Sex Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 6) by T'Gracie Reese, Joe Reese

with Laurencia Dalrymple.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Remarkable lady.”
    “I think so.”
    “She may run for president, you know.”
    “I’ve heard that.”
    “And yet she’s so down home; charming, but so easy to talk to.”
    “I know.”
    “So what the hell is this?”
    A pause.
    “I’m sorry…”
    “I would think you’re sorry. You damned well ought to be sorry!”
    “I just…I don’t…”
    “You don’t, huh! Well, look!”
    He slid open a drawer of the desk, reached inside, and pulled out a newspaper.
    The Washington Post .
    He held up the front page.
    There she was, lower right quarter of the page.
    A picture of Nina Bannister.
    And the headline:
    “Dem. Lawmaker Advocates Blanket Welcome for Refugees!”
    “I…I…”
    “You haven’t read this yet, Nina?”
    “No. I didn’t see the paper this morning. I’ve been answering mail.”
    “Read it.”
    He threw it at her.
    She caught it and read:
    “In a sharp break from party policy…”
    She looked up.
    “A sharp break from party policy is not good, is it?”
    The face across from her, now brutally cold, glared back.
    She forced herself to go on reading.
    “In a sharp break from party policy, a junior member of the Democratic Party told a reporter yesterday that she favors allowing admission into the United States of all Honduran refugee children. ‘There are only about fifty thousand of them,’ said Congresswoman Nina Bannister, newly-elected representative from the state of Mississippi. ‘And there are three-hundred million Americans. That means only one American out of every fifty-thousand would have to take in a child. Surely we can do as much!”
    She put down the newspaper.
    “I didn’t give this story,” she said quietly, “to The Washington Post .”
    “If you give it to one paper, you give it to all of them. Surely you’re not so stupid that you didn’t know that.”
    The word stung, but there was nothing to do but sit and take it.
    “And surely you also know that we are feverishly trying to work out a deal with the other side to fix this mess before it gets any worse. The President has asked for thirty-billion dollars so that we can process these people and get them back home to where they came from. The Republicans are holding tough. All they can do is say, ‘Why didn’t you build the wall when you had the chance?’ Right. A Berlin Wall right on our own border, built to keep people out and not in. Most ridiculous thing I ever heard of in my life. No. No, the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of in my life is you shooting off your damned mouth to the national media. And doing it without consulting a single member of your own party.”
    A horrible silence for a time.
    There was no sound in the room, nor outside of it.
    The Capitol Dome gleamed white through a huge window to her right.
    It seemed to be grinning at her.
    “The President is livid.”
    “The President knows about this story?”
    Jeb Maxwell shook his head:
    “No, of course not. The President never reads any newspapers. He especially doesn’t read stories about his own party members making policies he’s never heard of. But don’t worry about him. He’s heading off to Geneva later this morning for talks concerning the Ukraine. Oh, and by the way, I don’t suppose you’ve thought of a way to solve that crisis too? Maybe just invite all the Ukrainians to come and stay at your place for a while? Maybe just a few years, until the Russians stop shooting at them?”
    “Sir, I…”
    “Lady, what in the hell were you thinking?”
    More silence.
    Deeper silence. Purple silence.
    Then black silence.
    She could only shake her head and whisper:
    “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
    The black silence darkened.
    She felt like a badly-behaved freshman who had been summoned to the principal’s office.
    Only that would have been for some minor offense such as fighting or breaking a window.
    She had humiliated herself before the President of the United