Dirge (Devastation Trilogy 1)

by Lesli Richardson

  I prefer days like this, because they better match my usual default mood.

  Despite this cold snap we’ve had an unusually warm, wet winter. Area lakes are overfull, creeks and streams are running higher than average, there’s been some minor flooding in usually dry areas, and we’ve had to deal with issues with roads and bridges washing out.

  “Good morning, Dave,” I say as I fasten my seatbelt.

  “Good morning, Governor Forrester.”

  I ask him about his weekend, about his family, and that’s the extent of our conversation. My detail is good about not talking to me unless I seem to be in a talkative mood, especially first thing in the morning. I pretend to flip through one of the binders of paperwork as I sip from my travel mug of coffee.

  The truth is, I’m still trying to stabilize my governor’s mask for the day, make sure it’s firmly in place before I have to deal with people.

  When I walk into my office, Casey literally enters just a couple of steps behind me and sets a fresh mug of coffee on my desk.

  “Good morning, Governor Forrester.” All business this morning, Case doesn’t force a too-cheery smile on me. As always, she can tell I’m hanging on by my fingernails right now. Add in forced peopling while trying to intelligently brain regarding budget matters, and it’s already a recipe for disaster.

  “Good morning, Casey.”

  I’m the governor, so I can get away with referring to my staffers by their first names.

  She takes my empty travel cup from me and passes it to Declan, who’d silently scooted into my office on Casey’s heels.

  He’s spooky-good in that way.

  He takes it into my private bathroom to wash it while Casey deals with me. I hand the binders off to Casey before I set my laptop bag in my chair and shed my overcoat. We have ninety minutes, give or take, before my meeting.

  “What’s first?” I ask.

  She rattles off my schedule for the day as I set up my laptop. I’m not fully processing information yet, which is why she also sends a copy of the schedule to my work phone for my reference, and lays a paper copy on my desk.

  This is our routine for days when I start off here in the office.

  “And this is your two-week reminder that you’re flying to DC for the NGA meeting,” she says.

  I hear the record screech in my brain, so loudly that I’m sure Casey and Declan can hear it, too.

  “I thought I was driving?” I say, even though I know no, I wasn’t.

  I’d told her I wanted to drive, and she’d said no and moved on.

  Still, I stubbornly want to die on this hill.

  I despise flying now. Since my return, I’ve flown less than fifteen times, and never without Casey, or without a Xanax in me.

  She can’t go with me this trip, though—Declan’s accompanying me. The National Governors Association has two large meetings a year, and the winter one’s in DC.

  “And I told you, I’m not letting you make a twelve-hour drive when you can fly in ninety minutes,” Casey says. “Even if you pay out of your own pocket, I can’t justify that expense and waste of time. Besides, we’d have to send security with you for a road-trip that long. Not doing it. You’re flying with Declan. End of story.”

  I stare at her, and she stares back.

  I blink first.

  Shit.

  It doesn’t help that I really don’t want to go to the NGA meeting, not only because I’m the keynote speaker, but because it’s the weekend after Valentine’s Day.

  I spent last Valentine’s Day in a Xanax haze in bed, with Casey at the house with me, working from there that day and running interference for me while Declan ran the office, telling everyone I was sick with food poisoning.

  “We also need to finish your keynote speech for that,” Casey says. She glances at Declan. “You’re on top of that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good.” With that out of the way, and with Declan rejoining us, they quickly prep me for the meeting this morning before moving on to the next topic.

  “I’ve got Director Rudolph on standby this morning, to come in after you’re finished with the budget meeting. He requested facetime with you.”

  I inwardly groan. Our TEMA director is good at his job, but Paul Rudolph’s also an anal-retentive, passive-aggressive, overly cautious pain in my ass. “Why can’t we do this over the phone?” At least then I can put him on speaker, mute it, and multi-task, usually with Casey or Declan standing there and monitoring the situation for me.

  Case gives me that smirk. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was a full-on sadist deliberately enjoying my misery. “All the rain lately. He wants to go over some contingencies with you, and he’s bringing Commissioner Turner in with him.”

  My inward groan becomes an out-loud one as Case’s smirk turns into a full-on grin.

  “What the heck did I do wrong this weekend?” I grumble. “I didn’t break any mirrors or kick any black cats. Haven’t I suffered enough?”

  TDOT Commissioner Raylene Turner and I have butted heads more than once, both before and after I became governor. She’s a holdover from Dick Cailey’s tenure. When I was sworn in, I decided we’d had enough upheaval and wanted to focus on my agenda. I only made two immediate changes, both of them long-term political appointees who’d skated by every time we got a new governor. Everyone else, I was letting prove their worth before making a decision.

  But Raylene Turner is an old Southern Belle who holds an engineering degree from MIT. She is qualified for the job, because I’m old-fashioned in that I think if you’re responsible for roads, bridges, and other infrastructure like that, maybe you should have an engineering degree with a heavy focus on transportation-related topics.

  Yes, that was sarcasm.

  She and I frequently disagree about what path to take to a particular destination, even if we agree on the desired outcome. It also feels like sometimes she argues with me just to argue. Like she has a chip on her shoulder and expects automatic pushback from me even when there isn’t any. I understand she’s probably spent her life trying to make herself heard and taken seriously over lesser qualified men, but that’s not a problem she has with me if she’d just let me get one goddamned sentence out at a time without trying to talk over me.

  “I’ve told them it’ll be your lunchtime, so you can eat while you’re talking to them.” Her smile fades. “I’ve already let them run some basics past Dec.” She nods to him and I shift my focus.

  He’s a different man now than the one who sat at my kitchen table yesterday. He’s dressed in a suit—blazer and tie, even though he doesn’t need to today. He could get away with chinos and a button-up, if he wanted to, but he dresses as if he was still an active attorney trying cases.

  I watch more than listen to him as he details their concerns due to all the rain we’ve had, more projected rain in the forecast, and the two department heads’ legitimate worries about roads, bridges, railways, and navigable waterways that ship goods through our state.

  I sit back in my chair while he reads bullet points off his phone to me. By the time he finishes less than five minutes later, I nod. “Okay,” I wearily say. “But I want one of you two in here with me for this. Misery loves company.”

  “Dec,” Case says. “You’re up. You can get the governor his lunch, and yours, and bring it back before getting started. I have to be over at the Senate speaker’s office by one for a meeting.”

  I sip my coffee. “Okay. What’s next…”

  She calls in the staff for our morning meeting, including my comms director, Cassidy Larraby. These don’t take long, because Casey and Declan have already had the main staff meeting and know what needs to be brought to my attention now and what does not.

  By eight thirty we’re finished with that, and I’m returning to budget meeting prep. Casey leaves Declan with me to go over stuff. I’m good, and determined, and a control freak, but any top government executive who insists he knows more than his staff a
bout everything that’s going on is either psychotic, a liar, or both.

  I’m juggling dozens of plates in the air. I have trusted staff I know can distill information for me into concise, accurate highlights before presenting it to me. Declan isn’t the only aide in my office, but Casey hired him as her deputy because he’s the one she trusts the most to keep an eye on everyone else in her absence, and to accurately gut-check her and me both. Even more importantly, she trusts him with my privacy, and with the kids’ privacy, and that’s incredibly important to me in light of Aussie’s confession to me.

  And I like the guy. He doesn’t act like he’s trying to brown-nose, or score political points with me for higher ambitions. He doesn’t want to run for office—ever. He does his job exceptionally well, and that he does it at what amounts to a financial sacrifice on his part speaks highly to his character. I know for a fact he could easily be pulling in $250k or more a year at the law firm, but he’s making less than $50k a year now.

  My administrative assistant buzzes to let me know that everyone’s assembled for the budget meeting, and am I ready to have her send them in?

  Declan’s already brought me another coffee. I take a sip before standing and pulling on my blazer. I nod to Declan, who answers her and tells her to send them in.

  “You ready?” I ask him.

  He gives me a smile. “Yes, sir.”

  “Here we go.”

  The door opens.

  Chapter Twelve

  Then

  “Here we go,” I say as I watch Aussie’s row of classmates stand and make their way toward the stage.

  First row, first to go.

  I’m flanked by Casey on my left and Ryder on my right, with Logan on his right. Declan is on Casey’s far side, and my two brothers, Chase and Tyson. All of us are taking pictures or filming with our cell phones.

  Ellen’s sisters were invited, but all sent their regrets.

  Thankfully.

  Not shocking. Aussie probably couldn’t have picked them out of a lineup to save her life. She barely knows them and after her experience with them ahead of the first memorial attempt, she doesn’t want to.

  She’s graduating fifth in her class, and dammit, this is yet another one of those events where every other fricking thought in my head is, “Ellen, I wish you were here.”

  And it’s silently killing me inside.

  I have a feeling I’m going to need to ask Casey for one of my Xanax tonight. I hate taking the damn things, but I haven’t slept more than two hours in the last forty-eight.

  I’m barely holding it together.

  It’s been nearly a year. When the fuck does the “it gets easier with time” part think about maybe kicking in? I mean, I don’t expect to be doing Broadway numbers in front of the Grand Ole Opry, but I’d like to wake up just one goddamned morning and not feel like I’m being crushed to death from the inside out.

  The only reason I haven’t killed myself yet is my kids, and especially Aussie. Ellen would never forgive me if I gave up and left them behind right now. She’d especially never forgive me if I did it in a way that made one of them the unlucky person to discover my body.

  Except I don’t know how much longer I can last. It feels like I spend most of my time trying to fake being a functioning adult. And I don’t mean in the usual way adults normally fake it.

  I mean barely faking it in the way that keeps me in office as governor and not being admitted to a psych ward for a forty-eight-hour mandatory hold.

  Faking it in a way that makes me glad I don’t own a gun.

  Faking it in a way that hides how much the sound of the wind screaming refuses to go away.

  This moment is the first truly bright spot in my life in a year. Watching our baby, who heartbreakingly looks so much like her mother, walk across that stage.

  Our children have used their studies to help ease their pain, digging in and studying. We’ve been through a couple of family counseling sessions, because I thought that’s what we were supposed to do. Then they ganged up on me after the third one and begged me to stop. That they were fine, they simply needed to grieve in their own ways.

  So…we stopped.

  Hell, it was one of the few times in their lives they’d ever banded together with that kind of solidarity.

  Although Logan had a point, and it was the same point Aussie made to me the night she came out to me—they’d accepted they’d lost both of us, started grieving, and then they got me back.

  On the stage it’s Aussie’s turn, and the woman reading names smiles. “Aurora Claire Forrester.”

  We all stand and cheer for her, but that’s lost in the thunderous applause from the entire auditorium. We whistle and scream, and when she looks at us, smiles, and waves, I remember them placing her in my arms after cutting the cord.

  Carrying her over to Ellen, both of us crying as we counted fingers and toes and welcomed her.

  Introducing her older brothers to her.

  The first time she said Mama.

  Her first day of school.

  When she was a flower girl in a friend’s wedding when she was six.

  And…more.

  Everything.

  I barely made it through her senior prom. I think the only reason I let her go was because she had an EPU team taking her and her “friend,” Ashleigh, and I gave the officers orders to not so much as let them go to the bathroom alone.

  Overkill, I know, but hey, what kind of dad would I be if I didn’t take at least one opportunity to embarrass the hell out of my daughter?

  Besides, they spent the night here after prom, in the guest bedroom down in our basement.

  Don’t ask, don’t tell.

  And I got a hug and a, “Thanks, Dad,” from Aussie the next morning when they made me breakfast as a thank you.

  Life’s short and brutal and fucking mean. I’ve learned that first-hand. I don’t need to be a dick to my daughter when she and her girlfriend just want to spend the night together after their senior prom.

  I don’t want my daughter to think I’m a controlling asshole, even though Ellen used to teasingly call me her controlling asshole—frequently with motherfucker added in there somewhere, and always wore a smile when she did—and this is a battle I don’t need to fight.

  I damn sure don’t want to fight it.

  As I blink back tears, we all sit while she finishes making her way across the stage.

  Dammit, I wish you were here today, girl.

  * * * *

  Casey made us reservations for a late lunch at Aussie’s favorite restaurant, the pizza place by our old office. We take up the entire back room and laugh and talk and eat ourselves nearly sick. Ashleigh and her parents and family joins us, and I pick up the whole tab.

  Tonight, the girls are spending the night at my house again, but after lunch they’re going to go with Ashleigh’s parents—with a security detail in tow—to a graduation party with her family.

  That means as lunch breaks up and it’s just “us guys” making our way back to my house, I’m left in quiet contemplation as my sons and brothers chat while the security teams drives us home in a large, black SUV.

  Casey and Declan rode together today and are heading off somewhere, but she’s going to drop by my house later tonight and use the excuse that it’s to do with work.

  She and I had a wordless conversation earlier where I know she understood what I needed.

  “Why’d she have to pick Vanderbilt?” Logan kvetches. “How the hell are we supposed to beat up the guys she dates and terrorize them if she’s not going to UTK with us?”

  Ryder laughs, and my sons exchange a fist-bump. Everyone says they’re carbon copies of me, and they are. They both have my blue eyes and light brown hair and look a lot like me.

  “She’s happy, guys. Please be happy for her.” I stare out the window.

  It’s a gorgeous day today and reminds me too damn much of the day of Ellen’s memorial.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Logan mutters
, echoed by Ryder, and I realize what I said came out in far too harsh a tone.

  Definitely not what I meant to do.

  “I’m sorry, guys.” I force my Dad mask into place and fake a smile as I look at them. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.” As a father, I apologize a lot faster now—and with far more frequency—than I ever did before. I don’t want my kids’ last memory of me to be me barking at them over something.

  Again, it all comes back to Ellen was the heart and soul of our home. My girl had all of us completely wrapped around her. I’ve spent the last school year feeling useless in many ways. I’m an attorney and suck at math, but Aussie wants to get a degree in economics, for fuck’s sake. I can balance my checkbook and read a simple ledger sheet, and here she is, bringing home AP-level math books with class names that I’ve never even heard of, much less taken and passed.

  I can sit there on my laptop or with a binder of information to study and stare at her as she does her homework, but that annoys her.

  I know, because I tried that, thinking I was being a “present” father.

  A month into the new school year, she finally set some ground rules with her old man—she’d snuggle with me on the couch to watch TV, or to do her homework, but I had to quit trying so hard.

  Because I was trying a lot harder now than I used to, which makes her feel weird and makes me feel…

  Rightfully guilty, I guess.

  Ellen.

  She did it all, was a supermom. I’m not being sarcastic, either. She volunteered, she tutored the kids when they needed homework help, she drove them to school and sports and kept our house. I tried to hire a housekeeper once and she refused.

  As she pointed out, we had three kids with chore lists.

  When I made partner at the firm, she quit teaching to be a stay-at-home mom. That was her decision, not mine. I even asked Casey to please ask her to reconsider. It wasn’t that we needed her income, but I didn’t want her looking back later to regret it.

  Only after Casey thoroughly sussed things out for me and assured me that was really what Ellen truly wanted did I relax over it.