by Lynn Murphy
“Probably. But look how sweet his is all curled up with your shoe.”
Two thoughts crossed his mind as he went to put on another pair of shoes for his morning run. One was that his wife would have a made a much better mother than she thought she would and two that he had somehow in a very short time bonded with that scruffy little dog in a way that would exceed all the dog stories in history.
Chapter Twenty Four
Kel leaned against the wall and took a deep breath. This was not how he wanted to feel on this night. Waiting for the primary returns and anticipating getting the nomination was not supposed to be accompanied by signs of going into insulin shock. He had chosen to spend this evening at his campaign headquarters in Newport and it was packed with people and news reporters. He assessed his condition. Slightly dizzy, but he could probably walk out of the room without anyone noticing. He stepped away from the wall and decided he was better off leaning against it. He lifted his hand and it was starting to shake. He searched his coat pockets and realized that he had brought nothing with him in case of just such an emergency. Okay, he thought. Best course of action. He closed his eyes for a minute.
“Kel?” A hand touched his arm. He opened his eyes and saw Tara standing beside him. “Are you okay?”
“Not really. Do you think you could find Evan or Alan, or even John somewhere in this crowd?”
“Will you be all right if I leave you?” Concern was written all over her face.
He smiled a little. “I hope so.”
“I’ll be right back.” He watched her go and tried to focus on not letting the dizziness get the best of him. He was not going to pass out in front of all these people. That was the kind of publicity that would end his bid for the White House. And he wasn’t willing to let that happen, after spending the last three months forcing everyone to let him talk about real issues and not his dating life and his diabetes. It had been a hard road for anyone, but for someone prone to the kind of health problems he had it was a grueling road he would be glad to be done traveling. He let out a sigh of relief as Tara and Evan joined him.
Evan told Tara to take his arm. “And the three of us are going to waltz out of here like we’re just talking.” When it was just the three of them in another room, Evan took control of the situation and Tara sat beside him looking worried, but not talking. He drank the orange juice Evan handed him and accepted the expected lecture about carrying glucose with him while Evan checked his blood sugar levels. Evan took glucose tablets out of his own pocket and handed them to Kel in case he needed them later.
“Crisis averted,” Evan said, refilling the glass and handing it back again. “But honestly, I’ll be glad to see all this end. November can’t come soon enough.”
“I really have tried to keep it all in check, Evan.” Kel sat the glass down on the table beside him and reached for Tara’s hand, hoping she would take it. She did.
“I know you have. And when I told the press it wouldn’t interfere with your ability to be President, I meant it. But when you’re pushing yourself this hard physically, you need to be extremely cautious.”
It was nothing that Kel didn’t already know. He’d simply forgotten to take anything with him tonight. A stupid mistake, but at least nothing had happened. Evan said that he would go and give John an update and Kel told him that he would be out in a few minutes. He was still holding Tara’s hand .
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“It was nothing compared to the last time I saw you have problems,” she said, referring to his hospital stay.
“It really doesn’t bother you, does it?”
“That you’re diabetic? No. Not at all. That’s not even a part of why I don’t know if I can commit to this relationship.”
“Then what is it? I know I made that one comment, but I had every intention of coming back to talk to you. But you weren’t there.”
“So many things, Kel. I don’t know if I can handle the media attention, I’m not sure what you want, and I’m essentially the same age as your children. How do I know if I could be first lady? And I don’t know if the relationship could wait until you were done in the White House.”
“Do you love me?”
She looked into his eyes. “Yes.”
“Then nothing else should matter.”
She pulled her hand away and stood and walked to the door. “But it does. I’m going to go get ready to announce you getting enough delegates. I’ll see you later.”
He sat there, considering what she had said. The media attention he might be able to do something about. He wasn’t sure why she had said she didn’t know what he wanted. He thought he had made that abundantly clear. He hadn’t ever really given much thought to the age difference, because it never felt as if there was one. And yet that had been one of his biggest objections to Alan and Janet’s engagement, even though Alan had told him he never noticed the difference. And it he did win the election? Would he have to wait out his term in the White House to be able to have something permanent with her? On that count he didn’t know if he had enough patience. The timing of this thing had always been wrong. If only they could have met while he was just a senator things might have been easier. They loved each other, but couldn’t seem to find a way to make it work.
“Kel?” John stood in the doorway. “You okay?”
“Yes, just a little too much insulin. Evan took care of it.”
“They’re about to announce the poll results.”
“Let’s go see how we did then.” He hated that it was so easy to pretend nothing was bothering him, a skill he had learned all too well during the time he was married to Alise. As hard as he had worked for it, he would rather be trying to fix things with Tara rather than making a speech about how excited he was to move forward. But that’s what he did. He stood on the stage with Jim and Janet and John and Kim and Skip and thanked all of the people who had worked so hard on the campaign and promised to make sure they won in November.
Tara covered the speech he made and was proud of him, but didn’t stay to talk to him afterward. She had booked a hotel this time rather than stay at Lily’s and had an early morning flight back to Washington. At the hotel she watched the continuing coverage of the primaries and the concession speeches of the other candidates. She would have liked, had the timing been different, to share this night with him. She was certain he was going to be the next President of the United States. His dream was so close to coming true, and she didn’t know if she could be there to see it happen. It was a bittersweet moment.
Chapter Twenty Five
It was the last night of the convention and Kel would officially be named his party’s candidate for President. There was excitement in the air and anticipation for what he would say in his acceptance speech. The entire O’Brien family was here, along with George and Lily and Evan and Mary Katherine. Tara had covered each night, doing a story every evening, but had not spent more time with Kel than just a few brief minutes each day. She had been asked to sit with the family and she almost refused, but Lily had taken her by the hand and said she must and her boss had loved the idea. He’d told her to interview them too, which she had, and it had run before that night’s coverage of the event. Like everyone else in the room she was captivated by his enthusiasm and his eloquent acceptance speech. When he was done he got a standing ovation. His family went up on the stage afterwards and she was taken along with them. He hugged each one in turn and they were all talking animatedly as the traditional balloons and red, white and blue confetti fell and the reporters were doing their live shots. And then he saw her, standing at the edge of the group and came and stood in front of her, looking happier and somehow more rested than she had seen him in a long time. His arms went around her and he bent to kiss her and she couldn’t resist, locking her hands behind his head as somewhere around them it seemed a million flashes were going off. She knew what photos were going to be on the front pages of every newspaper tomorrow and for the brief moment in time that he
was kissing her, she didn’t care. In fact time seemed to stand still.
He smiled down at her and she remembered that she had a story to file herself. “I have to go do my report,” she said.
“And after that?”
“We’re already going to be tomorrow’s trending story, Kel. We should just leave at this for tonight.”
His smile vanished. “I want you to spend some time thinking about us. About what you want from whatever this is that we’ve started. I love you, but I can’t keep this up. Either we decide to do this forever, or we have to end it. I’d personally rather have forever. But it’s completely up to you now.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek and went back to his family and she went to find her camera crew, and prayed she would be able to hold it together to do her report.
As she had expected, photographs of the two of them kissing graced the covers of every newspaper she saw. And she was pursued by the press with a vengeance, everyone wanting to know if she was going to marry Kel. There was nowhere she went that she wasn’t photographed; going to work, the grocery store, a book store. She visited Evan and Mary Katherine and hated that photographers camped out outside their house until she left. She was called in to an editorial meeting and told that the media hype was out of control and that they saw her as a liability, not an asset. They had no choice, they said, but to let her go. She was quickly assured that it was not the quality of her work or any other reason and that she would be given the highest recommendations and three months’ salary as severance pay.
She went home, still stunned by the afternoon’s events. She walked through her apartment, her head spinning with everything that had been happening. For the second time in a month she found herself without a job. She had her expenses paid through the election, she thought, and then what? She supposed that her father would help her find something in Atlanta and maybe that was what she needed to do. Forget all this had happened, chalk it up to her fifteen minutes of fame, and just go home. But how could she forget her time with Kel? How could she pretend she had never fallen in love with him, and not just because he was so gorgeous and had the bluest eyes she had ever seen? She loved the person behind that handsome face, who he was and what he wanted and what he dreamed. She loved all of him, but she didn’t know how to make herself a part of his life.
She kicked off her shoes, pulled out her cell phone and called Julia.
Chapter Twenty Six
Evan groaned as he pulled into the driveway. His mother-in-law’s car was also parked there and he went inside the house preparing himself for the confrontation that would surely come before she left. As he opened the door, the smell of roses assaulted him and he saw a huge vase of pink and red ones on the table. He searched his memory to think of some event a Thursday in early October that would warrant flowers, but came up short. As he came into the room, he also saw several photo albums and scrapbooks scattered on the sofa. Mary Katherine’s cell rang and before she could greet him she said “Oh I need to take this in the studio,” and raced up the stairs, living him alone with Margaret. Had she been crying? Or was he imagining that as he watched her go?
“So what’s up with the flowers?” he asked.
“I knew it would be a difficult day for Mary Katherine.” Margaret shifted on the sofa and turned a page in one of the albums.
“Oh, really. Why?”
She gave him a withering look. “You wouldn’t understand, Evan.”
“Why don’t you try and explain it to me, Margaret. I’m not nearly as stupid as you give me credit for.”
“It’s Harry’s birthday. He would have been forty today.”
“You know, Margaret, Harry is dead. He has been for over twenty years.”
“I know that, obviously, Evan. But Mary Katherine just can’t forget the days that were important.” It suddenly dawned on him why she couldn’t forget. She had never been allowed to forget. There had probably always been a call or a text , an email or a card or flowers to remind her of every day that might dredge up painful memories. His mother-in-law had turned her house into a shrine to Harry Thurston. The photographs everywhere, the high school corsages still tacked to the dresser mirror in Mary Katherine’s bedroom, the constant conversations about him. Evan doubted Harry’s own parents had as many objects in their house to memorialize him.
“And you’ve done everything you can to make sure she doesn’t, haven’t you? What kind of mother makes sure her daughter is crippled by grief for over twenty years? You bring her flowers on a dead boyfriend’s birthday but you can’t come and help out when she’s had chemo?”
“Evan, you are over reacting.”
He should have done what he always did, just kept quiet. But he couldn’t seem to do that today. “Am I? Why have you done everything in your power to try and make sure she was unhappy with me? I know I’m not the son in law you wanted, Margaret, but maybe instead of constant harping on who I wasn’t maybe you should have seen what I am. Contrary to what you’ve always had everyone in your family think, I wasn’t some ignorant peasant Mary Katherine picked up from the gutter and did a Pygmalion turnaround on. My father was a high ranking naval officer with a prestigious post. I learned social graces from my mother, not from Mary Katherine, I was an Olympic athlete, and I graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins. And I have loved your daughter unconditionally for twenty years and will until the day she dies. Don’t ever send her flowers to commemorate anything regarding Harry again. Don’t call her about him, don’t show up with photos and scrapbooks. And don’t expect us for holidays unless you take down the shrines all over your house. Am I making myself clear?”
Margaret stared at him. “Very.” She gathered up the albums and her purse and swept toward the door before they both realized that Mary Katherine was standing at the foot of the stairs. “Darling, I’m going since your husband doesn’t want me here.”
“And neither do I, Mom, if you can’t be nice to my husband. Just so you know, we’ll be out of town for the weekend. We’re going to Janet O’Brien’s wedding.”
Margaret looked from Mary Katherine to Evan and turned to leave. Normally Evan would have been a gentleman and opened the door for her. Tonight he didn’t.
Evan stood rooted to the spot where he had been standing and didn’t speak. Mary Katherine could see all kinds of emotions just under the surface that were close to erupting, but he kept them in check and finally moved toward the stairs. She stepped aside and he started up, but then as if the effort was suddenly just too much sank down on a step and put his head in his hands and rubbed his temples as if he had a headache.
She sat on the step below him and drew her knees up to her chest and wondered if they were going to fight or if everything was going to be okay.
“We’re never going to be rid of him, are we?” he whispered.
“Probably not.”
“I’m going for a run.”
“You ran this morning.” She knew that didn’t matter. That was how Evan released stress.
“I know that. I just…need to run.”
“Evan, I hadn’t even thought about it until she showed up after lunch. I was working on my next exhibit and packing for the weekend. And then she was at the door.”
He nodded. This time it wasn’t her fault. Maybe it never had been. As he started back up the stairs again he asked, “While I’m gone do you think you can get rid of the roses?”
“Of course. You don’t need to look at them, and neither do I.”
“It’s not so much looking at them as it’s that the way they smell makes me sick. It always has, ever since my parents’ funeral. Everybody knew my mother loved pink roses and the chapel was filled with them. The scent of them was overpowering.” He went upstairs to change and she took the flowers and put them in the outside garbage can. Twenty years he had showered her with flowers, sometimes for no reason, and as she thought of it now, not one time had any of the arrangements contained even so much as a single rose. They had so many ghosts to deal with, she and Evan.
But somehow they had managed to make it this far together, mostly due to Evan’s extreme patience and understanding.
While he ran, she packed for both of them, ordered in dinner and set the table. She talked to him about her new exhibit and they went to bed early as they were planning an early start the next morning. The truth was, the day’s events had made them both tired. She was almost asleep when he said “Mary Katherine?”
“Yes, darlin’?” she asked.
“Did we even get Janet and Alan a wedding present?”
She laughed and assured him they had and closed her eyes and went to sleep.
Chapter Twenty Seven
“How do I look?” Janet asked, as Casey and Sara surveyed their cousin in wedding day splendor. The dress was a sumptuous creation made especially for Janet and was a fantasy dress if ever there was one. It had a perfect silhouette, a twenty four foot train and beautiful embellishments.
“You could have put a few more pick-ups and flowers on the skirt,” Sara said.
“And maybe the train could have been a tiny bit longer,” Casey teased. “There’s probably going to be some aisle that isn’t covered.”
“Seriously, what do you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” Kel said from the doorway. “But not as beautiful as you are.” He came in the room and gave her a kiss. “And your bridesmaids are beautiful too.”
“Thank you Daddy,” Janet said. “What’s that you’re holding?” She indicated the flat blue velvet box he had in his hand.
“You asked for good memories of mother. What I’m about the give you are good memories.” He opened the box and she gasped as she saw what was inside. There was a necklace of three strands of pearls and diamonds woven together with an emerald and diamond pendant hanging from it and a bracelet and earrings to match.
“Oh, they’re gorgeous,” Janet said, reaching for the bracelet and putting it on. She took of the pearl earrings she had been wearing for the emerald and diamond ones and Kel fastened the necklace around her neck.