The President's Daughter - Mariah Stewart [42]
“What other failings might he have had, Mrs. Hayward?” Simon toyed with his pen.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said, ‘Whatever else his failings might have been.’ I don’t recall anyone ever mentioning that your husband had any failings whatsoever.”
Sensing that he was teasing her, Celeste Hayward laughed. “Well, you know, he had his weaknesses, as do we all. He had a scandalous addiction to Hershey bars. The kind with the almonds.” The former First Lady sat back down and leaned closer to Simon as if to share a confidence. “And—I’ve never admitted this publicly— my husband could not abide cats.”
Simon laughed appropriately. “I knew if I dug hard enough, I’d find that skeleton in the closet.”
“And there you have it.” Mrs. Hayward sat back in her chair and smiled graciously. “Is there anything else you need to know?”
Sensing dismissal, Simon closed his notebook and stood. “No, I think we’re fine. For now, anyway. And we discussed earlier the list of questions that I would be faxing to you as a follow-up.” Simon opened his briefcase and tucked the notebook in, then said with a snap of his fingers, “Oh, I almost forgot. I found some old photographs in one of the boxes that Dr. Norton sent over. I thought maybe you’d like to see them. Maybe you could even identify some of the people.”
“I’d be delighted to see them, and of course if I recognize . . .” The former First Lady studied the first in the small stack of photos. “Yes, this is the former Speaker of the House, Andy Liston, and his wife, Marguerite. Lovely, lovely woman. She was from Madrid. And this one”—she moved on to the next—“hmmm, let’s see. This is my husband, of course, with his brother, Tom; his wife, Alice; Miles Kendall; and Philip Norton, of course. This was at a Brown reunion, I believe. And this next one . . .”
Celeste Hayward’s face froze.
“This was . . . oh, some Ambassador, I believe. I don’t recall his name.” Some dark emotion—a passionate fury—flashed momentarily across her face.
“And the young woman?” Simon asked even as Celeste buried the photo at the bottom of the pile, as if she could not put it aside quickly enough.
“His daughter—the Ambassador’s—I believe.” Her nostrils flared slightly. “I . . . I don’t remember her at all.”
She handed the photos back to him and stood in a single motion.
“Now, when will you be meeting with my son?” She took a few steps toward the doorway as if to show him the way out.
“I believe we’re on for next Thursday morning.” Simon tucked the photos back into the briefcase and snapped the lid, then followed her into the hallway.
“Have you met him before?” The gracious, composed, self-assured woman had already returned, her face once again composed and pleasant.
“I might have met him briefly years ago when I was covering a story at the House.” Simon tugged on his overcoat, marveling at her control. “He wouldn’t remember, of course. Do you see him often?”
“As often as possible.” She nodded. “Gray has a home nearby, so when he and Jen are here in Rhode Island we spend lots of time together. And I do travel to Washington when the weather is kinder on old bones. I don’t see Sarah quite as often as I’d like. She used to visit once every month for a weekend with her daughters, but now the girls are getting older, you know. They both have busy schedules of their own I’m afraid. Emily, the older girl, is almost twenty now, and in college. Sometimes it seems only yesterday that Sarah was the one in college. . . .” Her voice trailed off for the briefest of moments. “But that’s life, isn’t it? Time has such a way of flying right past us when we’re not looking.”
“Mrs. Hayward, I can’t thank you enough for fitting me in.