Page 118 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
I would come. Somewhere deep inside my hollow form, there was a memory of a girl who had been groomed for such moments, and that girl knew the importance of continuity. Whoever won, having Ash’s widow at their side would show the country it was okay, that the transition of power was good and necessary, and would hopefully lend an air of something like post-mortem endorsement from the fallen President. I would have done the same had Kay won.
Embry gave a beautiful speech, mostly about Ash and what a leader Ash had been. How much he intended to honor Ash’s wish for peace. And for the first time, he told the world that he’d loved Ash not only as a brother in arms, but as a man.
All Ash had ever wanted was to publicly call Embry his own, and now Embry was giving him that at last, even if it was after Ash was in the ground.
I suppose there was some media furor around it, but it was mild, over quickly. That Ash had been queer as well only seemed to add to the ways that the nation grieved, not subtract from it, and that the new President-Elect was openly bisexual merely added to the energy of his election. Aside from a few men stepping forward to sell tell-alls of torrid nights with either Ash or Embry, the truth of their love floated up into the air like a balloon and drifted easily into the horizon. The world was ready to know it and mostly be okay with it. Ash would have been proud of that—he did always like to believe the best of his people, and here they were, being the best about one of the most personal, intimate parts of his life.
The day after Embry won the election, with the November cold creeping in through the corners and windows, I found out I was pregnant.
I texted him—who else would I text?—and he came to the White House right away, finding me sitting on the bathroom floor, staring at the pregnancy test like it might bite me, with citadels of cardboard and packing tape closing me in like a prison. I was supposed to move out that week, make room for Kay who would live there until Embry moved in after his Inauguration, and I’d insisted on packing up all of our personal effects myself. Ash’s toothbrush and half-empty bottle of mouthwash. His comb, with a single black hair caught in the teeth…now the only hair of his that existed on Earth.
The pregnancy test sat surrounded by it all like some kind of mythic relic, the Holy Grail I’d been striving for these past three years. How long I’d waited to behold this one thing, these two blue lines, and now seeing them made me electric with fear.
Embry scooped me easily into his arms and carried me to the bed—my marital bed, Ash’s bed—and arranged me against his chest. I felt like I couldn’t breathe for either joy or grief or both.
“I don’t know whose it is,” I said numbly. “Yours or his.”
“It doesn’t matter, Greer. I’m yours either way.”
He pressed his hand low on my stomach. He took a breath. “And if it is Ash’s—” He broke off, but he didn’t need to finish because I knew what he was thinking.
If it was Ash’s, then it might be the only part of him we had left.
THREE MONTHS after Embry’s Inauguration, we marry in a quiet ceremony by Vivienne’s lake. It’s late April, with a fresh spring breeze rustling along the shore, and as Embry and I say our vows, he keeps one hand in mine and the other on my belly, which pushes through my simple white dress in a taut curve. The baby kicks as I say I do, and we both laugh. When we exchange rings, we exchange the same ones we already had, so that I’m wearing the wedding ring I married Ash with and Embry is wearing the band Ash gave him the night before he died.
My love for the two of you exists inside your love for each other—when you love each other, you are loving me.
I have to believe that’s true. I have to believe that this is what Ash would have wanted, and anyway, there’s no other way it could have happened—Embry and I were magnetized together by our hurt. Who else could understand my loss? Who else would miss every part of Ash, not just the leader or the friend, but the cruel, demanding lover and the devout Catholic and the tired soldier who still had trouble sleeping at night?
With each other, the pain seemed bearable because we could share it and nurse it and tend to it, and keep our memory of Ash alive and thriving. The first time we fucked, the night of Ash’s funeral, each pretending he was still there with us, it felt like the first time I could breathe again, and I hoped and prayed to God it was what Ash had meant the night he died. That no matter what happened, he would want Embry and me to be happy together.
Happy would be a stretch without Ash. But being together…yes, we could do that at least.
And for the sake of the child in my belly, I hoped that happiness would come again, even if I doubted it could ever come for me. But for Embry and this baby, I wished all the happiness in the world.
Strangely, the biggest advocate for our relationship was Merlin. Merlin who had once admonished us to keep our ménage a secret, who had once pressured Embry to keep his relationship with Ash hidden. It was as if something broke free in Merlin after Ash’s death, like a great burden had been lifted, and for the first time I saw how truly capable of compassion and friendliness he was.
“Let the public gawk,” he s
aid with a dismissive gesture when Embry and I told him about the baby. “I daresay they’ll ultimately find it romantic, that you found comfort with each other. And if they point back to the Melwas video and cry affair, who cares? You have more than enough PR capital to spend on it.”
And today, at our wedding, he is in the very front row. He was there at the private wedding Mass Embry and I had first thing this morning, the only one sitting in the pews as we made our vows with the Church. And here at the ceremony we are having for our friends and family, he walked me down the aisle to give me away. He beams at us as we exchange our vows for the second time today, and for a moment I have to absorb how strange I would have thought this wedding years ago. Behind me, Morgan stands as my matron of honor, in front of me stands Nimue performing the ceremony, and behind Embry stands Lyr, straight and manlike in his tuxedo, so very like Ash that it hurts and it heals to see him here in this moment. And between us both sits Galahad in his own miniature tuxedo. He’s found a stand of early dandelions and he’s busy plucking them in his little toddler fists and blowing the seeds at our legs. And in his happy laugh, I hear both Embry and Abilene. Whatever her faults, he has the best parts of her—the spontaneity, the courage, the determination—and now he is my son too, and I love him as I will love my unborn child once he or she is born. Embry and I are waiting until the birth to find out the sex.
In the small spread of chairs along the shore, all the people I care about and love are here, with nothing but blessings in their hearts for Embry and me—Vivienne, Kay and Althea Colchester, Trieste, Belvedere, Uri, Gawayne, Percival Wu and Emily Gareth, and Lynette my assistant.
With all of them watching, and for the second time in my life—and technically the second time today—I marry the President of the United States.
After the ceremony, we have the reception on Vivienne’s wide lawn—surrounded by mountains and with the water glinting teasingly through the trees—and Merlin finds me after the cake and dancing.
“Would you mind taking a stroll with me?” he asks. “The sunset will be quite pretty over the lake, I think.”
I kiss Embry goodbye for now, and he slings his tuxedo jacket over my shoulders when I tell him where I’m going, and then Merlin and I step out on the smooth path down to the lake.
“Congratulations,” Merlin says. “It was a beautiful wedding.”
“Thank you. I wish…”
But I don’t actually know what I want to wish for. That I didn’t need to have a second wedding because my first husband was still alive? Obviously, yes, of course, that an infinite amount of times over.
