Chapter Two

SLIGHTLY LESS THAN SIX MONTHS LATER

President Henry Clay Stockbridge was an imposing figure in his mind's eye, with dark brown hair he envisioned to be fuller than it was and with a natural mussiness that he thought was boyish, but it wasn’t. He claimed to be five feet ten inches tall. “Five eleven in these cowboy boots,” he’d say to people who didn’t ask. He was five foot eight if you swiped his wallet and checked the license. He was between wives at the moment, with his most recent ex happily ensconced back in New Mexico living off a monthly stipend negotiated long ago as part of the prenup. She was also prohibited from saying a public word about him if she wanted to keep collecting her meticulously negotiated settlement.

The President stood in the Oval Office gently caressing the back of a leather chair and looking out the back window of the first floor of the White House. He watched with a smile as his sixteen-year-old son, Daniel Webster Stockbridge, threw rocks at a squirrel, while carelessly stomping on the last vestiges of a vegetable garden that had been planted behind the White House Press Room by the prior Administration. And now you have a pretty good idea of exactly what makes the Stockbridge boys tick.