Published: 2001.

Characters: Holly Markham, mathematician Reyna Putnam, public relations.

Setting: Orange County, California.

Twelve Flowers were Their Gift to Say....

Reconciliation.

(10 years).

"I think it's letting up." Holly moved the windshield wiper k.n.o.b down one setting and the slap-thunk rhythm slowed. Somewhere, and years ago in all likelihood, an engineer had decided that given the variables of the wiper length, motor speed and windshield slope and size, that this speed of steady swipes would efficiently clear water during the most common volume of "light rain." That, or the engineer had simply copied the last engineer's decisions. Life was full of shortcuts. Sometimes they made no significant difference. Sometimes they meant that neither setting one or two was the right choice for basic precipitation.

Drops on the hood of the rental car pooled and separated in a chaotic dance. She wasn't surprised that Reyna hadn't answered her comment. There was a lot on Reyna's mind, none of it particularly pleasant.

"I read another blog about the big coming out." She and Reyna had been spiritedly debating the politics of a highly placed GOP strategist announcing he was gay and switching all of his gay-related politics 180 degrees. "This one insisted that his partic.i.p.ation in creating the Defense of Marriage Act was costing gays and lesbians and their allies millions and millions of dollars in legal fees and lost benefits, and that no mere fundraiser was ever going to even the scales. That there was no way he could ever make up the lost time to the legal spouses from other countries who couldn't come to the US because their US and/or European marriages and right to immigrate were denied by the federal government."

It was at least something to talk about. Better than the reason for the rental car and the grim hours that lay ahead of them. She shifted the speed of the wipers up for a couple of swipes, then turned it down again. She was willing to bet the settings were copied from those for a larger car-they were definitely off. She'd driven a hundred rental cars in the last ten years and this was at the bottom of the list for weather controls, unable to handle a typical rainy November morning in Los Angeles.

Reyna suddenly said, "Right side."

"Oh, sorry." Holly guided the car back into the right-hand lane of the access road. Spending most of the year at Oxford made readjusting to U.S. driving difficult. "So if the blogger is right, you and I being treated as single when we're married according to the state of Iowa, is a financial burden that this guy caused us."

Reyna continued to gaze out her window. "n.o.body has that much power. No one person can influence that many lives. It takes willing accomplices."

Glad to finally be pointed the right direction on the 405, she merged out to the fast lane and kept up with traffic, remembering the way with ease. With customs and LAX finally behind them, their first destination was the Putnam Inst.i.tute, the conservative think tank foundation that Reyna's father had founded. Holly thought the demand for a meeting uncivilized, given the circ.u.mstances, but Reyna had consented. She would listen. I didn't mean she'd agree to anything. She was, after all, a Putnam.

"They might as well blame me for Proposition 8," Reyna continued. "They were still flogging the talking points I developed for my father on the evils of gay marriage." She sighed. "If this guy has half a soul, he feels like c.r.a.p, and he's going to take c.r.a.p for years. And he should. I did."

If anyone was going to sympathize with the newly out pariah it would be Reyna. Her circ.u.mstances were different, though. Few people knew that Reyna's complicity with her father's ultra-conservative agenda had been compelled by a very personal form of blackmail. There had been some comment-short-lived-when Reyna had not appeared with her father at the inauguration that had made him Vice president. But to some she would always be the b.a.s.t.a.r.d child, an indiscretion, so not for the bright, pure light of great ceremony.

Ill-health was the only reason Grip Putnam hadn't run for the Oval Office at the end of his eight-year VP stint. He might have won, Holly mused, even though he was a symbol of the deep economic mess the eight years had created. Ironic that his heart gave him trouble when a lot of people didn't think he had one. To this day, Holly heard Darth Vader music in her head whenever she thought of him.

Finally in smoother traffic, Holly reached for Reyna's hand. "It might as well be London," she said, meaning the rain.

"I could seriously go for a steak and stilton with a Jameson's." Reyna lifted Holly's hand to hold between both of hers. "You didn't exactly get a bargain with me, did you? All this...angst. The calls Thursday didn't stop. Reporters don't care about time differences and you in the middle of exams."

"Stop that."

It had been a long time since Reyna had been so depressed about her unhappy past, but then they more or less lived in England and she hadn't had to deal with much about her father in spite of his political prominence. Grip Putnam's daughter being an out lesbian was gossip-worthy, but being married to a professor of mathematics-one who taught at Oxford and was known to lapse into mathematic idioms during interviews-took the shine off the story.

"I got you," Holly said, "and I was meant to be with you. I am the luckiest woman in the world."

"You," Reyna said with a hint of a smile, "don't believe in luck. There is no such thing as luck, I've been told. By you."

"The kind of luck that led me to you is simply an experience we've not yet been able to express in an equation. I am content to call the yet-to-be discovered equation by the name aluck.'"

"Full of it, that's you."

Holly was so happy to see the teasing grin that she felt herself finally relax. It was going to be a beast of a day. At least she could make Reyna smile. She fished in the backpack she'd slung onto the floor behind Reyna's seat for the not quite finished bag of plain M&Ms. "Chocolate pills?"

Reyna shook out a few, then emptied the rest of the bag onto Holly's palm. "We can at least get In-N-Out burgers while we're here."

"Our dollars to a conservative-owned company?" Holly's stomach growled-it knew no politics.

"I am just guessing that we're funding less evil with two burgers than we are with the tank of gas we'll have to buy sooner or later."

Feeling better for the little bits of candy, Holly said, "Point taken. Burgers are the one thing I really miss about American cooking. Well, from a restaurant."

"I'm glad we're having dinner with Audra. I'll need her mac and cheese by then."

"She texted that it's all ready for the oven, plus that marvelous frozen pea and crab salad she makes."

Finally, Reyna's smile wasn't strained. "Okay, that sounds simply delicious. I can get through whatever h.e.l.l they throw my way."

"Of course you can, darling." Holly gave Reyna's fingers a last squeeze before returning both hands to the wheel. It was time to negotiate off-ramps and boulevards. "If they think differently they're the fools. The math says odds are on you."

"In a fair fight."

"You still have your mother's memoir notes, and they can still tarnish your father's image."

"They don't have quite the punch they did a week ago."

"True," Holly had to admit. "But while the room might be filled with Grip Putnam's influence and ego, his body is shortly to be six feet under."

Reyna didn't answer right away and Holly worried she'd been too blunt. She couldn't hide her lack of regret that the great Grip Putnam had finally met his maker. She cherished a vision of Jesus with a report card and a big red pen saying, "I gave you two rules, just two! How did you fail the a.s.signment so completely?"

Finally, Reyna said, "I still don't know how I feel. I knew him so well, and I hated him so much. He did right by my mother, finally. Her last year was bearable and she died peacefully... And in his very strange way, he still loved her."

"Strange covers it. He didn't love the way you and I do-the way most people can. But I know it's hard on you."

Reyna nodded and the former gloom returned to the car.

The solidity of Holly was like a balm. From the day they'd met, Holly had brought a certainty to Reyna that life contained love, and it was unquestioning, stalwart, honest and palpable. Holly also meant that she deserved that kind of love, though sometimes she wondered what she had done to earn it.

Not today. She didn't wonder today. As they pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot of the Putnam Inst.i.tute's main building, she felt instead the familiar loathing. Her father had always controlled her upbringing by giving and withholding money, but after his wife and son had died in an accident, his scrutiny of her life had become intense. He'd bartered her mother's medical bills for Reyna's life and energy. She had given up lovers, a social life and her own conscience to the breaking point. And then Holly had crashed into her life. Holly had blown down the house of cards that had preserved Reyna's sanity. Shattered by love, she'd found a way to rebuild her life. Her mother's memoir notes had given her freedom from her father's iron hold-blackmail ran in the family.

Holly managed the umbrella as they made their way to the main doors. Reyna recognized the guard who let them in and nodded. His quiet, "My condolences, Miss Putnam," made her stop and thank him. His tone was human and honest-and very likely the only measure of those qualities she'd find within these walls. When the doors shushed closed behind her she felt a shiver of dread and was glad of Holly's quiet step next to hers as they crossed the cold, echoing marble.

She had decided to wear the suit she had bought for her TED University lecture. She considered that lecture the height of her career as a speaker on rhetoric and political communications. The all-black light wool with a blazer that nodded toward an aviator's cut gave her confidence. It reminded her of the nights she'd ridden for hours, just the bike and the road, and a long way from the misery of her days. She hadn't thought she'd care much about what she wore today, but she supposed she was her father's daughter. He had never appeared anywhere without a careful decision about his appearance. She just wanted the photographers and commentators to have nothing to say so they would all go away. She had done the talk show circuit and had no desire to return to the scream-anything-to-keep-the-camera-on-you tactics.

They were met at the elevators by a bland-faced factotum of some sort. Young, no doubt zealous in his work, he greeted them politely, gave her perfunctory condolences for which she thanked him in kind. He pressed the b.u.t.ton for the top floor-it looked like they were going to be dragged all the way to the executive board room. She knew who was waiting and as they walked down the long hallway to the imposing double doors she felt the hair on the back of her neck bristle. If she were a cat she'd have entered the walnut-paneled room hissing.

"Reyna, my dear, thank you for coming on this sad day." Before Reyna could evade him, Danforth Jackson Hobson IV had seized her hand and given it a shake, calculated to the last degree to be both warm and bracing. But his eyes still burned with a zealot's fire and Reyna had no trouble envisioning him in some previous life with a torch ready to light a witch's pyre.

Her skin crawled as she extricated her hand. "It is a sad day."

Hobson hesitated before likewise shaking Holly's hand.

"My wife, Dr. Holly Markham," Reyna said.

In the past ten years, Hobson had learned to school his reactions better. There was almost no sign of his discomfiture at having to nod and acknowledge Holly's full status in the midst of introductions, but Reyna caught him glancing at his hand after he'd let go of Holly's as if he wanted a sanitary wipe.

Only when Hobson had stepped back-which told Reyna all she needed to know about who had called this meeting and who had the highest stakes in an outcome-did the other members of the board come forward. She greeted the five men by name and made them all greet Holly. One big happy family.

The last person she greeted was Paul Johnson, her father's personal a.s.sistant. Of everyone in the room he looked the worst-his eyes were rimmed with red and Reyna could not recall ever seeing him less than flawlessly turned out. But today his suit was slightly crumpled and his tie tack didn't match his cuff links.

It was entirely possible that he was grieving the most of anyone in her father's life. She had loathed his hypocrisy for a long time. A supposed ex-gay man, who had married and become a father after undergoing the "treatment" ministry offered by Hobson's followers, Paul had been the poster child for reparative therapy. She had come to pity him, after catching him in an unguarded look he had directed at her father. Sublimating love and l.u.s.t with work left scars, and she knew that road. She abruptly wanted to comfort him, to tell him she understood that the closet had this price-the love he'd kept hidden for a decade and the suffering he felt now would never know acknowledgement. But that didn't make them any less real. She caught herself before saying anything untoward-Paul had made his own bed.

"Shall we sit down?" Hobson was all congeniality.

Holly didn't move toward the conference table and Reyna realized she had already counted the chairs. They were one short.

"We, ah, we'd like to keep this meeting to members of the board." Hobson smiled benignly as his gaze drifted briefly to Holly.

"But I'm not a member of the board...yet," Reyna said. "On today of all days, I want my wife with me." She gestured at Paul. Maybe that wasn't fair. Long-conditioned, he immediately rose and fetched a chair from the corner, inserting it so that Holly could sit next to Reyna. It earned him a look of contempt from Hobson, but he didn't see it.

They had all settled into the supple leather seats before Reyna continued, "I don't understand why we are meeting now, before the funeral and before the reading of the will. Are you telling me that he left no other directive than his will?"

"He rescinded his nomination directive," Paul said, then he gulped back to silence at a glare from Hobson.

"Indeed, we have no formal notification of your father's nominee for his seat as chairman of our board." The other vice chairman, Seth Miller and Dobson's equal on paper only, was someone she had never known well when she'd worked for her father. A gifted researcher, she recalled, but not gifted in communications. "We a.s.sume it's in his will, therefore."

"Why do you think he nominated me? We haven't spoken in any depth in years."

No immediate answer seemed forthcoming. Reyna had always liked Holly's axiom: solve for the simplest solution. That they were even having this meeting meant Hobson wasn't sure it was him. He wanted to lay some groundwork if it wasn't. To make it clear who really ran things even if he continued as the board's vice chairman instead of the new chairman. "Then what's our purpose here, right now, before the funeral and having any information we'd need to make a plan for going forward?"

"If you are your father's nominee, what do you intend to do?" Hobson had that paternal smile that said he'd pat her on the head if she gave the right answer.

"I haven't given it any thought, and I won't unless I have to." Reyna nearly rose, having said all she intended to say.

"You live in England most of the year."

"That's where my wife's work is. She's with the Mathematical Inst.i.tute of the University of Oxford." Suck on it, Reyna thought. Go ahead, call us elitist because my wife is brilliant and you can't solve for X. Great, she was already resorting to mental sarcasm, which meant it really was time to leave.

"From that distance, it's not clear that you would have sufficient contact to function as chairman of our board."

"You don't have WiFi?"

Seth Miller smothered a laugh as Hobson's normally pale face reddened. Well, it was good to know that Hobson was ruling a divided roost.

Holly suddenly rose. "I'm sorry, but I really must ask where the bathroom is. Sorry, Reyna. I'll be right back."

"I'll show you where it is," Paul said.

Nothing changed with the two of them gone. Reyna smiled blandly at Hobson's various talking points on how she would really not like being chairman of the Putnam Inst.i.tute. She knew she wouldn't like it. She knew she wouldn't do it. But if her father had left her his seat-she knew the Bylaws, it was his to give-she would have to figure out how to dispose of it. Right now, all her thoughts centered around s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Danforth Jackson Hobson IV as much as possible in the process. Childish? Yes. But nowhere was it written she had to be grown up all the time.

"Thank you," Holly said to Paul. "I should have asked our escort to stop. It was a long drive and the endless supply of soda on the flight has caught up with me."

"I'll wait right here," Paul said, after pointing out the door.

Obviously, she was not being given rein to wander the building. Whatever, she just wanted to use the facilities and wash her hands. Not wanting to abandon Reyna for too long she was quick about it and rejoined Paul in the hallway in short order.

"Ms. Markham, I was wondering if you would give Ms. Putnam a message from me. I can't deliver it directly."

"I will do my best." Holly noted that his steps had slowed. She was pretty sure he was the a.s.sistant that Reyna said had been in love with her father for years.

"Mr. Putnam and Mr. Dobson had had a big falling out-it happened over a year ago, as soon as Mr. Putnam returned to his duties full time here, after we left Washington. Though he... In order to support the campaign he had to eschew... I mean to say that-"

"He had to pander to Dobson and his hateful followers to get elected."

Paul swallowed. "It wasn't something he did easily and he didn't like that those people had no sense of compromise."

"Fascists don't compromise-sorry, I'm interrupting." Holly thought there was little to be gained by preaching to this choir. "So you would like me to tell my wife that information?"

"If you would. I know that his will authorizes releasing his letter of nomination for his seat. She shouldn't say or do anything until it's read. But he hasn't nominated her. When he made his decision we discussed it at length. Mr. Dobson is going to be very unhappy."

"You?"

"Heavens no! I'm hardly qualified!" Paul, who had been studying his feet, finally met her gaze. "Mr. Miller."

Holly didn't want to admit that she didn't keep up on the various people involved in the Putnam Inst.i.tute. Miller was one of the men in the meeting, but she was clueless about his politics. As when a student sometimes talked over her head-it happened-she nodded wisely. "He's more...measured in his feelings on this issue, then?"

Paul nodded vigorously. "Mr. Miller is all about finding out where the gulf is between what people think and the goals of the Inst.i.tute, so that we can address their concerns and create an effective message. Mr. Dobson ignores the data. Public opinion has changed. And I know Mr. Miller's appointment means finally a permanent shift in the Inst.i.tute's focus as Mr. Putnam wanted. He never had the time to make it happen when he was in office, of course. Then when we got back home he was wasn't well. And now..." His voice broke.

Not knowing much about him it seemed like the only thing to do to put her hand on his arm and give it a sympathetic squeeze. "This must be hard on you."

The look she got said she had no idea, no true idea, of how difficult it was. Reyna had said he was tortured. So sad...not just to ignore who you are but pretend to be exactly what you aren't.

He resumed walking, more briskly, toward the board room. "This is my business card. My private number is on the back. If after the reading of the will she wants more information she can call me. Please don't-please only tell her we had this conversation."

"Of course. Your secret is safe with me."

She meant the note, but he stumbled slightly and looked panic stricken.

"That one too," she added.

"I'm not... There's..."

"Your heart and soul are not my concern, Paul." Though older than her by a few years, he reminded her of a student penitent coming to her for absolution over an academic misdeed. "I'm not judging you. You've given that power to others."

The atmosphere in the board room was as tense as a math department meeting with office s.p.a.ce at stake. Reyna had laser beams for eyes and that hateful Hobson man looked like he had spit up in his mouth.

"Glad you're back, darling. We really should go." Reyna stood and turned her attention back to the room. "Other people have stolen your thunder, gentlemen. The newsertainers are getting rich not selling your vision of faith, morality and G.o.d, but fear. Any kind of fear, including fear of you. If you can produce studies and papers that make people afraid, you're of use to them. If you don't, you're part of the progressive conspiracy or a n.a.z.i, take your pick. You gave those non-thinking loud mouths unlimited power because you thought they worked for you. They took your trust and looted our national treasury, wasted billions and billions of dollars in foreign wars and they have perfected being able to look someone in the face and say tax cuts for them and no health care for you is patriotic. You reap what you sow-now where have I heard that before?"