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“With someone else?”
She hesitated, then nodded slowly. He had no idea who she was, and she was so tired of pretending she and Dennis had been blissfully happy. At least Nell Kelly could tell some small part of the truth.
“A lot of someones?”
“No, only one. He was faithful. He just wasn’t faithful to me.” She toyed with the pillow in her lap. “He wasn’t anything with me.”
There was a long pause. “Are you trying to tell me you didn’t have sex with your husband?”
She realized what she’d almost revealed. “Yes, of course I did. It just wasn’t great sex.”
That was a lie. There had been a few weeks of fumbling attempts that had left her with this humiliating uncertainty about whether or not she was still a virgin. She felt like a fool. All through high school and college, her healthy body had ached for a man’s touch, but she’d been raised to be daddy’s good girl, so she’d said no the few times a boy had gotten up the courage to ignore the Secret Service.
“The guy must have a problem.”
A big one. He was buried six feet under at Arlington National Cemetery. She choked back a laugh that felt like a sob. “Are you sure I wasn’t the one with the problem?”
He paused for a moment, and she realized he was really thinking it over. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
She found herself smiling. “Thank you.”
“Feeling a little insecure, are you?”
“A little.”
“So he had great sex with his girlfriend, but not with you.”
“I don’t know what kind of sex he had with his . . . his . . . girlfriend.”
He straightened, and his eyebrows shot together. “Crap.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t a girlfriend,” he said slowly. “It was a guy.”
Wine sloshed over the rim of her glass, and she sent the pillow tumbling as she jumped up from her chair. “That’s ridiculous! Why would you say something like that? How could you even think it?”
“I don’t know. It just popped into my head. And the corner of your mouth is tight again. Your ex-husband’s gay. That’s why you divorced him.”
“No! That’s absurd. It’s ridiculous.” She rubbed at the wine spill with her other hand. “If you’d ever met him . . . He was—he is a very masculine man. Very good-looking. Athletic. The kind of man o
ther men are comfortable around. You’re completely wrong!”
He didn’t say a word. He simply gazed at her, and his gray eyes were filled with pity.
She tried to curb her panic. Why had she been so reckless? It was a secret she’d kept for so long—the secret that would have brought down an administration and made the Clinton sex scandals look tame. The married President of the United States was a homosexual.
The only person who had known besides herself was Terry Ackerman, Dennis’s oldest friend, deputy chief of staff, and lifelong lover. She stepped over the pillow she’d dropped and walked to the window carrying her wine. Through the sheers, she could see the lights of the swimming pool, and just beyond, a truck whizzing by on the highway.
Until Dennis and Terry had met during their junior year at Harvard, both had been in deep denial about their sexuality, but once they’d set eyes on each other, that was no longer possible. They had everything in common. They were from prominent families. Both were ambitious and popular with their peers, two young lions on the fast track to glory. They dated new girls every week and told themselves lies about the sexual fantasies they were having. But their attraction had been so strong that they were powerless against it.
She remembered the November night six weeks after she and Dennis were married when she’d finally forced her husband to confess the truth. They’d been campaigning in New York City and staying at the Waldorf-Astoria. She’d been miserable. Her marriage hadn’t quite been consummated, and she’d finally realized it wasn’t her fault.
Tears had clouded Dennis’s eyes as he’d sat on the end of the bed and stared down at his hands, his voice so choked with guilt it had been hard to understand him.
“The moment Terry and I first looked at each other, we knew we’d found our only soul mate. Neither of us has ever looked at anyone else since.” He’d gazed up at her, his golden brown eyes stricken. “Except for Terry, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I do love you, Nealy.”
“Like a sister,” she said dully. “You love me like a sister.”
