I’m not sorry for helping my friends, I recited as the car disappeared past the oaks lining the front lawn. I’m sorry I lied about Andy. I’m sorry you’re not the father I hoped you would be.
With her glasses on for the evening, Meg looked even more professorial than usual, probably as deliberate a costume choice as her gardening clothes on the day I’d met her. She wasn’t here for denials, for tears, for guilt—just a simple recital of facts. It worked. I felt my defensiveness dropping away.
I told her about meeting Andy at the Tauber retirement party in Pennsylvania, how he’d started calling me after that, and how I’d started calling him back. I told her the truth about Jake Spinnaker’s birthday party. Meg winced when she heard that we’d gone to a fundraiser for the president, and I felt shame flood my face before realizing that her reaction meant she was surprised. That was a good thing. It meant the press didn’t know about it either.
I told Meg that Andy and I had started calling each other a few times a week. That I was always careful not to give away anything private about the campaign, but that it was nice to have someone to talk to about it, someone who understood.
Her squint relaxed when I said that.
“You had us.” Then she shook her head. “But I know it’s not the same.”
Had. Past tense.
“And then Andy was there in Kansas,” I went on, my throat tight. “He showed up right when I found out about the Diazes, what Elliott did . . .”
Meg took her glasses off, fingers pressed to her nose like she was squeezing away a migraine. “You told Andy that Elliott did this.”
Everything seemed blurry now in recollection. “I don’t remember what I said, exactly. I just kind of vented.”
Meg let out a quiet groan. “Kate. Why on earth did you think Elliott Webb had anything to do with this?”
“He hates me. And he’s anti-immigrant. And—and when I accused him, he didn’t deny it. It was almost like he was happy that I was upset. So I thought he was . . .”
As the words dried up in my mouth, I suddenly felt very small and very foolish.
“Getting revenge?” She shook her head. “Let me tell you something. Elliott Webb is a political animal. He would never do anything to jeopardize his own career. And in this case, that means helping your father to win his election. So—”
I turned away, but she grabbed my hand.
“No, I want you to think about this, Kate. Why would Elliott do something that would draw negative attention to the campaign? If he’d learned about the Diazes, wouldn’t it make more sense to hush them up, keep the story quiet, rather than inflaming the situation?”
“I don’t know.” I knew how sullen I sounded, but I really wasn’t in the mood for a lesson in political strategy.
She sighed. “Anyway, the White House is already issuing a retraction.”
I gasped. “How—?”
“News travels fast. The LAPD made a statement around noon saying the Diazes were picked up by a random traffic stop. Their brake light was out, and when the police officer asked for ID, neither of them could supply a driver’s license.”
“Is that the truth?”
Meg looked confused. “Of course it’s the truth. What, do you think we’re bribing police departments now? Kate.” She cocked her head. “You’re smarter than this.”
I swallowed, hollow with disbelief. “So this was random. It had nothing to do with us.”
“No. It didn’t. Not that it’ll matter. The accusation is out there and it will stay out there forever. That’s the way these things work.”
Because of me. Because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
“Now,” Meg said, her voice a shade sharper. “What about these photos?”
“I didn’t expect him to kiss me,” I said, my heart stuttering at the recollection. “I think Andy felt bad for me. I’d been crying, he was just trying to get me to stop.”
Meg looked doubtful.
I tried to laugh but it wouldn’t come out.
“We’re not dating, whatever that website said.” My attempt at a smile flickered and died. “But I guess it’s like you said. The accusation is out there.”
Meg motioned me over. I swung my legs around the edge of the bed so she could slide an arm around my shoulders. We sat there, my head bowed as we rocked gently back and forth. With every rock, I could feel Meg forgiving me.
“I’m sorry this happened,” she finally said. And then, her voice icy: “I could kill that kid.”
“Andy?” I leaned away, confused. “Why? This isn’t his fault.”
“Kate. Sweetheart.” She blinked as if seeing me for the first time. “Andy Lawrence played you.”
I could only stare at her. “He—what?”
“Maybe this is all a little fresh for you, but think about this objectively.” She brushed my hair back from my face and peered at me. “Andy finds your number. Andy calls you. Andy won’t let up until you’ve gone out with him. You keep the campaign private, so he keeps calling. Keeps asking questions. I don’t know if he was instructed to do this or took it upon himself, but the fact is—he got close to you, learned something damaging, and brought it to his father. And you’ve seen the results.”
My mouth wouldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t deny her accusation. But I couldn’t believe it either. Andy was my friend. He did this to help me. What she was saying was . . .
Exactly what I’d suspected from the moment he first called me.
The more I’d gotten to know Andy, the more authentic he’d seemed. He felt like the one steady thing in my life, a reliable voice on the other end of the line who could cut through all the political nonsense swirling around me. He was my lifeline to reality. And Meg was telling me that he was a liar.
Andy played me. It didn’t ring true. But I wasn’t exactly in a position to trust my instincts, now was I? I’d been wrong to accuse Elliott. Wrong to trust Nancy. And if what she’d maliciously told me this morning was true, then all of my hopes about the senator were wrong as well.
“This isn’t your fault,” Meg said, standing up. “But I’m going to be honest here. It’s bad.”
“Whose idea was it to invite me for the summer?”
The words charged out of me the second Meg’s hand touched the doorknob. She froze, trapped by the question. I stared back, unflinching. I had to know.
“I think Nancy suggested it first. Why?”
Her voice was casual, but I could see her nerves at work. She wasn’t quite mustering the cool, calm exterior I’d grown so used to. She knew what I was really asking.
And yet I couldn’t voice the question. Couldn’t even think it. It was too stark, too cruel.
“Did you want me to come?” I asked instead, standing from the bed to face Meg. “Did you want to meet me? Get to know me?”
“Back in June?” She let out an exasperated huff. “You want an honest answer here, Kate? No. I didn’t want any of it to be happening at the time. But . . .”
She reached her hands out.
“I’m glad now.”
“What about him?” I couldn’t lift my hands to hers. I felt like stone, every part of me heavy. “Is he glad?
Her eyes were pained. She backed away.
“Give him time.”
31
Thursday, August 28
63 hours since I last spoke to Andy Lawrence
68 DAYS UNTIL THE GENERAL ELECTION
“It’s not fair!”
I’d picked the wrong time to come downstairs. Gracie’s screams of protest were loud enough to silence the crickets in the backyard and nearly sent me careening out of the living room myself.
But Meg had spotted me, and by her expression, she needed backup. The senator was in Idaho, so it had fallen to his wife to tell the twins that they’d be off the campaign schedule for the foreseeable future. To Gabe, this was fantastic news. To Gracie, it was the end of the world.
I entered the fray.
“It won’t be so bad, Gr
acie,” I tried. “We’ll get to hang out just the three of us when Meg’s away. No supervision. Woo-hoo?”
Gracie’s glare only deepened.
“This is your fault. You messed up, so we’re stuck here with nothing to do!”
Yep, I thought. Pretty much.
“Watch your tone,” Meg cautioned, but an idea had struck Gracie, her big blue eyes widening with sudden hope.
“What if just me and Gabe come along, and Kate stays behind?”
“I’ll stay behind,” Gabe offered, and Gracie not too subtly kicked him. “Ow.”
Meg closed her eyes. “Grace. This is not up for debate. You’re starting school in less than three weeks and I want you focused.”
We all knew that wasn’t the real reason. Governor McReady was whooping it up across the country with Carolee in tow and her school year down in Texas had already begun. This wasn’t about academics. It was about politely burying me. The campaign had deemed it too conspicuous to exclude only me from appearances, so the official story was that all three of us were spending much-needed time out of the spotlight.
That was not where Gracie Cooper wanted to be.
“I don’t want to stay with her,” she said, turning away in a sulk. “It’s not fair. We’re your real kids. We should get to go. She’s just . . . a bastard.”
I gasped, stung, not just by the word but by the way she’d looked at me when she said it, aiming it with intent to wound.
But before I could react, Meg had launched herself across the room, landing in a crouch, her white-knuckled hands locked around Gracie’s collar.
“You do not use that word, do you understand me?”
Gracie’s face went red. “I . . . yes? I don’t even know what it means!”
Meg let go. “It’s an outmoded term denoting lineage in a patriarchal . . .” She groaned, frustrated. “It’s a word you are never to use. Apologize.”
“I’m sorry I called you a bastard.”
She said it so mournfully that I almost burst out laughing.
Later that night, after Meg had gone to sleep, Gabe and Gracie snuck into my room with a flashlight, and then froze in the doorway, surprised to see that I was still up reading.
They climbed onto the end of my bed, Gracie a few inches behind Gabe, as if she was worried I might lunge at her. Gabe absently clutched the flashlight to his chest, so it lit up his face campfire style. I almost expected them to launch into a ghost story. Instead, Gabe whispered, “What does bastard mean?”
Gracie’s eyes remained locked on mine. She really didn’t know.
“It means somebody who was born . . .” How to put this. “Outside of a marriage.”
I hoped it was dim enough in the light from my bedside table that they couldn’t see me blushing.
“So . . .” Gracie looked as uncomfortable as I’d ever seen her. “Are you one?”
I smiled. “Yeah, kinda. But like your mom said, nobody really uses that word anymore.”
The twins looked at each other. They weren’t done.
“Did Dad love your mom?” Gabe asked.
They waited, patient as statues, while I tried to recover from the sensation of having been stabbed by the question.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “Why?”
They glanced at each other again. Gracie inched closer.
“Mom said that when two people love each other very much, the man puts his penis in—”
“Okay!”
I cut her off, my hand pressed to her mouth. A giggle bubbled out of her and Gabe started to grin, and I couldn’t help laughing myself.
“I don’t know anything,” I admitted. “I’m as confused as you guys are.”
I fell back onto my pillow and Gabe and Gracie crept up around me, flopping onto their backs in imitation.
“And I wish we could be out on the campaign trail,” I said, nudging Gracie. “All of us. But them’s the breaks.”
“Them’s the breaks,” she repeated, with all the world-weariness an eight-year-old could muster.
• • •
I’d hoped that our late-night bonding session would be enough to crack the wall that had come up between me and my sister, but when Meg hit the road the next afternoon, Gracie protested by locking herself in the upstairs bathroom, refusing to come out to say good-bye.
Meg smiled ruefully and gave Gabe and me each a kiss on the forehead. “Be good. Lou will drop by later, but call me or the campaign phone if you need anything. Or ask security.”
“Got it,” I said, simultaneously shooing her away and fighting the impulse to drag her back into the house.
When her car disappeared, Gabe grabbed my hand.
“Mom’s only gone for the weekend,” he reminded me. “Gracie will come out before then.”
He was right. In fact, Gracie came out one hour later, once the smell of stovetop popcorn curled its way under the bathroom door and Gabe and I turned the volume way up on the movie we’d just downloaded. I hid a smile as Gracie clomped her way to the very far end of the sofa and sat with her arms crossed, a scowl etched deep into her face. It took her five minutes to sneak a bite of popcorn when she thought we weren’t looking. But halfway through the movie, I heard her laughing and saw with relief that she had her legs kicked up on the coffee table, today’s anger forgotten for the moment.
She’ll forgive me, I told myself. And then she’ll get mad at me for something else. This is just being a sister.
And the senator will forgive me too. I just need to give him time.
That last thought evaporated as soon as it formed.
Louis came by around seven with some takeout dinner and groceries. He had his baby at home and a very patient wife, so I knew he couldn’t stay long. But even if it was brief, I was happy to see him. It occurred to me now that Lou Mankowitz was the one person in the campaign that I’d never felt uncomfortable around. He was also the one member of the inner circle that I’d gotten to see the least. When we were on the road, he was manning the shop at headquarters. When we were home, he was on the road, getting the field staff ready for the senator’s arrival. But for the next four days, his job was restocking our cereal and ice cream and making sure we hadn’t torn the house down in Meg’s absence.
And . . .
“Sorry, kiddo.” He really did look sorry as he extended his hand and I relinquished my campaign-issued cell phone.
Meg had warned me in advance that they were taking the phone back. Apart from this week’s house arrest, it would be my only punishment for what I’d set in motion.
“You can use the phone in the kitchen,” Meg had offered wryly, and I knew I was in no position to object, given the trouble that all the clandestine cell phone calls of the past few months had caused. Still, I wasn’t relishing having to talk to my friends in the center of household operations, within constant earshot of Meg and the twins.
I’d hurriedly texted the new number, first to Penny, Lily Hornsby as an afterthought, and then to Uncle Barry and Tess, in case they didn’t have it. Not that they were likely to use it—Barry had skipped this week’s checkin call, and hadn’t tried to reach me at all since Kansas, even after the word Kategate had started scrolling across news tickers again, accompanied by that lurid shot of me and the president’s son. Maybe he’d figured that the Coopers were managing my media circus of a life just fine. Or maybe he was mad at me too.
Then, with a last burst of rebellion, I texted the house phone number to Andy Lawrence, Mr. Lurid Shot himself, wondering whether he’d have the guts to call knowing that Meg or the senator could be on the other end of the line.
“FYI—my cell phone’s been confiscated. Here’s the landline . . .”
I hoped that had sounded casual enough. Warm enough. I hoped he would call, using some phony accent or fake name, and that they wouldn’t know. Or even that they would. That Meg would pick up and realize that Andy really did want to connect, even after getting information out of me. That he cared.
With Meg
gone, I might have the chance to talk to him in private.
If he called. Every time I passed the kitchen, I stared at the phone, trying to summon a ring through sheer force of will.
It didn’t work.
• • •
One benefit of being unsupervised was that we could now watch the news to our hearts’ content. Gabe grumbled, but Gracie was obsessed, flipping compulsively between channels, hunting for any mention of Meg or the senator—or even better, footage. She missed her parents, really, but she was putting on a brave face, pretending she was getting “prepped” for the moment we were called back to the campaign trail. I snuck looks over her shoulder, but every time my name came up, I made her change the channel. Watching myself get picked apart by complete strangers on national television was not worth the stress headache.
I’d made it a game. Whoever could get to the remote first after hearing the word Kate was the winner. I knew Gracie was a born competitor, but even so, I was shocked by how well the tactic worked. She dove over sofas, ripped the remote out of Gabe’s hand, and on one impressive occasion, ran all the way downstairs, sprinted along the corridor and vaulted over a side table to get to the remote before me, suffering only minor bruises in the process.
But despite my attempts at avoidance, all the snippets we heard lodged in my brain, rearranging to form a mosaic of the campaign’s spin.
I was a victim of that cad Andy Lawrence. He was the one with a sordid history of bad behavior and pranks. My only crime was naïveté. The cable news commentators ate it up and spat it back out. They had polls going—they always had polls going—and more than anything, America felt sorry for me.
I didn’t feel sorry for myself. Even so, I waited for that phone to ring.
When it finally did, late that first afternoon, it was Penny, asking how I was doing, whether I’d managed to talk to Andy yet. And then in the evening it was Meg, checking in from Baton Rouge. Then Penny again the next day, wanting advice on dodging paparazzi.
“They’re like camped out on the end of our block. What do I do?”
“Just smile at them and keep walking,” I offered, remembering Nancy’s first piece of media training.
The Wrong Side of Right Page 25
