I’d staved off grief when Hank died, throwing myself into work, telling myself that work helped more than anything else would have. The person who didn’t let me get away with those sorts of lies was dead, after all. I could tell myself whatever I liked, and work eighteen hours instead of fifteen, and no one would confront me about it.

As First Gentleman he’d made recruiting kids to sports one of his main areas of influence, and since the election he’d managed to secure more scholarship funds and more access for inner city youth to join teams or classes than anyone had thought possible. The programs he’d started needed support. To rest was to insult his legacy.

But god, I missed him. I’d cleverly married a smart, passionate, charismatic man. We’d been best friends since college, and he’d proposed on the eve of my first election (for mayor, which I lost). “When you’re president, I want to have sex in the Lincoln Bedroom,” he’d said, raising a glass of wine.

“Deal,” I’d replied.

We had a long bucket list together, but at least we managed to mark that one off.

It takes a specific personality to pursue this job, and I tend to think most of us are the type who run toward work in a crisis, not away from it. When people offered their condolences I often found myself comforting them. I was relieved when I’d cycled through all that heartfelt sympathy. I was fine. Everything was fine.

Or so I kept telling myself that entire first year alone, as if repetition would make it true.

I was feeling uncharacteristically tired around ten p.m. one night—a time of day he used to refer to as Miriam’s off on a wild hare o’clock—when a light tap on the door to my office on the second floor of the residence woke me up.

I say “woke me up” because prior to that I’d been…somewhere else. Not asleep. Daydreaming. Thinking about Hank and I arguing about whether the expression was “wild hare” or “wild hair” (we eventually determined they had different meanings), thinking about the brand of box wine we’d been hooked on in college, when any sort of wine seemed fancy.

Then I was abruptly thrust back into a room in the White House where Hank would never again laugh, or tease me, or sigh dramatically when I came up with another wild hare to hunt down. I scolded myself for not being more resilient and stood to answer the door.

None of the florists should have still been at work, of course, but it would take a much more steely person than I am to question the residence staff in their wisdom. And I had the sneaking suspicion that the butlers informed everyone else when I kept strange hours, or when my routines changed.

It was clear, immediately, that Betty Sanderson did not have flowers on the mind.

“Ma’am.”

I couldn’t place her tone. She stood in front of me, looking down, brows drawn, a formidable black woman very nearly old enough to be my mother. She was also one of my favorite people in the building.

“Mrs. Sanderson. What can I do for you tonight?”

“So it’s gonna be like that? ‘Mrs. Sanderson’?”

I gestured to the other chair. “What is it?”

To my deep surprise, Betty sat down. She leaned forward, hands pressed together, and said, “Will you take a bit of advice from someone who knows what she’s talking about?”

“Of course.”

“If you keep pretending, you’re going to fall apart, ma’am. You need a break.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but she shook her head so I closed it.

“I see what you’re doing, and I’ve done it myself, but the only thing that happens when I’m worn out is I eat too many potato chips and smoke too many cigarettes. You—you’re the president.” She paused. “He was a good man, and we all miss him. But you can’t keep going on as if you don’t.”

“It’s been a year. I’m used to—this.” A lie. I swallowed after I said it, like I could swallow the words (and the disloyalty).

Betty shook her head again. “You need to feel it, ma’am, before you can be done with it. After that, you should go somewhere you don’t keep expecting to see him around the corner. Then you come back to us with a little bit of space in yourself where you’ve grieved for him.”

Part of me wanted to rear up like a wild horse, go on the attack. In fear and sadness and simple bewilderment. Part of me wanted to weep.

I am the President of the United States. I blinked a few times and focused on my guest. “He loved lilies.”

She smiled. “I know he did.”

“You make sure there are always lilies in our bedroom.”

Betty Sanderson, florist and ad hoc grief counselor, took my hands. “I lost my George twenty years ago and I was right back here the day after the funeral. The First Lady found me making flower arrangements past eight one night and before I knew it, I was crying on her. The First Lady! Me crying on her nice blouse!” She shook her head. “For you it might not be crying, it might be yelling. And it won’t be a sweet lady who happens to be your boss, either. It’ll be the president of somewhere, or the prime minister of somewhere else.”

“I take your point, Betty.”

“Then take my point, ma’am.”

No bullshit in her tone. A rare quality in my life, and one I valued. “I take your point. But I can’t just run off on holiday, I’m the president.”

She squeezed my hands, then released them. “Presidents, in my experience, always find a way to do what they need to do. I have faith. Goodnight, ma’am.”

“Goodnight. You can tell the butlers I’m going to bed.”

“They’ll want to know if you’d like anything else.”

Hank to walk in with a cup of tea and a smirk, maybe a good story to tell from his day. But even the unstoppable White House butlers couldn’t produce that. “No. Thank you.”

She nodded and withdrew. I took myself off to my bedroom.

Perhaps the universe thought I needed a nudge, even after that. Or perhaps some backstairs alchemy of whispers and significant looks and whatever other codes exist somehow managed the trick, but two days later Jules told me we needed to head to Oregon.

The only clear thing I remember from that trip is Agent Ruiz steadying me as I stepped off Air Force One. We’d landed in the middle of a storm and I hadn’t been prepared for the wind.

“Sorry, ma’am,” he’d said, pulling his hands quickly away and returning to his usual detached stance.

It was the first time he’d ever touched me.

And I remembered it after.