Veena would stop by at least twice a week. It was Abby’s only time to get her mind off her parent’s challenges and focus on something superficial and fun. They would delve into wedding websites, picking out favors, decor, and invitations. Veena’s father had insisted on a traditional Hindu wedding, with three days of festivities, over four hundred guests, and a white horse for the groom to ride in on. It would be a huge event and Abby could already feel her nerves on edge as she considered the thought of standing in front of hundreds of people while Veena and Spence celebrated their marriage. Would Abby be up to facing the huge crowd? It was so much easier to drop into the shadows.
Since arriving at the house three weeks ago, Abby had yet to leave the comforting embrace of the estate. She wasn’t ready. But Mom’s agent had insisted that Abby find a way to be ready. She scheduled a date for Mom and Abby to get their hair done. With Abby’s hair having only been trimmed by her own hand and a pair of medical shears in the past year, her appearance was far from what a senator’s daughter should look like. She was scheduled to make an appearance at the local mall in three days in order to dispel rumors that she was pregnant or dead, and according to Mom’s agent, she needed to look like she had ‘not been attacked by zombies while away on vacation’.
She and Mom had been provided private service at a prestigious salon in exchange for a positive quote to the media from Mom. All in contract, and approved by her agent, of course. Mom’s hair was shaped into a bob haircut that would be easier for her stylist to shape in a hurry. Mom had been hesitant to leave Dad’s side lately, and had often arrived at least an hour late, not providing the stylists with much time to primp and prepare their work of art.
After stating that she would be happy with whatever cut she received, the stylist went crazy with delight on Abby’s hair, streaking highlights and snipping layers into the normally subdued tresses. Abby was surprised how pretty it turned out. The bouncy layers softened her furrowed brow and gave her a peaceful, more carefree look. An appearance far from the turmoil that was actually hidden in her heart.
They’d even gone so far as to go through a regimen of nail and facial treatments, culminating in an appearance that would shock Oyana and Dr. Otieno. She almost laughed as she looked in the full-length mirror. Her makeup was perfection and the artist had been kind enough to keep it light and unobtrusive, revealing her own beauty instead of the layers that most celebrities seemed to portray nowadays.
Mom’s agent had also brought in an up and coming designer, so she and Mom had enjoyed at least thirty minutes of perusing various styles and garments with laughter and joy. It was rare that Abby saw Mom laugh anymore, and it felt good. Though the actual leaving the house had been torture, it was healing to get away from Dad for a little while, because, as much as they loved him, the pain of seeing him in his feeble state had worn both of them to their cores.
Mom had finally chosen a simple pair of black pants and a coral shirt for Abby to wear on the way home, as well as several other outfits they would be sporting during their scheduled appearances the next several weeks. Fortunately, they would be doing the events together, as Abby had yet to gather the courage to make any lone appearances.
The actress that mom was truly shone during the endless question and answer sessions. She’d been able to demonstrate the emotional pain of living with a loved one who had recently suffered from stroke, while still being able to show the joy of having her daughter back from overseas.
Abby wasn’t sure that she’d be able to pull it off even half as well. She remembered her last few interviews before the attack. They’d all been with Sean at her side. He’d answered most of the questions, guiding the interviewer through manipulation of words and facial expression towards the more comfortable questions, able to avoid complicated inquiries with a laugh and a show of his dimple. It had been art. But now? What would he do in front of a camera? How would he react? The last time he’d been threatened with a photograph, he’d shot at the man with a handgun.
But, that didn’t matter anymore. Sean was gone again.
“How are you feeling? Are you ready?” Mom’s voice was a soft anchor, keeping her safe from the storm of her thoughts with love and concern. “There are quite a few cameras out there, sweetie, at the back entrance too. If you want, we can get security to remove them, but it will take another half hour.”
The clock showed 11:28pm. Too late for this Cinderella to wait for security to arrange an unassailable escape. It was, after all, their first appearance together since leaving the hospital and it would surely be splashed throughout the internet in a matter of minutes.
“No, it’s fine. Just to the car, right?”
“Yes,” Mom assured her. “No questions. Straight to the car.”
“Okay.”
Abby recited the last verses of Psalm 6 as she waited for Mom’s makeup artist to apply one last dab of powder.
Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the Lord has heard my weeping.
The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
Then she added the last verse with a bitter taste on her tongue.
All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish;
they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
SHE wanted to close her eyes to the lights that glared through the window as she and Mom came out of the private rooms, into the lobby of the studio. It was a sense of intrusion that she hadn’t felt for so long, but old training kicked in immediately as her face shifted into its unemotional, yet cordial smile and her body lifted into a form of appropriate positioning gleaned from years of experience.
“Are you okay?” Mom’s agent asked. Abby could tell that the woman was feeling guilty about not being able to hide their beautification visit from the media, but the paparazzi was an unscrupulous beast, always winding its tentacles into worlds that one would have thought were out of reach. Naturally, the monsters would have sniffed them out.
“Yes,” Abby said, her words surprisingly reassuring and calm. “Thank you for this evening. It was a lot of fun.”
At that, the agent breathed a sigh of relief and opened the doors.
“Abigail! Why were you in Africa?”
“Did you have a baby?”
“Where is Sean? Is he with the child?”
“How is the senator?”
“Abby! Over here.”
“Miss Ellwood. Can you sign my shirt?”
“Abigail! Just a few questions.”
“Where is Sean Court?”
“How did you recover so quickly from childbirth?”
“Where is the baby?”
“Where is Sean?”
When the door to the car was finally shut and the driver managed to power through the crowd, Abby sank into her seat and closed her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, honey. That’s one rumor we haven’t been able to manage.”
“It’s okay, Mom.” It really was. Of all the rumors that could have been going around, having a baby with Sean was probably one of the more positive. “When they start calling the baby an alien, then I’ll worry.”
Mom laughed and placed her hand over Abby’s on the seat. “Thank you so much for coming tonight. I really needed this.”
“I think I did too. It’s strange to feel…” Abby didn’t know how to put it into words. It was strange to have a hairstyle, to be wearing makeup, to have clothing on your body that cost more than Dr. Otieno made in a week. “…strange to feel American again.”
“I’m sure it must,” Mom said with understanding. “You look pretty though.”
They sat quietly in the backseat during the ride home, both of them exhausted from their torture session.
When they arrived, the nurse told them Dad was sleeping, so they were able to sit in the living room in front of the laptop over a tub of chocolate chip ice cream. “Should we do it now? Or maybe wait until tomorrow?” Mom ask
ed.
“Let’s get it over with.” Abby opened the laptop and pulled up the latest gossip sites.
Fortunately, the posts were mostly favorable, with only a few commenting on how awful she and Mom were to be primping while Senator Ellwood wasted away from incurable cancer.
“Cancer?” Abby laughed. “Dad’s going to love that one.”
“At least they’re not saying that he has syphilis anymore.”
“Eww. That’s gross.”
Mom fought a losing battle with the ice cream fairy, digging spoonful after spoonful into her mouth while Abby scanned through a few more websites. She stopped at one that had created a compilation of what Abby and Sean’s ‘love child’ would look like. Abby thought about Caleb, how he had been a perfect combination of Frank and Sandra. She touched the glass of the monitor featuring a beautiful little girl, Abby’s hazel eyes, Sean’s thick hair, Abby’s button nose, and Sean’s dimple. She was precious.
Mom had stopped eating the ice cream and was now staring at the picture with her. “There’s something I should tell you,” she said in a muffled whisper.
Abby looked at Mom, who had placed the tub on the coffee table and was now biting at her fingernails in concern. “It’s not my place to tell,” she said quietly. “It’s your father’s. But now… I mean, he can’t tell you. I’m not sure he’d want me to, but I just feel this tug at my heart. You need to know, Abigail.”
Without a word, Abby closed the laptop, but continued to stare at its silver cover. Whatever Mom was going to say, it would cause her another night of insomnia, but Mom needed to get it out. She looked up with a smile, and softly batted Mom’s hand away from her gnawing mouth just as Mom had done to her as a child. “Fingers aren’t food,” she said with a tilt of her lips into a smile.
Mom tried to smile back, but Abby could tell she was hurting inside.
“Abigail…,” she started. “Your father and I, we were so worried when you were considering dating. All of the boys we were looking at. They weren’t good enough. We couldn’t trust them. We knew you needed so much more than Randall Steinmetz.”
Abby laughed at the memory. “Thank you for that,” she said, trying to make light of the moment.
The comment served its purpose and managed to loosen Mom’s shoulders out of the tense positioning they’d assumed upon the opening of her statement. “And then there was that boy in the library.”
Abby’s heart crushed inside her chest.
“I got to see the video. Your father was mad, but I could see that you had a crush on him. He was very handsome, after all.”
“Mom…”
“So, I convinced him to let you try it.”
“It was you? I thought Dad had some sort of research company investigate his past and make an approval in committee or something.”
“Well, of course your Dad found out who the boy was. After all, he is the king of background checks. But he told me that Sean Court was a good boy. Military service, no scandalous blemishes in his file, appropriate social skills…”
“Appropriate social skills?” Abby questioned.
Mom sighed and tipped her head. “You know that’s a top priority if somebody’s going to get dragged anywhere near this family. I wouldn’t want to subject an anxious ninny to what the media put Sean through.”
“True. He did manage to charm the pants off the paparazzi.”
Mom sighed again, this time without a smile. “Your dad considered it an excellent match, but he was also worried about your security.”
Abby nodded her head. Dad being worried about her security had been the story of her life.
“Well… he kind of hired Sean to date you.”
“I already know. He told me.” Abby’s core tightened in response to Mom’s confession.
“Oh, yes… I see,” Mom stumbled over her words. “Sean refused the money, of course. But, somehow, Dad and his lawyers had still managed to get him to sign the contract. So after a while, Sean had a pretty tidy sum built up in his account.”
“I thought you said he refused the money.”
“We used it to buy the jewelry set,” Mom said, her voice quavering and weak.
Abby’s hands reacted to the words by immediately wrapping themselves around the position the necklace had taken around her neck. “No.”
“It was part of the investigation… the stolen jewelry. I’d communicated its worth to the police when they questioned me. That was one of the reason’s they’d taken Sean into custody. They thought maybe he’d taken it.”
“Did you think that?” Abby asked, her eyes beginning to fill with tears at the thought of her mom having to be dragged through questioning after her daughter had just been attacked so viciously.
But mom’s acting skills were in high gear for Abby’s sake, and her strength overpowered any moisture that might overtake her perfectly mascara’d eyelashes. “No, sweetie. I know that Sean never could have done something like that… but your dad…”
“I know about the shooting, Mom. Sean told me that as well.”
Mom nodded her head and closed her eyes in relief, clearly glad that she wouldn’t have to be the bearer of the news. “Are you angry?” Mom asked.
“No,” Abby reassured her. “I don’t know that I wouldn’t have done the same thing in his position.” And then something struck Abby. “How was it kept out of the media?”
“Very few people know about the shooting. Sean insisted on keeping it under wraps. He didn’t file assault charges, didn’t want to cause you anymore anguish than you were already suffering from.” Mom opened her eyes, a ragged sigh enveloping her words. “Your dad was never the same after that. Even after he found out that Sean hadn’t done it, he was angry, afraid. We both knew that it was…” Mom faltered, trying not to fall into the emotion that was taking over. She stared at the leather couch on which they were sitting, her fingers tracing a circle on its surface. “…we knew it was the person who’d been sending the birthday notes.”
“The man with the glasses?” Abby said.
Mom continued to stare but didn’t answer the question. “There’s more.”
“About the attack?” Abby asked, wondering if Mom had a deeper insight into who the attacker may have been.
“I can’t say much about the attack. There’s too much I don’t know. But there’s something else…” Mom stood and began to pace. Abby curled into herself on the couch, mentally preparing herself for the rest of the story.
“Your dad had James McCarrin track Sean’s movements overseas. He kept a correspondence. I don’t know what they were communicating about, your dad was sure to keep me out of the loop. But I do know that he found out hours after Sean was gunned down. It was the first time your father and I prayed together.”
“You prayed for Sean?” Abby asked. She was shocked. Not only were her parents not the praying type, but her dad had made his disapproval of Sean clear through his assertive actions.
“We prayed for Sean, and for you. Dad had always felt guilty about the attack on you. He felt that he’d failed somehow. And then the guilt of shooting Sean’s hand and taking away his ability to become a doctor… it was almost unbearable. After Sean was hurt overseas, your father imploded. He would cry for hours on end, not getting out of bed, not eating. It was awful.” Abby watched Mom’s shoulders shake with memory as she stood at the fireplace, staring into a picture of the three of them at the beach when Abby was ten. Such a different world.
“I’m pretty sure that Sean went overseas for you, and for your father.”
“For me? But I was in Africa.”
“You were still here at the time,” Mom said.
Abby was surprised. “I don’t understand.”
“He knew that the media would eventually see his hand. Fingers had to be amputated. It was awful. He didn’t want that for you. That knowledge of what had happened. He left a week after his operation, against doctor’s orders. He told me to let him know as soon as you were able to talk again, b
ut by the time you had your first words… I no longer had contact with Sean.”
“You were communicating with him?”
“I tried,” Mom said. “But mostly it was your dad. They communicated via email. I trusted that your dad was giving me all the information, but I really can’t be sure. You know how things are with politics and communications. There are so many things left unsaid, so many illusions to the truth.”
Abby nodded her head. “Sean told me that he was a consultant. That he worked with some of his military contacts. Did Dad know about that?”
Mom bit her lip. “I’m sorry, honey. I know I should have asked him. I should have been more insistent on finding out… but, I figured that he would tell me when the time was right. And now…” Mom lifted her hand towards the master suite. “Now we may never find out.”
Mom’s face turned to stone. Abby stood and wrapped her arms around Mom’s shaking shoulders. “Dad is going to talk again. I know it. He’s already moving his hand. He may not be able to communicate with spoken words, but he’ll be able to talk.”
“I know, sweetie,” Mom said, falling into Abby’s arms. “I know he will.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
A month later, Dad had begun to voluntarily move various muscles throughout his body, including the fingers on one of his hands. Abby was developing a system of communication that amounted to her asking a yes or no question, and Dad answering with or without a squeeze of his hand. She could tell that he was still confused, because even simple questions about his surroundings were occasionally answered incorrectly.
When she and Dad were alone, Abby would ask the raging questions that were digging into her heart.
Why were you communicating with Sean while he was out of the country?
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