Every Star in the Sky

by Danielle Singleton

  Geoff shoveled more pasta into his mouth. “She knows. She likes Il Trillo better than her own cooking, too.” He paused to swallow the food. “That’s what you need. A wife to bring here so you can steal all of her pasta instead of taking mine.”

  “I think my find-a-wife days are over.”

  “Oh, mate!” Geoff slapped the table in excitement. “I can’t believe I almost forgot. She’s single!”

  “Who?”

  Geoffrey lowered his voice. “The one you’ve wanted all along. She’s Treasury Secretary now . . . you’re equals.”

  “She’s married.”

  “That’s not what I heard. Kept it out of the papers, but a nasty split. Husband had a whole second family, apparently.”

  Richard stared at his friend in disbelief. “No fucking way.”

  ****

  Richard finished dinner with Geoff and tried to maintain his composure, but inside his emotions were raging. He hadn’t seen or even spoken to Rebecca in over ten years. Not since our disastrous meeting in London, he thought. In an attempt to calm his nerves, Richard drank too much that night – and I ended up blowing it, he concluded. Rebecca had seemed so distant, so confident in her marriage and her children. But if she’s divorced now . . .

  No. Richard shook his head as he climbed inside his government-issued car. He had a full-time security detail ever since being named Chancellor of the Exchequer. Don’t get your hopes up. She might as well have told you to go fuck yourself the last time you saw her.

  “Straight home, your lordship?” asked his driver.

  “Yes. Straight home.”

  As the black car rumbled through London’s busy roads on its way to Downing Street, Richard continued to war with himself over the news of Rebecca’s divorce. “A whole other family?” he muttered under his breath. “I knew I never liked that arsehole.”

  Richard’s driver glanced in the rearview mirror but didn’t say anything. He had been a protection officer for fifteen years, which meant he was used to pretending not to hear the personal moments of the famous and powerful.

  “She probably doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now,” Richard continued. “Not if her whole world just crashed down around her.” Then again, he thought, looking out the window, maybe a friendly face is exactly what she needs.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  The next morning, Rebecca was reading an email from her chief deputy when her assistant, Jamal, beeped in on the intercom. The young man had followed her from New York to DC and partnered with Sarah to provide the Secretary the support she needed.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?” said Jamal. “You have a call from Lord Dublinshire’s office? The British Chancellor of the Exchequer?”

  Rebecca raised her eyebrows in surprise. Wow, Richard. I haven’t heard from him in forever. “Put him through,” she said.

  A second later, the phone rang. Rebecca picked it up. “Yes, please make this quick. I’m busy and extremely important.”

  She could hear Richard’s laugh from the other side of the Atlantic. “I hate to break it to you, Madam Secretary, but I’m equally busy and important.”

  It was Rebecca’s turn to laugh. She slouched back in her chair and twirled a strand of hair between her fingers.

  “What’s up, Richard? To what do I owe the surprise?”

  “I never would’ve thought ‘what’s up’ would be part of your vocabulary, Miss Barnard and Harvard.”

  “I have two Millennials as my children . . . I’m down with all the slang.”

  “I’m sure you are,” Richard replied with a chuckle. “How are they, by the way?”

  “Good. Sarah is twenty-six and working for me. Jonathan is twenty-four and in his senior year at Columbia. He took a gap year before college so he’s a little older. How’s Buddy?” she asked, referring to Richard’s beloved dog.

  “Buddy passed a few years ago. I have a chocolate lab now. Gus.”

  “Aww, I bet Gus is a cute little guy.”

  “He weighs nearly six stone. There’s nothing little about that dog.”

  Rebecca leaned forward and opened a new browser on her computer, typing ‘stones to pounds’ in the search bar. “Eighty-four pounds. Wow!”

  “You just looked that up online, didn’t you?”

  Rebecca smiled and shook her head. “You know me too well.”

  “That I do, Becks,” he said. “That I do.”

  A silence fell over the phone as the two old friends reached the end of their pleasantries. Unlike her calls with other people, though, this silence wasn’t awkward. Rebecca realized that she liked knowing Richard was on the other end of the line, whether they said anything or not.

  “I’ve missed this,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

  “You’ve missed what?”

  “Talking to you.”

  Rebecca knew she was headed down a rabbit hole, but she didn’t care. Newly single for the first time in three decades, she liked being able to talk to friends – male or female – without worrying what John would say.

  “I’ve missed talking to you too,” Richard replied. “We should do it more often. Especially because we’re both finance ministers now. But only if John wouldn’t object,” Richard added. He was testing the waters. Geoffrey told him that Rebecca and her husband split, but Richard didn’t trust the rumor. He wanted to hear her say it.

  “John and I are divorced,” Rebecca replied. “So his objections wouldn’t matter anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Becks. Truly.”

  “Don’t be. I . . . I don’t want to get into it right now – not when I have a meeting in a few minutes – but don’t be. It’s for the best.”

  “Okay,” Richard said, knowing better than to push any further. “And I won’t keep you any longer. I have a call at the top of the hour as well. I just wanted to say hello and wish you luck in the new job. I’m sure we’ll be talking more soon. I know our predecessors interacted with each other a good bit.”

  “I look forward to it, your lordship,” she said, doing her best impersonation of a British accent.

  “Oh, please. You were never any good at that.”

  They both laughed, and another warm silence settled over the phone.

  Finally, Richard said: “I’ll talk to you soon, Becks.”

  “Bye, Richard.”

  Rebecca smiled as she hung up. Her first real, true smile in longer than she could remember. It was amazing how the love of a good man could make a woman feel beautiful even in the midst of her darkest hour.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Richard texted her again the next day at the same time to say hello and wish her a Happy Thursday. Rebecca knew what he was doing, but this time she didn’t care. I need a little joy and friendship right now, she thought.

  The next morning, day three, her phone rang again. Rebecca looked at the clock on her computer. Ten a.m. sharp. She smiled as she picked up the receiver.

  “This is starting to be a habit, don’t you think?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Rebecca’s smile vanished at the sound of the deep American voice.

  “What do you want, John?”

  “Who did you think I was?” he pressed.

  “None of your business. You forfeited your right to know that or anything else about me.”

  Her ex-husband grunted into the phone. “Fine. If that’s how you want us to be, fine.” He paused. “I’m calling because I got an email from Sarah with a bunch of documents to sign. You’re selling our apartment in New York?”

  “I told the kids they could decide what to do with it. I don’t want it, and you don’t need it since you’re living with them now.”

  “We bought that place together,” he countered. “Surely I should have some say in the matter.”

  “I don’t give a shit, John. And honestly, I have better things to do than talk to you about this. I’m a big fucking deal. I have Secret Service protection, I can sign official Treasury orders, and I have my own d
amn flag that flies on my motorcade car. I’m sorry if you can’t handle the fact that I’m more important than you now, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m more important than you now.” Rebecca picked up a folder from her desk and lifted her purse off the back of her chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting to go to. At the White House.”

  Rebecca hung up on John and sauntered down the hallway of her office with an extra sway in her hips. Jackass, she thought. As Rebecca climbed into her car, her cell phone buzzed.

  Good morning, beautiful! Busy day for me. I hope things are great with you. xx, R

  SIXTY

  Two weeks later, the calls and texts from Richard stopped. It was a busy Wednesday morning, and the 10 o’clock hour nearly passed before Rebecca even noticed the lack of a message from him. Walking back to her office from a conference room down the hall, Rebecca hung her head in disappointment. He’s probably having a busy day too, Becky, she told herself. You can’t expect him to keep this up forever.

  When she passed Jamal’s desk, Rebecca noticed an odd grin on the man’s face. Once inside her office, she realized why: an enormous bouquet of pink, purple, and red tulips was sitting on Rebecca’s desk. She opened the card displayed on the top.

  I’m roses serious when I say that I hope you have a daisies happy day.

  Rebecca’s eager assistant had followed his boss into the office and now stood admiring the flowers.

  “The card isn’t signed,” said Jamal, reading over her shoulder.

  “It doesn’t need to be,” Rebecca replied with a smile. “I know who sent them.”

  “Your kids?”

  “No. These are from my best friend.”

  Jamal used his pen as a pointer and counted the flowers. “There are 34. Shouldn’t it be 24 or 36? Multiples of a dozen?”

  “I guess the florist messed up,” Rebecca said, sitting down at her desk.

  “Weird. Well, do you need anything, ma’am?”

  “No thank you, I’m fine right now.”

  After Jamal closed the door behind him, Rebecca stood up and leaned over her desk toward the flowers. She breathed in their fresh scent and read the card over and over. Thirty-four tulips. One for every year we’ve known each other.

  Not for the first time, Rebecca thought back to her years at Harvard with Richard and wondered what might have been.

  If she said yes.

  If he chased after her.

  If they were two normal people to begin with and could have been together from the start.

  “But you wouldn’t be here, Madam Secretary,” she told herself. Putting the card back in the flowers, Rebecca sat down in her chair. “You definitely wouldn’t be here.”

  Rebecca picked her cell phone up off the desk and opened a new message chain.

  The flowers are beautiful. Thank you. xx, B

  His response came instantly.

  I figured enough time had passed and maybe the rules had been reset. Still too much? Or am I allowed to send flowers now?

  She smiled and started typing back with her thumbs.

  I was right the first time around. You can never go wrong sending a woman flowers.

  SIXTY-ONE

  Apart from his assistant Tricia, who coordinated the flower delivery, no one in Richard’s life knew about his renewed pursuit of Rebecca. All they could tell was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was happier than they had ever seen him. Vacation days were approved. Clever nicknames were assigned. And there was laughter in the halls of Number 11 Downing Street for the first time since Richard took the oath of office.

  Perhaps the biggest change, though, was the addition of ‘family dinners’. On the first Friday of every month, Richard invited his senior staff and their families to have dinner at Number 11, which served as both his office and his residence. Richard’s sister and brother-in-law joined the group for the first dinner, and Geoffrey brought his wife and kids to the next one.

  After the second dinner was over and all the staff and guests had returned home, Richard and Geoff walked out to the back patio with cigars and whisky in hand.

  “This was nice,” Geoff commented as he sat down on the outdoor furniture. “Your staff seemed to enjoy it.” He paused as he lit a match and held it to the end of the cigar, drawing in hard on the first few puffs. “It’s good to see you like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Relaxed. Happy. I don’t know what her name is, but I’m a big fan.”

  Richard raised his whisky glass up to his mouth and cut his eyes over at his lifelong friend. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mmm hmm, sure. Tell me this, old man, is she young enough to give you a little Richard Junior running around?”

  “Hypothetically,” Richard said, “if there were a woman potentially in my life . . . no, she’s not young enough.”

  Geoff blew rings of smoke into the night air. “That probably bodes well for the relationship, since I don’t see you putting up with a dimwit twenty-something. Although,” he added with a grin, “it is a shame you won’t be able to pass along those devilishly handsome good looks.”

  Richard shook his head and drew in a long breath from his own cigar. “Children weren’t in the cards for me. Sarah’s eldest will be the next marquess.”

  Richard was so unassuming and down to earth, and they had known each other for so long, that Geoffrey often forgot about Richard’s title. Forgot that, in addition to being Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was also Lord Dublinshire.

  “Do we like him?” Geoff asked. “The heir?”

  “He’s a sniveling little shit. Calls me ‘Dick’ and is content to waste away his youth on the hopes that I will die young like my father did. He’s twenty-six and blowing through his trust fund trying to ‘make it’ as a professional sailor.” Richard huffed his disapproval. “His younger brother, on the other hand, is a great kid. Went through Sandhurst and is stationed on Gibraltar as a First Lieutenant.

  “If William were my heir,” he continued, “things would be different. I’d be content to die young, content to leave the estate intact, confident in the knowledge that the family – and the family name – would be well represented. But William is the second son, not the first.” Richard raised his glass to the sky. “So I must live forever.”

  Geoff roared with laughter at his friend’s dramatic declaration.

  “Tell me this, Mr. Live Forever, can immortals play tennis? I won’t be fit for much of anything early tomorrow, but I can probably sneak out in the afternoon.”

  Richard shook his head. “Can’t. I’m driving to Rosewood first thing in the morning. I’ve got my monthly lunch with the Dowager tomorrow.”

  “You mean your mum?”

  “She prefers I call her the Dowager. I think she likes to rub in the fact that there’s not a current Marchioness of Dublinshire, only a Dowager Marchioness.”

  “Chancellor of the Exchequer and heir apparent to be Prime Minister, but still not good enough because you haven’t got a wife?”

  Richard nodded. “That’s my mum for you.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  The next day, promptly at noon, Richard was shown into the dining room of the Dowager House for lunch with his mother. As the widow of the former Marquess, Victoria Arrington lived in a house on the edge of their property that was reserved for surviving spouses. Richard would have been more than happy to let his mother continue living at Rosewood – I’m rarely there anyway, he thought. But Lady Dublinshire insisted on following protocol, and she moved to the Dowager House the week after Richard’s father died. “It’s the appropriate thing,” she had told him, using her late husband’s favorite word for what members of a family like theirs should or shouldn’t do.

  Both of her children had command performances once a month with their mother – Richard the first week and Sarah the third. Victoria said it was to keep an eye on them, but Richard suspected it was the eighty-one-year old’s way of giving herself something to do. With a
family raised and a husband gone, life could get rather lonely in the countryside.

  Richard walked into the dining room and found it empty. No surprise, he thought. She loves to make an entrance.

  Five minutes later, his mother walked in.

  “Darling! So good to see you,” she declared, opening her arms wide for the mandatory hug. Except it’s not really a hug, Richard thought, since their bodies never touched and their hands barely grazed the shoulders of the other.

  “We’re having beef stew today,” Lady Dublinshire continued. “It’s still so cold out. I was hoping for a warmer March than this.”

  Richard nodded and waited for the butler to pull out his mother’s chair before sitting down himself.

  “It’ll warm up soon,” he replied. “April is always when it turns.”

  A very boring but very appropriate conversation continued for several minutes, through the first course salad and on into the beef stew. The weather, the upcoming garden show, his sister’s kids . . . the topics never changed. Richard let his mind wander to work meetings and emails he needed to return, nodding and smiling enough to convince his mother that he was paying attention.

  As lunch drew to a close, Lady Dublinshire said: “Oh, dear, this might interest you. I couldn’t sleep the other night, so I turned on the channel that used to show your father’s House of Lords sessions. They were talking about the world economy, and there was an interview with the American finance minister. She made some excellent points – a very impressive woman.”

  Richard froze mid-bite and turned pale for half a second before lowering his spoon to the table. He set his jaw and let out a fierce breath.