my dear. We can finish making arrangements tomorrow.”

In the end, she managed to buy herself six weeks of solitude, but then she was put back to work again, doing what she’d been raised to do, what America expected of her. Being the First Lady.

Chapter 2

2

OVER THE NEXT six and a half months, Nealy grew so thin that the tabloids began printing stories that she was anorexic. Mealtimes became torture. She couldn’t sleep at night, and her sense of suffocation never went away. Despite that, she served the country well as Lester Vandervort’s First Lady . . . until one small event brought it all crashing down.

On a June afternoon, she stood in the pediatric rehabilitation facility of a Phoenix hospital and watched a little girl with curly red hair struggling with a new set of leg braces.

“Watch me!” The chubby little redhead gave Nealy a bright smile, leaned on her crutches, and began the laborious process of taking a single step.

All that courage.

Nealy hadn’t often felt shame, but now it overwhelmed her. This child was putting up a gallant fight to regain her life, while Nealy was watching her own pass by.

She wasn’t a cowardly person, nor was she incapable of standing up for herself, yet she had allowed this to happen simply because she hadn’t been able to give either her father or the President a good reason why she shouldn’t continue to do the job she’d been born to perform.

Right then, she made up her mind. She didn’t know how or when, but she was going to set herself free. Even if her freedom lasted only for a day—an hour!—she would at least make the attempt.

She knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to live the life of an ordinary person. She wanted to shop in a grocery store without everyone staring at her, to walk down a small-town street eating an ice-cream cone and smiling, just because she felt like it, not because she had to. She wanted the freedom to speak her mind, to make mistakes. She wanted to see the world as it really was, not polished up for an official visit. Maybe then she would finally be able to figure out how to live the rest of her life.

Nealy Case, what do you want to be when you grow up? When she was very little, she’d told everyone she wanted to be President. Now she had no idea.

But how could the most famous woman in America suddenly become an ordinary person?

One obstacle after another sprang up in front of her. It was impossible. The First Lady couldn’t simply disappear. Could she?