The President's Daughter Read Free Page B

should have one, but it hadn’t worked out that way. Vanessa was hers, and had been ever since the day Meg found her, a tiny grey kitten wandering around outside the Chestnut Hill Mall, and brought her home. Adlai and Sidney, the two Siamese, were her parents’ cats and rarely deigned to leave their bedroom. Humphrey, the lumbering, arrogant tiger cat, didn’t belong to anyone. He had shown up on their patio a couple of summers before and decided to move in, no matter what anyone else said about it. He took turns sleeping in everyone’s rooms—“sleeping around,” her father said.
    Then, there was Kirby, their dog. They had gotten him at the pound right after Neal was born—so Neal could have a twin, was Steven’s explanation—and no one could agree on what breed he was. He had grown up into a large shaggy brown-and-white dog with floppy ears and a shepherd head. The kind of dog whose loved ones were the only ones who thought he was beautiful. Anyway, Kirby belonged to all of them, although mostly, he would sack out on Steven’s bed at night. For that matter, he napped there almost all day, every day, too.
    â€œI think”—Meg looked at her cat and then opened the music library on her computer—“that it’s time for a musical interlude.”
    Vanessa stretched out her front paws, back arching, then jumped over to the bed and settled down to sleep.
    Meg’s favorite song in life was Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock and Roll,” but that was too rowdy for sitting down and being fretful—which was her plan. Something soothing would be preferable, so she went with The Sound of Music , since, secretly, she was a major fan of musicals.
    Or, okay, maybe not at all secretly.
    During the overture, she went over to her bed to lie down and be pensive. President. Good God. As far back as she could remember, her mother’s life—and, as a result, the rest of the family’s lives—had revolved around Washington; it was a given. First, the House of Representatives, then the Senate. Nothing like moving up the old ranks.

    Her mother had taken maybe six weeks off when Steven was born, and they’d lived in Washington for almost two years when Neal showed up, but basically, it had always been like this—the family here in Chestnut Hill, outside Boston, and her mother living in an apartment in Georgetown, flying in on weekends and whenever else she could. They were all used to it, and as her mother put it, “tried to make the days they were together count.” Those days always seemed to be hectic.
    It was hard even to imagine what it would be like if her mother was a lawyer in her father’s firm, or a teacher or something, and lived at home all the time. Not that Meg didn’t wish it were that way. Whenever Congress recessed and her mother didn’t have to be out among her constituents—possibly Meg’s least favorite word in the English language—it was so nice. Kind of a luxury. Waking up and hearing those quick footsteps on the stairs made her feel complete inside, that everything was as it should be. When her mother was home, the footsteps never seemed to stop, as though she was trying to make up for every single day that she hadn’t been there.
    No one at school thought it was much of a big deal, thank God. They were used to it. In fact, a lot of her friends were always saying they wished their mothers didn’t have to be around all the time and yelling at them or whatever. Meg would have chosen the yelling any day.
    She ruffled up Vanessa’s fur, then smoothed it down again, except for the fur on and around her head, creating an ugly, out-of-proportion beast. Quite the stray cat look.
    It was funny—it had gotten so that no one even thought about it twice when her mother was on CNN or someplace. And it was an odd day if she wasn’t prominently mentioned in the paper and all over the Internet. For