Divide and conquer - Tom Clancy [5]
But Hood had never believed that work itself was really the problem. It was something older and deeper than that.
Even when he had resigned his position as director of Op-Center and went to New York for Harleigh's performance at a United Nations reception, Sharon still wasn't happy. She was jealous of the attention that other mothers on the junket gave him. Sharon realized that the women were drawn to Hood because he had been a highly visible mayor of Los Angeles.
After that, he had held a powerful job in Washington, where power was the coin of the realm. It didn't matter to Sharon that Hood put no stock in fame and power. It didn't matter to her that his replies to the women were always polite but short. All Sharon knew was that she had to share her husband again.
Then came the nightmare. Harleigh and the other young musicians were taken hostage in the Security Council chambers by renegade United Nations peacekeepers.
Hood had left Sharon at the State Department's understaffed crisis center so that he could oversee Op Center successful covert effort to rescue the teenagers and the captive foreign delegates. In Sharon's eyes, he had not been there for her again. When they returned to Washington, she immediately took the children to her parents' house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Sharon had said she wanted to get Harleigh away from the media zoo that had pursued the children from New York.
Hood couldn't argue with that. Harleigh had seen one of her friends seriously wounded and several other people executed. She was almost killed herself. She had suffered the clinical consequences of classic stress or triggers for post-traumatic stress disorder: threats to the physical integrity of herself and others; fear and helplessness; and a guilt response to survival. After all that, to have been surrounded by TV lights and shouting members of the press corps would have been the worst thing for Harleigh.
But Hood knew that wasn't the only reason his wife had gone back to Old Saybrook. Sharon herself needed to get away. She needed the comfort and safety of her childhood home in order to think about her future.
About their future.
Hood shut off the TV. He put the remote on the night table, lay back on the bunched pillows, and looked up at the white ceiling. Only he didn't see a ceiling. Hood saw Sharon's pale face and dark eyes. He saw how they had looked on Friday when she came home and told him she wanted a divorce.
That wasn't a surprise. It was actually a relief in some ways. After Hood had returned from New York, he met briefly with the president about repairing the rift between the United States and the UN. Being back at the White House, being plugged into the world, had made him want to withdraw his resignation from Op-Center. He liked the work he was doing: the challenge, the implications, the risk. On Friday evening, after Sharon had told him of her decision, he was able to withdraw his resignation with a clear conscience.
By the time Hood and Sharon talked again on Saturday, the emotional distancing had already begun. They agreed that Sharon could use their family attorney. Paul would have Op-Center's legal officer, Lowell Coffey in, recommend someone for him. It was all very polite, mature, formal.
The big questions they still had to decide were whether to tell the kids and whether Hood should leave the house immediately. He had called Op-Center's staff psychologist Liz Gordon, who was counseling Harleigh before turning her over to a psychiatrist who specialized in treating PTSD. Liz told Hood that he should be extremely gentle whenever he was around Harleigh. He was the only family member who had been with her during the siege. Harleigh would associate his strength and calmness with security. That would help to speed her recovery. Liz added that whatever instability