Dutch and Gina: The Power of Love (18 page)

Manny didn’t like it, Crader and LaLa could see that, but they were both glad that Gina was taking charge.
 
Everything was political to people like Manny and Primrose.
 
They never took into account the toll this event had to have taken on Dutch.
 
But it had taken a considerable toll.
 
Even LaLa, who wasn’t a political pro, could see that.

As Gina steered Dutch toward the elevator, they stopped long enough only for Dutch to shake Crader’s hand and to give LaLa a kiss on the cheek.
 
LaLa was like a kid sister to Dutch, and he felt as responsible for her as he felt for Gina and Little Walt, for Jade and Christian.
 
LaLa was in that inner group.

“You’ve been taking care of yourself?” Dutch asked LaLa.

LaLa smiled.
 
“Yes, sir,” she said.
 
“Have you?”

Dutch smiled a smile that highlighted his exhaustion.
 
“I’m sure Gina will look after me,” he said.
 
“Why don’t you and Crader come up to the Residence with us?”

LaLa looked to Crader for guidance.
 
Crader looked to Gina.
 
Because they both loved Dutch dearly, he and Gina were becoming something of a White House tag team.
 
He knew her nonverbal cues and she knew his now.
 

“Not just yet,” Crader said after that look in her eyes said it all.
 
“But later.”

“Good enough,” Dutch said.
 
He had already noticed that Crader was holding LaLa’s hand, a development that concerned him.
 
LaLa was a sweet young lady who wore her heart on her sleeve, and too many men had taken advantage of that.
 
Including Crader.

“Behave yourself, Cray,” he warned him.

Crader smiled, although he knew exactly what Dutch meant.
 
“What did I do?” he asked rhetorically as he stood erect from the side wall, his hands outstretched.
 

Gina smiled too as she and Dutch made their way for the elevators.

“Where are the children?” Dutch asked as they stepped onto the elevator.
 

By using the term children, Gina knew that Dutch meant both Little Walt and Jade, of course, but also Christian, their son-in-law.
 

“They’re in the Nursery awaiting your arrival.
 
Jade and Christian are so distressed that I felt it would be better if you saw them outside of the glare of your staff.
 
To reassure them.”

Dutch smiled, pulled her to him.
 
“You think of everything,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m cool all right.
 
That’s why I didn’t run out there to meet you.
 
That’s why I stayed right in that hall like they had coached me to do.”

Dutch stared at his wife.
 
“I would have been mighty disappointed if you would have listened to that coaching,” he said.

Gina smiled, looked into his eyes.
 
She, too, was blown away by how anguished he looked.
 
She knew he had to have been in pain.
 
He, after all, loved Liz.
 
But she never dreamed he’d be this decimated.

They stepped off of the elevator in the Residence and made their way to the Nursery.
 
Although Dutch had been away from his family for only a few days, it felt as if he had been gone for weeks.
 
He couldn’t wait to see Little Walt’s grin again, or to feel Jade in his arms, and Christian.
 
Before he met Gina, he always felt like a man alone.
 
He’d come home, hear the sounds of silence, and feel compelled to have some female come over and warm his bed.
 
But after Gina, the last thing he wanted was any outsiders around him.
 
Gina and the children were all he needed.

As soon as the door to the Nursery opened, Jade jumped out of Christian’s lap and ran to her father.
 

“Daddy!” she said as she fell into his arms.

“Hey.”

She pulled back, looked at him.
 
“It’s so awful,” she said.
 
“You should hear the things they’re saying about you on the TV.
 
They talk as if you’re the murderer, Daddy!”

Gina saw the look of increased anguish that came over Dutch’s face when Jade told him about the news reports.
 
She knew Dutch.
 
She knew he had been avoiding any media accounts like the plague.
 
But to now know that his own daughter had to hear such sensationalism alarmed him.
 

 
He smoothed down Jade’s long, wavy hair.
 
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” he told her.
 
Then he shook Christian’s hand, as he stood alongside her.
 
“Hey, Chris.
 
You’ve been taking care of my family?”

“Yes, sir,” Christian said in that sincere way of his Dutch loved.
 

Then Dutch looked back at Jade.
 
“I don’t want you watching any of those so-called news shows right now,” he said to her.
 
“They aren’t worthy of your time.”

“I know it’s a load of nonsense,” Jade said.
 
“But why are they saying such horrid things about you?”

“Because they can,” Gina said as she moved toward the crib.
 
Dutch looked over at Little Walt, too, and began moving that way.
 

“That’s the beauty and the ugliness of America,” Gina went on.
 
“You can say whatever you like and get away with it.”

“But the things they’re saying,” Jade said with such distress in her voice that Christian placed his arm around her.

“Hey, there,” Gina said to a grinning Little Walt as she lifted him out of his crib.
 
“Daddy’s back!”

Little Walt looked from Gina to Dutch, who stood behind her, and then grinned again as he lifted up his arms toward his father.

“Here’s the man of the house,” Dutch said as he lifted his chubby, brown-skinned son.
 
“You’re getting bigger and bigger every time I see you.”

“Daddy,” Walt said, patting Dutch’s face, and his voice, his smell, his grin melted Dutch’s heart.

“Yes,” he said proudly, fighting back tears.
 
“I’m your daddy.
 
Thank God you’re too young to be ashamed of me.”

Gina, Jade and Christian were horrified when they heard Dutch speak that way.
 
Jade broke away from Christian and hurried to his side.

“Don’t say that,” she said.
 
“I’m not ashamed of you.
 
We’re not ashamed of you.”

Dutch looked at Gina, as if he would only believe it if she said it too.
 

Gina, however, was so shocked by his vulnerability that she, at first, stumbled over her words.
 
“Er, I, of course we aren’t ashamed of you, Dutch, what are you saying?
 
Why would your son, or any of us be ashamed of you?”

But that bewildered look in his eyes made her acutely aware that there was more to his story than she had suspected; something that had him ashamed of himself.
 
And it wasn’t something neither he nor she wanted to discuss in front of anybody else.
 

Dutch took a seat in one of the Nursery chairs and held his son, his eyes mostly closed as he held him, while Jade, like the kid she sometimes came across as to Gina, sat next to her father with her head on his shoulders.
 
Christian sat on the other side of Dutch and it seemed to Gina, watching them cling to Dutch, that he was surrounded by love.
 
That made her feel good.
 
And she stepped out, to discuss the president’s welcome home dinner with the White House chef.

By the time she returned, Dutch was putting a now sleeping Little Walt to bed and Jade was standing beside him at the crib, talking to him about her mother.

“She called last night,” Jade was saying, not realizing that Gina had reentered the Nursery.

“Did she?” Dutch said, paying more attention to carefully laying down his sleeping son than the import of what she was saying.

“Yes, sir.
 
She’s coming to visit in the Fall.
 
She wants to see you when she comes.
 
She says she needs to talk to you.”

“What about?” Dutch asked.

“I don’t know. You know how eccentric Ma is.
 
She’s not going to tell me.
 
Will you see her?”

Dutch glanced at his daughter.
 
“Do you want me to see her?”

“Yes, sir.
 
Very much.”

“Then I shall,” Gina heard Dutch say and Jade smiled.
 

“Great.
 
It won’t be until around September, you know how Ma is about leaving that bookstore for two minutes.
 
But she’ll be here.”

Christian was the first to see Gina as she began moving toward the crib.
 

“Little Man sleep?” Gina asked as she moved toward the crib.

“That he is,” Dutch said, staring at their son.
 

Jade looked a little taken aback when she heard Gina had returned.
 
She wasn’t sure if Gina had heard the conversation or not, but then concluded that she didn’t care.
 
Instead of moving back and allowing Gina to stand beside Dutch, Jade, instead, placed her hand around her father’s waist and laid her head on his shoulders in a show of possessiveness that made Christian cringe.
 
He understood that Jade loved her father above any other human being alive, maybe even above her own mother and certainly above Christian himself, but Gina was Dutch’s wife.
 
She was crazy if she thought she was going to in any way supplant Gina’s place in Dutch’s heart.
 
Christian hoped Jade realized that.

Gina stood beside Jade as they watched Walt.
 
She saw the way Jade placed her arm around Dutch when she saw her.
 
But that was okay by Gina.
 
She wasn’t fighting any woman for Dutch’s affection, especially not his own daughter.
 

“Daddy,” Jade said, “why don’t we go into the theater room and watch a movie, and just forget about all of this scandalous nonsense.”

“Not right now,” Dutch said and then he held out his hand to Gina.
 
“Ready?” he asked her.

Gina took Dutch’s hand.
 
“Yes,” she replied.

“We’ll be back,” Gina said to Christian.

“Yes, ma’am,” Christian replied.
 
“We won’t let Little Walt out of our sight.”

Gina smiled as she and Dutch walked out.
 

Christian walked up to the crib and stood alongside his wife.
 
“What do you have against the First Lady?” he asked her.

Jade frowned.
 
“I don’t have anything against the First Lady.”

“Yes, you do,” Christian assured her.
 
“I see it now.
 
You really have some animosity toward her.
 
And I can’t figure out why.
 
She’s been nothing but kind to you.
 
To both of us.”

“That’s why what you’re saying makes no sense.”

“So why are you so thrilled, then, to have your father hook up with your mother again?”