Page 117 of Keep

“You were communing.” She clinked her glass against his. “The show is wonderful, Hank.”

“It is.”

“Oh—the ethics inquiry was officially dismissed yesterday. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

Hank nodded. He’d expected it—Clancy’s defeat had made the whole thing vestigial—but hearing it closed was a clean, small relief.

“Thank you.”

“Consider it my Christmas gift. I’m not buying you anything.” She scanned the room. “Now. Where’s Shelby? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

Shelby was in the second room, white wine, studying a landscape. Black dress. Pearl earrings Hank recognized—he’d given them to her for their fifth anniversary. She turned when they approached.

“Shelby, you remember Frannie.”

“Of course I do.” Shelby’s face opened into something warm and genuine. She extended her hand, and Frannie took it with both of hers.

“Look at you,” Frannie said. “How long has it been?”

“Too long.” Shelby’s eyes did their work—reading, assessing, arriving. “He needed someone like you in that building.”

“He needed someone like you outside it.” Frannie’s voice dropped half a register. “We’ve been taking care of him from different directions. Nice to finally coordinate.”

They looked at each other—the calibration of two intelligent women who’d been important to the same man from different directions, reunited in a room full of art painted by a third person who’d changed him more than either of them.

Shelby laughed—not the campaign laugh, the real one, the one Hank remembered from their kitchen and their porch and the years when they’d been each other’s only audience.

She looped her arm in Frannie’s. “Come see the rest with me. Hank’s already seen everything, and he’s making the face.”

They walked off together. Frannie leaned in to say something. Shelby tilted her head and laughed again.

Hank let them go.

Martin found him. The wire-rimmed glasses, the ponytail, the corduroy jacket with elbow patches.

“Senator.” Firm handshake. Unhurried.

“Martin. This is something.”

“It is.” Martin looked at the walls. “She’s hung them well. The viewer moves through the show like a conversation.” He adjusted his glasses. “You’ll see.”

He squeezed Hank’s arm and moved on.

Hank made his way through the second room. More landscapes, two abstracts he hadn’t seen—newer work, the pieces Chad had been producing since Diana’s call. They had an energy that the earlier paintings didn’t. Looser. Less careful. As though the painter had stopped asking permission.

Diana Thorne was near the passage between the second and third galleries, scanning the room over a glass she hadn’t touched.

“Senator. Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for this.”

“I offered gallery space to an artist whose work justified it.” Pleasant. Precise. A door closed without being slammed. “Fifteen pieces in three weeks. Most established artists can’t sustain that pace.”

“He’s been working around the clock.”

“I know.” Her eyes moved past him. “The Post critic has been in the third room twice. I consider that promising.”

She moved on.