“Natalie?” Bibb said. Natalie imagined Bibb pulling out a whetstone and slowly sharpening her nails as she spoke. All the better to claw you with, my pretty. “How quickly can you get to the White House? I need you on the North Lawn ASAP and I need the name of the center so we can get a reporter over there.”

“Wait...you want me to go to the White House?” Natalie stammered, thrown.

“Yes. I want you live from the North Lawn, ASAP. I’ll have our freelancer in Phoenix chase down any leads on the ground in Arizona. I can’t afford to waste time flying you out there. Let’s get you out front on this now.”

Everything went quiet except those words. Live from the North Lawn. For Natalie, that was the TV news equivalent of getting the Oscar, landing a CEO job, and hitting fifty million likes on your YouTube video simultaneously. Bibb was giving her a break!

Sure, you could insist on going to Phoenix to report this yourself, but Ryan wouldn’t, she chided. Maybe this was the Chief’s way of making up for the situation in the kitchen Saturday night. Maybe it was the universe’s way of ensuring things worked out in the end.

“I can be there in fifteen,” she told Bibb and turned right, heading in the direction of the White House.

26

Common Nonsense

Natalie pushed open the door of the security guard shack at the White House Northwest gate, stepped onto the asphalt driveway ringing the North Lawn, looked up at the White House North Portico with the expanse of grass and trees stretching out around it, and smiled.

She remembered the way her dad used to go silent whenever this image came on the screen. The way he’d nod at the reporters doing their live shots. How his voice filled with admiration when he’d rhapsodize, “Holding our elected leaders to account is a public service. It’s a big part of what makes our country exceptional.”

She wondered if her dad would forgive her for what she was about to do. She shook the thought away. This was news. And it was her job to report it.

Sorry, Dad, she thought as she started down the driveway.

She made a right turn onto a stone pathway that ran along Pebble Beach, the area reserved for White House live shots for each national network. (So named, she knew, because the area used to be a patch of mud covered with pebbles. The Bushes had the pebbles covered with more forgiving pavement, but like so much at the White House, it was known for The Way It Used to Be).