Balance of Power

SEVENTEEN

Three days before Christmas, to be spent with Mary, Kerry and Lara visited the gravesites.

It was morning. Thin sunlight filtered through a dissipating fog, and the grass on the knoll glistened with dew. Holding Kerry's hand, Lara gazed down at the headstones of her mother, sister and niece.

They were President and First Lady. Lara understood, and accepted, that the press, gathered some distance away, would film them, and that the image would linger over the Senate when it debated Kerry's gun bill, as it would over Gardner Bond's courtroom on the first day of trial. She knew that, in part, this was why Kerry had suggested coming. But she also knew that, with all the hurt they had sustained, Kerry sensed that this was a time for Lara to seek peace. Although, she thought to herself, he did not yet know the final reason this was so.

After a time, she banished those watching from her mind. In turn, Lara thought of Inez Costello, then Joan, and then Marie—recalling each not as she had seen them last, but in life, until their memory filled her like a living thing.

She did not know how long this took. When they stepped away, it was because she was done; when they stopped, a short distance from the graves, it was because Lara wished it.

"I can't imagine," she told him, "how this would have been without you."

A hint of pain surfaced in his eyes. "Without me," he answered, "it wouldn't have been at all."

"It wasn't you, Kerry." She hesitated, then touched his face. "All my life I've been afraid to lean on anyone. Now I know that I can. And so can you."

Kerry smiled a little. "Then that's all I could want."

She cocked her head. "All?"

His expression became puzzled. Watching him, Lara felt her anticipation quicken; this moment, before it was strained through the prism of politics and public life, belonged to them alone. She saw his puzzlement change to wonder.

"It wasn't flu . . ."

Lara smiled up at him. "Diapers," she informed her husband, "are the acid test of character. Even for a President."