Night’s Landing

Twenty-One

John Wesley Poe gave up on trying to get to sleep. He switched on the bedside lamp and sat up, haunted, even now, by the memory of taking fair-haired Betsy Quinlan to Night’s Landing for the first time.

It was more than thirty years ago. Hard to believe. He’d done so much since then. Yet he still could feel his awkwardness, his sense of inadequacy, around brilliant, gentlemanly Stuart Dunnemore.

And he could see the look in Betsy’s eyes when Stuart stood up to greet her on the front porch of the log house. He was a widower, no longer sad but so alone. He’d gone back to Washington by then but would come home for holidays, the occasional weekend. And he’d tend the family graves. His grandparents, his father, his brother, his wife. Granny-she wasn’t an actual grandmother until the twins were born but people called her Granny, anyway-hated going to the cemetery. She’d tap the side of her head and tell Wes that the people she’d lost were there, not buried deep in the earth.

Wes had lost his virginity to Betsy Quinlan. She’d lost hers to him. Their college romance had been brief, not that well-known even among their friends. It was before Stuart, and nothing like the kind of love he and Betsy had for each other, the kind of love Wes had eventually found with Ev. Devastated when he and Betsy drifted apart, he had kept his pain to himself, but Leola and Violet had seen it-and they’d told him, these two elderly sisters who’d never married, that there was someone out there for him.

That he and the Dunnemores had remained steadfast friends all these years was as much an accident of geography as anything else-they were neighbors. They had Night’s Landing in common.

And Stuart, Wes thought. He owed so much to his longtime friend and neighbor. They’d sit on the porch late into the evening and listen to the crickets, talk about politics and international affairs, the economy, social justice, personal and public accountability, terrorism-and fishing, varieties of tomato plants, the weather. Wes remembered when the twins were born, how shocked and happy Stuart was to be a father at last, and Wes had known that Betsy had married the better man.

Evelyn slipped into bed. She often stayed up late reading. She was a small, shy, attractive woman, more up to her role as First Lady than anyone had anticipated. People empathized with her awkwardness, the losses she’d endured.

“You can’t sleep?” she asked.

Wes shook his head. “No.”

“I keep thinking about poor Sarah and Rob. What a nightmare this must be for them. To have had that wonderful visit together in Amsterdam, and just a few weeks later-” She shuddered. “It’s hard to think about Rob suffering. And Sarah’s only just home from Scotland. Don’t you just hate to think about what they’re both going through?”

“Sarah’s back in Night’s Landing.”

Ev shuddered. She’d always been ambivalent about Night’s Landing. She’d never been a part of his life there or had any interest in making the Poe house her own. She appreciated Wes’s devotion to Leola and Violet, but to Evelyn, the sisters were remote, quaint, a little unreal. She was from an upper-crust Belle Meade family-she ran in loftier circles than the Quinlans. Her connections had helped propel him to the governor’s mansion, not that it mattered. Wes had fallen hopelessly in love with her in his late twenties, years after Betsy Quinlan had married Stuart Dunnemore and had born twins.

But Evelyn was no longer secure in his love for her-he didn’t know if she ever would be, if he ever could make her believe that she hadn’t let him down by not being able to bear children.

“Wes.”

“What is it, Ev?”

“If you had it to do all over again, would you still marry me?”

“Of course! Oh, Ev. Don’t think like that.”

“I love Sarah and Rob as if they were our own, but I know they’re not. I’ve never discouraged you from being a part of their lives. The Dunnemores are almost as much your family as Leola and Violet were. But you can’t let your affection for them cloud your judgment.”

“There’s no judgment to cloud. I’m on the sidelines.”

She looked at him as only she could, with a frank honesty he’d come to expect and appreciate-to need in his life. “Do you really think so?”

He didn’t answer, knew he couldn’t convince her.

“You’d do anything for Sarah and Rob. Anything. I’m not the only one who knows it.”

“Ev…”

“Our love for them makes us both vulnerable, but especially you. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

Wes sighed. She was the worrier, the conspiracy theorist, in many ways, more tough-minded than he was. He could lead and inspire, but he was the last to recognize an enemy. “I promise.”

She rolled over, her back to him. Wes turned out the light. He listened to his wife take in sharp, fearful breaths, and he could almost feel her mind racing ahead, imagining terrible scenarios, working herself up into an anxious frenzy. So often, her instincts were on target.

But not this time, Wes told himself. This time, she was worrying over nothing.

Some thug in Central Park had tried to take out two federal agents.

That was it. There was nothing more.