While my mother said I would be fine, my father said the marriage wouldn’t last long.

They were both right.

My life became a storybook of success-scholarship offers, valedictorian, All-America soccer player-and she moved on to marry one of the heirs to the DuPont fortune before I turned fourteen. Two years later, she and her third husband died when their private jet went down over the Atlantic Ocean. They were on their way to Bermuda for the season.

I tried not to cry. To be a man. But I guess all those eggs and coffees and lunches and beer caps had undermined my efforts at manhood. Sixteen and I bawled hysterically right in front of Black Turtle and my father and ran off into the woods to hide.

I only tell you all this because I want you to understand the significance of the next twenty-four hours I’m going to tell you about. Back then, I didn’t stop to think about why I felt that I had experienced some kind of spiritual ascension, I only knew that I had. Everything was right.

I had grown up afraid of being my father. I was happy to have his rugged looks, his strong back, and his quick mind. But I was determined to have more. I was going to be rich and powerful. That was the lesson of my childhood.

When I resisted Celeste Oliver’s temptation-my own forty days in the desert-I couldn’t help congratulating myself. I felt not just worthy of everything that had been placed at my feet, but entitled. I had worked and planned my whole life to be in the path of some fantastic destiny. Finally, on that summer day, I knew that it was in my grasp.

I had this amazing house that everyone wondered how I got my hands on. One of those deals you only hear about. It belonged to the family of a friend I knew at Princeton. They came to me to help work out the estate after the death of their grandmother. When I saw this place, I told them they wouldn’t even have to put it on the market.

It was an old Tudor cottage tucked into a small cove on Skaneateles Lake. You couldn’t see it from the road or even very clearly from the water because of the massive oaks and towering spruce that surrounded it. It had a prominent rubblework chimney flanked by stucco walls and brunette half-timbering. Gingerbread gableboards and diamond-pane window casements gave it a fairy-tale quality, and it had a thick slate terrace out back that overlooked the water.

The master bedroom upstairs was my favorite spot. It had a set of arched French doors in the peak of the roof that led out onto a small balcony. In the summer, the moon came up over the eastern ridge beyond the lake like a big pumpkin. From there, I could see all the way to the south end of the lake, into the next county where the tree-lined slopes descend almost a thousand feet from the ridge to the deep green water below.

By the time I got home from delivering the envelope to Roger Williamson’s mistress, dusk was on its last breath. I quickly changed my clothes and fished the velvet ring box out of the bottom of my sock drawer. Lexis agreed to meet me at Kabuki, a sushi restaurant in town at the head of the lake. During the drive to my dad’s I had called for a nine-thirty reservation at the front table overlooking the water.

My buddy’s grandmother had planted a bed of orange daylilies under the front windows and I stopped to cut half a dozen of them to give to Lexis. I got there late, but not enough to subdue the glow in Lexis’s eyes when I handed her the flowers. I drank seltzer water with Lexis, but I felt drunk anyway, and by the time we got our molten chocolate cake with green tea ice cream, I had asked her to marry me. She cried and said yes, then we drove back to my place, where I carried her across the threshold and we giggled like kids.

Upstairs, I opened the French doors and stepped out onto the balcony. Water lapped the smooth shale beach below and a broad swath of moonlight sparkled on the lake’s surface. As I turned, Lexis slipped her dress off her shoulder and it fell to the floor. I stepped inside, fumbling with my belt, then the zipper. My jeans hit the wood floor and we twined ourselves together on the four-poster bed.

It was deep in the night when I woke up. The breeze had a bite to it and the moon had either gone down or was clouded over. Beyond the balcony now was only blackness. I got up to use the bathroom and shook two aspirin out of a bottle. My water glass clinked against the tap as I filled it with lake water. I swallowed my medicine, then felt my way back into the bedroom, sliding under the warm tangle of sheets and pulling Lexis’s naked body close.

I was suddenly and inexplicably overwhelmed by an irrational fear. One day, we would die. Then we would be apart forever. Insane, I knew, but still my heart pushed up into my throat. The rest of my chest felt empty. I never wanted to be without her. Not then. Not for eternity.

“Lexis,” I whispered. “I love you.”

She stretched, and I could see her smile even in the darkness.

“I love you too,” she said without opening her eyes.

“I just don’t ever want to be without you,” I said, sick with this crazy fear.

“Go back to sleep,” she said, turning toward me and wrapping her arms and legs tight around my body. “That could never happen.”

IN THE MORNING, I took a ten-mile run in the drizzling rain. I was drenched and slick with sweat and sucking in air. I shucked off my sneakers and clothes on the end of the dock and plunged into the cold water. After looking around for any fishermen drifting in from the mist, I climbed naked onto the dock, grabbed a towel from the boat, and wrapped it around my waist.

Halfway up the slate walk to the house, I smelled food. Lexis had cooked up my favorite breakfast: broccoli and cheese omelets. We had buttered toast made from thick-cut Italian bread and coffee made from the beans of an espresso blend. We ate outside on the slate terrace even though the air was still damp from the rain. When I finished eating, I sat back and inhaled the curling steam from my coffee mug. Out on the lake, a fishing boat floated past, appearing and disappearing on the fringe of the morning mist. The laughter of the two fishermen rang out across the still water.

We moved inside and sat on the couch by the empty fireplace, reading our books until noon, then took my nineteen-foot Sea Ray into town for fried fish sandwiches at Doug’s. By the time we came out, the clouds had thinned and the sun had begun to boil off the dampness. We stopped at Riddler’s for the paper.

Someone had leaked the news of my impending nomination and my picture was on page one. I looked around the store and folded the paper in half before buying it with my head down.

Back at the house, we toweled off the deck chairs on the end of the dock and lay reading in the sun. When it got hot enough, we went in the water and played our usual game. I’d take a deep breath and crouch down on the rocky bottom. She’d fit her insteps into my palms, then I’d stand up fast and push for the sky. Lexis would launch into the air and do a flip. I loved seeing her do that and we’d laugh until we couldn’t catch our breath.

Dan Parsons sent a long black limousine for us at five-thirty, and by the time we arrived at the convention center, the crowd converged around us, fawning as if we were a museum exhibit. And, me being a Republican with a Native American mother, I guess in a way we were. Cameras flashed at odd intervals. I saw Lexis stare at a tray of champagne being offered to her by a waiter, but she smiled at me and shook her head no to him. We drifted through the swirl of congratulations. Congratulations when they saw her ring. Congratulations on the Iroquois deal. Congratulations for my nomination. Love. Money. Power.

We sat at the head table with the governor and his wife on one side and the Parsonses on the other. On the opposite side of the dais, Bob Rangle was red-faced and drinking a glass of white wine that seemed to be bottomless. The one time we found ourselves face-to-face during cocktails, he scowled and quickly turned away. I wasn’t surprised that he was finally showing his true feelings, but I was disappointed that he had chosen to show them here.