Zoe shook her head. “I’ll take a walk.”
She left the hospital and wandered down the hill, making a slow loop around the parking lot. Ten minutes later, she approached the receptionist again.
“Here it is,” the woman said, handing her a printout. “The cost for the hospital stay will be 279,000 rand. The doctors charge separately, but the total should not exceed 425,000 rand.”
It was less than Zoe had expected. She turned away, thinking to send an email to Alex, when the receptionist stopped her.
“By the way, a man came by a minute ago and asked about Kuyeya. He looked rather flustered. If you see him wandering around, perhaps you can show him the way.”
“What did he look like?” Zoe asked, confused.
The receptionist turned curious. “Actually, he looked a bit like you.”
Zoe was thunderstruck. It had to be Trevor, but his visit made no sense. She had left him at JFK airport less than two days ago. To reach Pretoria so soon, he had to take a flight immediately after hers. Or maybe he took one of Dad’s jets, she thought. It was possible, but it only deepened the enigma.
She walked quickly down the corridor, passing two doctors deep in conversation and a woman bouncing a baby. At the top of the steps, she froze. In the hallway below her were three men. Two of the men were dressed in bulky suits straight from central casting, and the third man was tall with graying hair and the build of an athlete past his prime.
It was her father.
“Zoe,” he said. “Will you take a walk with me?”
She stood motionless, staring at him. He looked exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in days. His skin was sallow and his blue eyes were clouded like an overcast sky.
“What are you doing here?” she asked softly.
“I had to see you. A phone call wasn’t good enough.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“Walk with me,” he said again, gesturing down the hallway. When still she didn’t move, he turned imploring. “I had a speech scheduled for tonight, a primetime interview tomorrow. I rescheduled them. I flew nineteen hours to be here. Please.”
“Okay,” she said at last. She walked beside him away from the waiting room, away from Joseph and Sister Irina and Jan and Kuyeya, toward a glass door that led to a courtyard with trees and a fountain and a few scattered tables. She sat down at one of them, trying to ignore the pounding of her heart.
“I told Harry Randall,” he said when his bodyguards were out of earshot.
She looked at him in shock. “And?”
“He wasn’t surprised. There have been other allegations.”
Her eyes flashed. “All swept under the rug, I’m sure.”
His guilty look confirmed the truth.
“And the press?” she asked. “What are you going to tell them about me?”
“I’m not going to say anything. Neither is Sylvia.”
She let out the breath she was holding and waited for an explanation. His words, when they came, seemed disembodied, almost trance-like. She had seen him like this only once before—on the night the call came from Somalia.
“There are some things you don’t know,” he began. “I offer them not as an excuse, but as an explanation. Your mother and I were an unlikely couple. I don’t know how it happened that we fell in love, but we did. There were a lot of things about her that I didn’t understand. She was selfish. When she set her heart on something, she didn’t let anything get in the way. Even you and Trevor. But she had this gift, this glow. When she was around, she made me feel alive.”
He took a breath. “It wasn’t Sylvia who suggested I get into politics. It was your mother. I’ll never forget the night she told me I could be President of the United States. She gave me that earnest look—you know the one—like she had a secret to tell. ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘imagine how much good we could do in the Oval Office.’ We planned it all out. She was supposed to be with me when I ran for the Senate.” He choked up. “She was supposed to be with me now.”
Zoe stared at him in shock. So many of her assumptions had been wrong.
“When she died,” he went on, “I promised her on her grave that I’d make it to the White House. What I didn’t realize is how many concessions I’d have to make, how many things I’d have to say that I don’t really believe. It’s ironic: your description of me in the New Yorker was spot on. It’s who I’ve always been. But the political climate right now is more toxic than I’ve ever seen it. It’s impossible to run as a moderate. People don’t want to hear about the benefits of cooperation. They want you to tell them how right they are and then beat up the other side.”