“Flirty FLOTUS Digs the Dictator,” Matt said, studying the photo on Natalie’s monitor. “Or better! Dick-Tator. It’s a Dicki-leaks dump!” He launched into a smug laugh.

“This is not funny,” Dasha said to Matt, then turned to Natalie. “Often people joke to cover up with laughter the sadness inside of them.”

“This is bullshit,” Matt said, reaching for his phone. “I’ll call the White House and see what Adam Majors has to say about this.”

“It’s weird,” Natalie mused mostly to herself. The setup, the photo. None of it made sense. Was the migraine a lie?

In the back of her mind, Natalie felt a familiar prick, the prick of instinct that told her there was something more here. Try harder, her first boss used to say. He’d also insisted she had an antenna for The Story and over the years she’d learned to trust it.

She zoomed in to study the picture more closely, as though it were one of those images in a kids’ magazine where you have to circle the incongruities—a book hanging in midair, a clock with the numbers backward, a tiger in a baby carriage, a mole on the First Lady’s neck.

A mole on the First Lady’s neck!

Quickly she opened her internet browser and pulled up photos of the First Lady and felt her heart beat faster. “Dasha, can you look at this picture? Do you see something on the First Lady’s neck?” Natalie asked, trying to keep her voice level, not let her excitement get out of hand. Because the First Lady was in profile, her neck—and the mole—were easy to see.

Matt crowded in uninvited. “It’s a mole. A beauty mark,” he said. “Why?”

Dasha nodded. “Matthew is not wrong,” she agreed.

Natalie beamed at them. “She had that mole removed two years ago,” she told them. “During the campaign.”

Matt looked at her skeptically. “How you know that?”

Natalie’s chair sighed, but she was ebullient. She pulled up the video from the Wisconsin women’s event she’d been watching earlier and hit Play. There was FLOTUS apologizing for wearing a turtleneck in August, explaining she’d just had a mole removed from her neck.

“There!” she said. “You see?”

Matt was staring at the screen. “It could be a different mole.”

Natalie wanted to scream. Instead she opened a new window and Googled videos of the First Lady from the campaign. The first thing that came up was a People magazine cover shoot. She was in a red blouse, with a mole clearly visible on the right side of her neck.

“See right there?” Natalie said, pointing at the First Lady’s neck. “A mole.”

Then she found the most recent video of the First Lady, a Today Show appearance about allergies. “There!” Natalie said, freezing the video when FLOTUS was in profile. No mole. It was gone.