Miles Vance stood by the door, his expression unreadable. "Yes, Mr. President. She is in the Residence. Shall I have the kitchen arrange a dinner for you both in the formal dining room?"
The offer was a lifeline, a chance to put structure and staff between himself and the woman he was supposed to call his wife. The host's memories, however, supplied the routine: formal dinners were rare. Their evenings were quiet, separate affairs, conducted in the vast, lonely space of the Executive Residence. To change that would be another signal that something was wrong.
"No, Miles. That won't be necessary," he said, forcing a casual tone. "I'll just head over. Thank you."
"Good night, Mr. President."
The walk from the West Wing to the Residence was the longest of his life. The familiar path under the colonnade felt like a walk to his own execution. The crisp October air did nothing to cool the panic rising in his chest. In the Oval Office, he was the President, a role he could play with the help of future knowledge. Here, crossing this threshold, he had to be a husband.
He entered the private quarters. The silence was immediate and heavy. The decor was opulent and pristine, familiar to him from memory but striking to his own eyes. It felt less like a home and more like the presidential suite of a luxury hotel, a place where people coexisted but did not truly live.
She was in the living room, sitting on a long white sofa, a magazine resting unread in her lap. Melania. She looked up as he entered, her expression composed, almost placid. But her eyes were sharp. They always were.
"Good evening," she said, her voice even, with its distinct accent. "You are finished early."
"There was a change of plans," he replied, stopping a respectful distance away. He searched for something to say, a line, a piece of dialogue that fit the scene. The host's mind was a blank; their conversations were often perfunctory.
"Miles said you cleared your schedule after the security briefing," she continued, her gaze unwavering. "Is everything alright?"
She had noticed. Of course, she had. She lived at the epicenter of the ripples he was creating.
"Everything is fine," he said, moving towards the small kitchenette. He needed a task, a reason for his hands to be busy. "Just… a new perspective on an old problem. It required some thinking."
He opened a cabinet and took out a glass, the simple, domestic act feeling profoundly fraudulent. He filled it with water from the tap, his back to her.
"You seem different," she said quietly.
His hand froze on the faucet. He turned slowly to face her. "Different? How so?"
"Calm," she stated, as if it were a puzzle. "In the meeting, they said you were… quiet. Then you gave orders no one expected. And now, you are here. Usually, after a day like this, you are angry. Tonight, you are just… calm. It is unusual."
He had no defense against this, no strategic pivot. This was an observation from a wife, a witness to the private moods of the man he had replaced. All he could offer was a sliver of a truth he hoped would pass for a whole one.
"Perhaps I'm tired of being angry, Melania," he said, his voice softer than he intended. "It hasn't been particularly effective."
He held her gaze for a long moment. She didn't smile, but the hard, watchful edge in her eyes seemed to soften almost imperceptibly. She gave a single, small nod, accepting the answer, for now.
Excusing himself with the pretense of needing to review documents, he escaped into the President's private study, closing the door behind him. He leaned against it, his heart pounding. That was harder than facing down the entire National Security Council.
He sat at the personal desk, a smaller, more intimate version of the one in the Oval, and opened the secure laptop. He was back in his element. For hours, he worked, the ghost of a husband fading as the strategist from the future took over. He pulled up every file he could find on the national debt, on federal budgets, on entitlement spending. The numbers were worse than he remembered from the history books. A wave of red ink, a fiscal cancer that he knew would cripple the nation by the time of the pandemic he had to prevent.
He began a new document, titling it with the name he'd given Miles: Strategic Supply Chain Initiative. He started listing key sectors: pharmaceuticals, specifically antibiotic and antiviral precursors. Medical equipment, from ventilators to basic N95 masks. Rare earth minerals for defense and technology. Semiconductors. He began outlining a plan of tax incentives, federal grants, and national security orders to aggressively reshore production of these assets, starting immediately. It was a declaration of economic independence disguised as a policy paper.
Driven by a new lead, he delved into the President's private budget folders, looking for the man's own notes. He needed to know what landmines were waiting for him. He found a file, cryptically named "Patriot Push."
He opened it. It was a political document, not an economic one. It detailed a massive new package of tax reductions, all without a single line item about funding. The cuts were meticulously crafted to deliver a small but noticeable windfall to median-income families—a sugar high for the economy timed perfectly for an election year. It was pure political candy, and from his future perspective, a fiscal catastrophe. The margins were filled with the President's own scrawled, enthusiastic notes: "A winner!" "Do this after midterms."
He stared at the screen, a cold dread seeping back into the room. He wasn't just on a mission to save the future. He was now in a silent, one-man battle against the past. He had to implement his own painful, long-term solutions while simultaneously sabotaging the politically popular, disastrous plans of the very man he was pretending to be.