Deadly Descent by Charlotte Hinger Page B

what my opponent is like. The press circles like buzzards. Thanks to the murder, I can’t even get decent treatment for my own mother without them video-taping every visit to every doctor.”
    I was stunned, but it made sense. It would account for Fiona’s erratic behavior, the unpredictability of her moods. My heart sank. Brian was right. Senators stayed in office a long time. If the disease were present in the mother in her sixties, the media would look for the same tendency in the son. He had to look ahead.
    “Brian, my twin sister, Josie, is a psychologist. We could count on her complete discretion in arranging total medical testing. She would understand everything.”
    He looked at me with mute gratitude.
    “That would be wonderful. Not doing right by Mom is killing me. What kind of son am I, putting my career before my mother’s health?”
    “It’s not you, Brian. It’s the media. How many good men aren’t running for office because of this kind of scrutiny? You’ve worked so hard. So terribly hard.”
    “And my wife. People don’t realize the toll this campaign has taken on Jenny. She’s shy. She hates the whole charade. It’s ironic that Mom just loves politics and she might be the one who brings us all down.”
    ***
    When I walked into the office, Judy pointed proudly to a new stack of Rolodex cards.
    “You’ve done all that?”
    I had left her with a whole stack of early school records. We make hard copies of everything, and these cross-indexed cards were the delight of the growing number of genealogy sleuths who found their way into our office. I picked up the first one. It was correctly formatted and printed.
    “This is super, Judy. Flawless, in fact.”
    Her huge blue eyes shone before she lowered them and studied the ties on her shoes as though they were of intense interest.
    Then I, who normally weighed words and actions as carefully as blind justice, surprised myself and made a very impulsive decision. One I would come to regret so profoundly it would haunt me the rest of my life.
    “Would you like to work here, Judy? For me, I mean? Full-time, as my assistant?”
    It was my right. I could hire anyone I wanted to, pay her anything I liked out of my own pocket. I needed her. Needed someone I could trust to run the office when I worked for Sam.
    I turned away, burdened by her vulnerability, unable to stand her sudden bright joy. Her trust. Trust, that most fragile of all emotions, which seems to rise pitifully, again and again, in some persons. Never mind what’s said about the strength of love and hope. It is the constant emergence of trust, with its accompanying cycle of betrayal, that breaks our hearts.
    “The same rules apply in triplicate,” I said, turning to face her again. “Keep your mouth shut and remember I’m running the show, not you. All mail, all stories are to be opened by me. And don’t listen to messages.”
    She nodded, but she clearly had not heard a word since I asked her to work for me.
    “I want to call Dad,” she sniffed. Then she grinned. “And my boss. My former boss.”
    She placed her hands together between her knees and squeezed as though she had to keep herself from shooting off the chair.
    “I’ll get to be with Dad from now on,” she said. “We’ll have each other. We won’t have Mom, but we’ll have each other.”
    I smiled, and she flew over to the phone. I left the room to give her some privacy. When I came back, she had resumed work on the school records.
    “It’s going to be crowded in here. Until I have time to come up with a permanent place for you, I’ll set up a spot where you can plop down with my lap-top. But, I don’t have time to reorganize today. I have to get cracking on my column.”
    I hadn’t settled on a subject and although I wanted to get back to reading microfilm, the column for the
Gateway Gazette
had to come first. Our county newspaper had started in the 1880s, survived the depression years, and was still going in the