Her routine went viral almost immediately. Cleo wouldn’t know this until the next day because she had other things to deal with, but she and Francis were trending within twenty minutes of the YouTube clip airing.

She was doing well from the very beginning. Very well, in fact. Cleo thought that her hips were shaking with quite a bit of passion, as requested by Francis, and her sway was swaying as instructed as well. They were three minutes in, and Cleo couldn’t believe how much fun she was having. This must have been why her mother danced! This must be why people sang and acted and lost themselves to a rock concert! She felt at one with the music and at one with Francis, and she saw Bowen watching her and grinning like he was rooting for her as much as he was rooting for himself, and she felt, honestly, like she could soar. She thought that maybe she’d even take a class or two at Dance DC with Francis once she had more time, after she officially launched the presidential bid, after all the hubbub that came with it. Surely she could find a night or two per week to dance.

There were only thirty seconds left to the song, and it came up so fast, Cleo hadn’t realized that they were nearing the end. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d lost herself like she had mamboing it out with Francis in front of five hundred of Washington, DC’s finest. Francis pulled her into a twirl and then spun her out toward the corner of the dance floor and yelled, “You got this, Senator!”

As the music quieted, then grew into a crescendo, Cleo quieted as well, then wound herself up, willing herself to run, willing herself to leap. To believe. She thought of her regrets list, and how she was so often alone, and how she now had Georgie and Gaby and Emily Godwin too, and how, if she didn’t just let go of her need to be in control and her need to win and have faith that Francis would catch her, when was she ever going to?

She started running, just as they practiced, and Francis stood on the other side of the ballroom with his arms aloft, his eyes trained on her, and he screamed again, “Come on, baby—I got you!”

And she remembered Georgie’s advice from just the day before, and so she ran, and then she leaped, and for a brief moment in time, she truly believed that she could fly.

TWENTY-FOUR

Unfortunately for Cleo, that moment was short-lived. Halfway through her leap, caught up in the moment and the energy, she shocked herself and showboated and did not heed Francis’s immaculately timed instructions from rehearsal. And thus, she threw up her arms too early and made a face toward the crowd, and her momentum therefore was slightly askew and she somehow angled her torso toward him rather than straight to the ceiling and ended up flattening her poor instructor against the band’s drummer and drum set, which then knocked over the cellist and, subsequently, the violinist too.

Bowen was the one who ran over first and helped Cleo to her feet. She thought that if it were possible to die of embarrassment (again), surely this would be the moment. Instead he leaned in close to her neck and said, “Go bow.”

Cleo was dizzy from the fall and surely hadn’t heard him correctly. “What?”

“Go bow. They won’t know the difference.”

Cleo knew that of course they would know the difference, but one thing she’d learned in Washington was that you could frankly fart in an elevator and, if you were savvy enough, convince the person next to you that they’d been responsible. Politics was half policy, half illusion. So she patted her hair down and reached for Francis, who was not yet moving or ready to bounce to his feet, and then she marched solo to the middle of the ballroom and she took her goddamn bow.

Cleo McDougal was not going down without a fight.

The applause was admittedly tepid at first, but then one table in the back started cheering, and so the one next to them started cheering and so on. No one in Washington liked to be outdone. Soon, just as they had with Bowen, they were on their feet, and goddammit, Cleo started laughing because she knew that she had just convinced them all that they’d farted in the elevator, and even if she didn’t win the competition, that was really something. Almost presidential.

Bowen won, and Cleo, grateful that he had rescued her just moments before, hugged him and said, “At least it wasn’t Suzanne Sonnenfeld.”

“That would have been the shame of my lifetime.” He laughed. “I think I was a bit of a ringer, though. My sisters used to make me go to ballet with them.”

Cleo made a face like she wasn’t sure how much that had helped, because he really wasn’t all that good, and Bowen laughed and said, “Well, I guess I have bragging rights now.”

“That’s no small thing in this town.”

Bowen nodded. “Listen—”

“Oh God, I’ve already humiliated myself enough tonight,” Cleo interrupted.

“I was only going to say that I had a nice time in New York—I mean, right up until the bourbon.” His eyes met hers, and they were honest, and they were warm, and Cleo, having survived a true humiliation for the evening, realized that he wasn’t trying to spurn her or embarrass her as she’d assumed. Why she’d assumed this in the first place probably said more about her knee-jerk judgment of Bowen (and everyone!) than what had transpired between them in New York anyway.

“Oh,” Cleo said. “Well, I should know better. Bourbon is my kryptonite, evidently.”

“It renders you weak?”

“Something like that,” Cleo said. “Last time I ended up dancing on a bar. So the rumor goes.”

“So, worse than tonight?” Bowen laughed.

“Possibly even worse than tonight.” Cleo managed a grin.

“Well,” he said, leaning in close, resting his hand on her waist, then around it. “I don’t regret any of it. Not one bit.”

The headline didn’t get much attention at first, which was why Cleo circulated around the ballroom with ease and allowed herself a (very) brief amount of small talk before she made an excuse to retreat to Veronica Kaye’s table, where Gaby sat beaming. In fact, no one at the fundraiser was any the wiser because their phones had been checked at the door, the better for privacy of the bigwigs. Inevitably a few people found their way around the rules because half the people in this room were paid to find their way around the rules, and one of those people was Cleo, who had tucked her phone into her gym bag, which was in the greenroom.

Veronica had hugged Cleo and congratulated her on the triumph.

“It wasn’t a triumph, but I appreciate that.” Cleo had laughed.

“It was, my dear. You took absolute shit and turned it into filet mignon. That is a triumph.”

So Cleo accepted her accolade, and when Veronica turned back to her table, Gaby gave her a double thumbs-up, which Cleo took to mean that a very big check and endorsement were on their way, and Cleo wanted to call Georgie and Lucas and share the news: that she was officially going to announce her candidacy as president of the United States. And she was going to do it without regret. If she could take a bow after a literal face-plant, she thought, she could do anything.

Though she’d been away from her phone for only an hour or so, she had thirty-one missed texts and five missed calls, which was surprising, since Gaby was the primary one to blow up her phone, and for a moment she worried that something had gone wrong with Lucas, that he was back in the hospital. Her pulse throbbed and her heart raced as she punched in her passcode.

The texts were from Lucas. The calls were from Georgie.

She didn’t need to speak with her sister, though, to understand what had gone wrong. She read his very first message.

Lucas: U have a list of regrets?

Then:

Lucas: Mom???

Lucas: What the fuck?

Lucas: What the actual fuck??

She grabbed her bag, and she raced toward home.

She knew, even without reading the rest, that it was already too late.

TWENTY-FIVE

Cleo had gotten careless. The other night, when Lucas was sick and just after she’d been taken off the Middle East trip, she’d forgotten to lock her top desk drawer. And as she raced down the darkened streets toward Alexandria, she remembered exactly why she had started locking it in the first place. Because of the calamity that was unspooling in front of her.

Georgie was pacing the kitchen when Cleo threw open the door and raced in.

“Where is he?”

“His room,” Georgie said. “But, Cleo, I think he’s very upset. Maybe take a minute and compose yourself. Generally, when you match hysteria with hysteria, it doesn’t calm the waters.”

“Please stop treating me like a patient and treat me like your sister!” Cleo screamed, though she hadn’t meant to raise her voice.

Georgie wasn’t fazed. She’d probably seen this all a million times. Not this specific thing but parents betraying children. Theirs wasn’t a new story.