The Department of Lost & Found Read Free Page B

to look fondly on ancestry that has enough cash and leverage to donate a new library or two.
    From that same shelf, I pulled out a Martha’s Vineyard T-shirt.
    the black dog, it read. Ned and I had spent a week there earlier in the summer. He started in on me in April to set aside a week in July for “just the two of us,” and given the desperation in his voice, maybe I should have sensed that the lives we were carving out around, not with, each other, weren’t enough. He brought it up again when I was dashing out the door to begin a weeklong trip through Europe with the senator, and in my haste, I agreed, which is how I found myself begrudgingly enjoying a lazy week in a quintessential beach house on the Vineyard. That week, I boiled lobsters for dinner because they were his favorite, I indulged him in renting a kayak, and I stayed up far later than I liked just to sit on our rented porch and listen to the lapping of the waves and hold his hand and stare at the stars.
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    a l l i s o n w i n n s c o t c h
    I held the Black Dog T-shirt out in front of me and almost tasted the homemade donuts that we’d eaten each morning that week. Tangy, sweet, cinnamon, soft, and crusty. Ned would dunk his into his black coffee, and I’d eat mine slowly until it literally melted in my mouth. Maybe I should have savored more than just the donuts, it occurred to me just then. I pulled the shirt into my face and inhaled, as if I might still be able to smell the salty air or breathe in the hazy sunsets or capture those moments—the moments of my former life—in the deep gasp of my breath.
    But there was nothing. So instead, I wiped away the solitary tear that had weaseled itself out of my right eye and careened down my cheek, and with sheer brute force, grabbed the neck of the T-shirt and tore it right down the middle. It would make a good dust rag, I figured, when I needed to do some cleaning up.
    ◆
    ◆
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    From: Miller, Natalie
    To: Richardson,
    Kyle
    Re:
    Please Call Me
    K—
    No word from you. The Post has this splattered all over the front page, of which I’m sure you’re well aware.
    Call ASAP.
    —N
    It was hardly an ideal thing to wake up to: your boss’s dirty laundry airing out for all to see, complete with the headline, “Dupris Is Duplicitous.” Lovely. The truth was that I didn’t know the particulars of this sticky tax problem. And as her senior adviser, I probably should have, but even I, future Madame President, wasn’t The Department of Lost & Found
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    immune to the occasional dropped ball at work. And besides, dirty laundry is simply part of my job. In politics, it’s not the dirt that bothers us, it’s the chance that someone might pick up our reeking scent. If you can manage to wring everything through the laundry without the evidence being spotted, well, hurrah to you.
    In the early spring, Kyle, who was my age but still a notch below me in seniority, which didn’t always foster the warmest of relationships, brought the senator’s endless list of gifts—including a Fabergé egg from a Russian diplomat and carved ivory elephants from ambassadors—to my attention.
    “I don’t think this is legal,” he said, taking a deep sip of the grande coffee that I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him without. “Have you ever looked into this? I mean, she gets thousands of thousands of dollars of gifts. And I think it could be an issue.”
    “Go away,” I said, waving my hand and squinting at my computer, dismissing him in the way that a queen might shoo a fly. I stopped to readjust the elastic band in my hair and pulled my highlighted brown locks into a bun at the nape of my neck.
    “Natalie, I’m serious. I think that this campaign might get ugly, and I really think that this could be an issue. I took a look at some of the stuff that she’s declared in the past, and . . .” He paused.
    “Not everything is there.”
    I rubbed my eyes. “ Everyone fudges, Kyle. No one reports everything. Not our