A DAY LATER, she was at her town’s small library. Past the rows of books and the magazine racks, there were three computers, set up in a row. She sat down and stared at the screen, which showed a picture of the library and said that this picture and the words on it were something called a home page. She put her hands over the keyboard and then pulled them away, as if she were afraid she would make something blow up if she pushed the wrong key.
Beth leaned back in the wooden chair. What to do? She felt queasy, empty, nervous, like the first time she had approached a paying customer with a pair of sharp scissors in her hands.
“Mrs. Mooney?” a young girl’s voice said. She turned in her seat, saw Holly Temple, a sweet girl whose hair Beth cut and styled. She said, “Do you need any help?”
Beth said, “I’m afraid I don’t know how to use this, Holly. I’m looking for some information, and I don’t know how to begin.”
Holly pulled over a chair and sat down next to her. “Well, it’s pretty easy. I’m surprised that Janice couldn’t help you.”
Her voice caught. “Me too.”
SHE WAS DRIVING to the rehab center to visit Janice, who had had what the doctors and nurses delicately called a setback. Physically she was improving day by day; emotionally, she was withdrawing, becoming more silent, less responsive. Beth found that she had to drive with only one hand, as she had to use the other to keep wiping her eyes with a wad of tissue.
At a stoplight, scores of supporters for the senator were gathered at the intersection, holding blue-and-white campaign signs on wooden sticks that they raised as they chanted. They waved at cars going by, gave thumbs-up to passing cars that honked in support. Two young men were staring right at her as they chanted. The light changed to green and she drove by, and she couldn’t help herself — she gave them the middle finger.
THAT NIGHT, FOR hour after hour, she dialed and redialed Henry Wolfe’s number. Eventually, at two a.m., he answered, and she got right to the point.
“Mr. Wolfe, next Tuesday is the New Hampshire primary. The day after tomorrow, I plan to drive to Concord and visit the offices of the Associated Press. There, I’m going to show them the documents that I signed and tell them what the senator’s son did to my little girl.”
Voice sharp, he said, “Do that, you silly bitch, and you’ll be destroyed. Ruined. Wiped out.”
“And come next Tuesday, so will your candidate. I may be silly, but I’m not stupid. I know if he wins the primary with a good margin, he’ll be your party’s nominee. And after that, he’ll be the favorite to be president. So destroying him in exchange for losing my shop and my double-wide and the one thousand two hundred dollars I have in my savings account . . . that sounds like a pretty fair deal to me.”
She could hear him breathing over the phone line. “What do you want?”
Beth said, “The first time we met, you said the senator’s life was scheduled in fifteen-minute chunks of time, and that your job was to make sure that time went smoothly. So here’s the deal. Sometime over the next two days, I want five minutes with him. And with you. Alone.”
Henry said, “Impossible.”
“Then make it possible,” she said curtly. “After all, you’re paid to solve problems.”
This time, she hung up on him.
TWO HOURS LATER, her phone rang. She picked it up and a tired voice said, “A deal. The Center of New Hampshire hotel. Two this afternoon. Room six ten.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“Look, you need to know that —”
Taking more pleasure in it this time, she hung up on him again. And went back to sleep.
LATER THAT DAY, Beth drove to Manchester — the state’s largest city — and instead of going into the pricey parking garage, she found a free spot about four blocks away. She trudged along the snowy sidewalk and walked into the hotel, past guests and people streaming in and out. In one corner of the lobby, there were bright lights from a television news crew filming an interview with somebody who must be famous.
She took the elevator to the sixth floor, got off, and within a minute, she found room 610. A quick knock on the door and it opened up within seconds, a frowning and worn-looking Henry Wolfe on the other side. He was dressed as well as ever, but his eyes were sunken and red-rimmed. Beth had a brief flash of sympathy for him before remembering all that had gone before, and then she didn’t feel sympathetic at all.
He started to speak and she brushed by him and into the room. Wow, she thought. This wasn’t a room. It was a palace, bigger than the interior of her double-wide trailer. Couches, chairs, big-screen television, kitchen, bar, and doors that led into other rooms. Flowers and baskets of fruit and snack trays and piles of newspapers.