“All those people with the long strings who you thought you saved,” Ben said, “you did save them. Their strings were long because you were meant to save them. Their strings were long because of you.”
Ben’s face quickly receded into the distance, locked away behind the ambulance door, and Hank closed his eyes, alone with his hope.
Jack
Jack was supposed to be at that rally in Manhattan. Katherine had urged him to attend, but Jack lied and said he was sick.
Thank god he hadn’t been there to witness it. To see an innocent man killed at his uncle’s event, his body ripped by the bullet meant for Anthony. He couldn’t understand how things had come to this point, how his family’s actions had turned fatal. How, on a hot day at the end of August, Jack found himself staring at the photo of the man who had died, mere feet from his aunt and uncle.
In the picture, the doctor had short black hair, deep lines around his grin, the lightest shadow of stubble on his cheeks, a stethoscope resting around his neck. It was probably his official headshot, Jack thought, the portrait from the hospital directory.
Jack asked his father how Anthony and Katherine were holding up.
“Your aunt’s obviously shaken that they were targeted by this maniac,” his father said. “But overall, I think they’re doing remarkably well. Your uncle’s polling even higher since the attack.”
Doing remarkably well? Back to focusing on polls? Hadn’t they watched a man get shot?
Jack didn’t want to believe that his own family could have caused this man’s death. Sure, many of his relatives had fought in wars, but this was different. This was a park in Manhattan, not a combat zone. And, until that summer, Jack honestly believed that his family’s greatest transgressions had been committed against their own, against the members like Jack and his mother, who couldn’t fit the mold handcrafted by their ancestors.
Jack knew, in many ways, that he was lucky to be a Hunter, with all their comforts and connections. But Anthony’s campaign had unleashed something new, something darker, something that made all the other family faults seem trivial.
Most reports on the shooting exclaimed that the doctor had “saved” Congressman Rollins’s life, but Jack read one article online in which a friend explained that the victim, Hank, had actually been attending the anti-Rollins protest.
Was it really Hank’s hatred for Anthony that led to his death? His passion for the short-stringers’ cause? Jack wanted to pinpoint the rationale, the motivation that Hank apparently felt was worth jumping in front of a gun for. As hard as he tried—and, indeed, at the academy he tried over and over—Jack still couldn’t imagine feeling anything so strongly that he would willingly risk his life for it. He had seen that commitment in his fellow cadets, and he saw it in Javier, who was still zealously pursuing his path of service even after receiving his string. Jack wondered what it would feel like to be so certain, so devoted. To feel that nothing about you was a mistake.
Jack pulled up in front of his aunt and uncle’s house, inhaling deeply. He had to do it today. No matter how many hours he spent ruminating over his family’s flaws, they were still his family. He couldn’t hide from them forever. And he already told the army about his “short string,” so he needed to make it look real.
But he had consciously chosen the afternoon, when Anthony would be at work, and he would only have to face his aunt.
“Thank goodness you weren’t at the rally with that horrible protest,” Katherine said, pulling her nephew into her arms. Jack’s father winced at anything too physically intimate, but Katherine was always a hugger.
“I know it’s been a crazy time for you and Uncle Anthony, but I, uh, I came because I have to tell you something,” Jack said, as Katherine poured him a cup of coffee. “I’m sure you know that I had to complete a string disclosure for the army, so I wanted you to hear it from me that . . . it’s short.”
Katherine’s hand trembled as she put down the pot. “How short?” she whispered.
“It seems to end somewhere between twenty-six and twenty-eight,” he said. （Jack always referred to the short string as it, fully detached from himself. He could never quite utter the words I or my.）
“Oh, Jack, no, I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.” Katherine’s voice broke with tears.
“It’s okay. Please don’t cry for me,” Jack pleaded, suddenly uncomfortable with her reaction. But what else had he expected? He knew his aunt could be just as blindly ambitious as his uncle, standing beside him no matter what. But she was still the one who had given Jack those G.I. Joe and Captain America action figures as a kid, who carried frozen meals to his house in the wake of his mom’s departure. Of course she would cry at the news.