Chapter 12
“Ithought that was you.”
My mother did nothing to conceal the delight in her voice as she made her quick way toward me, her riding boots percussion on pristine wood floors. Annelise Rogers weighed 120 pounds soaking wet. The sounds of her approach were light, rhythmic thuds.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes, baby.” It was something she always said, despite her youthful air. My father was on the north side of his midfifties. But my mother wouldn’t turn fifty for another couple of years.
“Hey, Momma.” I returned my own smile, relieved to see her looking well in light of my dark musings. I was far from believing things were okay, but it buoyed me to see her happy in the moment. Her surprise filled me with guilt that I didn’t come home more. She was my mother and I owed it to both of us to visit.
“I wish you would’ve called and told me you were coming for Sunday dinner. I would’ve had Viola whip you something up. One of your favorites.”
Wanting to serve me my favorites whenever I came home was one of the thoughtful little touches that made my mom, my mom. She was doting and made out of pure love.
“I can’t stay for dinner.”
“What do you mean you’re not staying? It’s Sunday afternoon.”
“I came to pick something up. Documentation I need for my new job.”
“What kind of documentation?” She led me farther into the house.
I hated lying. “My birth certificate. Social Security card and the like. I should probably take all that stuff anyway, for my own safekeeping, now that I’m all grown up.”
My mother’s safe was in her bedroom in a hidden panel behind a row of shirts. But I wasn’t surprised that she had us headed in the direction of the kitchen. She would find a way to feed me whether I was staying for dinner or not.
“Trev here yet?”
On a property the size of my parents’ estate, it was impossible to know who was around. Trevor had his own apartment, but he spent a lot of time here. Even when he’d lived in the frat house in Knoxville, then at his apartment in Nashville when he was at Vanderbilt Law, he’d maintained this as a home base.
“He won’t be back for a minute. He and Prissy are out for a ride.”
“Then now is a good time to ask,” I said with more than a little candor. “What do you think of this whole thing? Trevor being engaged?”
My father, predictably, was in favor of anything that would help Trevor get elected. My mother would have given it more thought.
“Prissy is a good girl...” My mother didn’t like to speak ill. Though, opening with a compliment like that was a good bet that she would. “...but not all relationships have what it takes, even when the reasons for being together make sense.”
There were things I’d seen over the years, ways my father treated my mother, that I’d never liked. They were an extension of the way he treated everybody—like he knew everything and planned to get his way. I’d seen how it had worn on her, getting past his bad attitudes and putting on a smiling face. But I’d also seen what parts of this life made her come alive—she was born to entertain, and to raise children, and to run a big house.
“You don’t talk much about when you and dad got together.” It occurred to me to fish for information. “How’d you know he was the one?”
“Come on, now. You know how it happened.”
Being a politician’s son, I’d heard the same stories repeated. They’d come to feel more like anecdotes, embellished for maximum humor and reaction value, and less like real stories about our real lives.
“Dad found you singing at a nightclub in Nashville and fell so instantly in love, he came to watch you every night. Sat at the same table and watched your set from start to finish. The manager didn’t like it—thought that Dad sitting there so intently focused on you ruined the illusion of your availability.”
I spoke this line as my father always spoke it and my mother rolled her eyes.
“The manager gave your dad such a hard time about loitering every night and sitting at that front table, Dad up and bought the bar.”
I’d heard a little over the years beyond the punchline. I knew he’d courted her with lavish gifts. I knew she hadn’t come to Nashville with much, and that he’d tried to help her improve her situation. Once they got together, it hadn’t taken long. It was less than a year between the time that they got married and when I was born. Or so I’d always been told.
“So that’s how you knew? Dad fell hard in love with you and you felt the same?”
“Well, Daddy certainly swept me off my feet. He came from one of the most powerful families in Tennessee. I was young and on my own, six months in Nashville and working three jobs to pay the rent. But Daddy was attentive, and funny, and he thought I hung the moon. I can’t say I was trying to find a husband, but at that point in my life, I was craving affection and stability. Your father gave me that.”
But she still hadn’t said anything about how he made her feel.
“How did he propose?”
It was the first time I’d ever asked the question. The retold story had never gotten to that part.
“One night, I showed up for my shift at the club only to find it empty. He’d had it decorated from top to bottom with roses and candles and such. Up on the stage, there was a new chair—much nicer than the one I usually sang on—and an upright stand I’d never seen. That’s when he gave me the Gibson. He knew it was my dream guitar.”
I knew the guitar of which she spoke. It lived in her music room. It was old now, but one of her favorites.
“Seems like it would be hard to say no to a proposal like that.”
My mother shrugged and gave a pleasant, but not entirely wistful, smile. “The situation always matters, just like with Trevor and Prissy. It’s easy to say yes when the timing’s right.”
Forty-five minutes later,I’d been served more food than I’d eaten all of yesterday. Fresh-squeezed orange juice, biscuits and gravy, thick-cut bacon, cheese grits, and a butter-scrambled egg. When I’d tried to get up from the table at the end of it, her firm hand on my shoulder had set me back down. According to her, I was “still growing” and needed a dessert. In this case, fresh berries and whipped cream.
As I ate, I paid close attention to her. She didn’t seem distraught, but her appearance wasn’t a reliable indicator. She was a politician’s wife. I liked to believe she was open with me—that I could always see through her veneer. The truth was, she knew how to turn it on and off.
“Now, why don’t you go find your brother and I’ll get your birth certificate out of the safe?” She rose from the kitchen table when I stood to put my dishes up.
“Keeping you company isn’t any trouble,” I answered honestly. “You still haven’t told me much about what you’ve been up to.”
My mother didn’t protest my following her up the stairs.
“You know what it’s like when we’re campaigning,” she said with Southern grace, her words neutral but her tone saying it all.
“Feels like they’re going a little overboard for a General Assembly seat, don’t you think?”
“Oh, honey. This goes way beyond the Assembly. Your father’s grooming Trev for a seat in the House.”
House, as in, the US House of Representatives.
“House elections aren’t for another two years.” Election cycles were emblazoned in my consciousness. “And he only just turned twenty-five.”
Early twenties was young for a run for Congress, and Trevor was nothing like me. If I was your stereotypical whiz kid who had done everything early, Trev was the stereotypical slacker. Even with all the people he’d paid to go to class pretending to be him, and all the ones he’d hired to write his papers, Trevor had nearly failed out of TSU. Twice.
“He’ll be twenty-six when he announces his bid. Twenty-eight when he takes office. And he’s not in the same situation as other candidates of the same age. The backers your father is courting won’t just be buying into Trev. They’ll be buying into the legacy of our entire family. With our connections, he’s got a shot at winning this thing.”
We got to the top of the stairs and I toyed with a question that had been on my mind.
“Dad never pushed for me to go into politics.”
My mother laughed. “You’ve known since you were four that you wanted to be a firefighter. Other kids grow out of that phase. I still remember how mad Dad got when you kept asking for fire trucks for Christmas every year.”
“Not just Christmas, my birthday, too.” I smiled.
“One year, I had to drive two states over just to find a fire truck you didn’t already have.”
I had a chuckle remembering a younger version of myself, my childhood room in the house I’d grown up in—the mayoral estate in Nashville—the house we lived in before we moved into the governor’s mansion in Oak Hill. I’d had dozens of fire trucks and all the accessories—toy hydrants and child-sized hats and turnouts. My tree house had a pole for me to slide down.
“At that same age, all Trev wanted to be was a veterinarian. Remember how he used to walk around with that stethoscope, checking for a heartbeat on all our pets?”
My mom smiled at the recollection. “I remember the time you helped him catch a squirrel so he could examine him.”
I chuckled at the forgotten memory. “That didn’t turn out how either of us thought. But what Trev lacked in sense, he made up for in passion. He never seemed interested in politics, though...”
Our footfalls were quiet in the upstairs hall thanks to long rugs that paved a runway along hardwood floors. Music came through the stereo system, classic country just like always.
“I guess your father saw something in him.” She opened the door to their bedroom suite and took us left, into her closet. I took a seat on the dressing bench. It was the nucleus of the circular space, which was organized into quadrispheres: two for clothes, one for accessories, and one for shoes.
Setting her phone on the bench next to me, she swept a rack of blouses aside, exposing a built-in safe. However intent I was on digging up information, I averted my eyes. Spying her passcode was a bridge too far. I still didn’t like the idea of prying, but I kept reminding myself: I was doing what I was doing because someone hadn’t been straight with me.
My eyes fell on her cell phone not two seconds before the screen lit up. Someone was sending her a text.
I got in a new piece I want you to see. Tuesday at opening time would be ideal.
I didn’t think anything of it. One of my mother’s greatest joys in life was antiquing. She was always driving here or there, in search of this or that. I would have ignored it if a single, familiar word hadn’t appeared where the sender’s identity belonged: Hinckley.
“Is there anything else you need?”
My eyes snapped toward the sound of her voice. She still rummaged around in the safe. Tiffany-blue and Cartier-red jewelry boxes were stacked like LEGOs on the top two shelves. Jewelry was my father’s preferred gift, but I wasn’t sure it had ever been my mother’s. Her most treasured gifts had always been natural, beautiful things, like fresh-cut flowers and natural crystals, unprocessed things that came right from the earth.
The bottom shelf of the safe was equally distinct. Five or six manila envelopes, letter size, lay in a short stack. She shuffled through them and handed one to me with a smile. I was still too flummoxed by what I’d just seen to return her kind expression. So I inspected the envelope wordlessly, taking in where she had simply written Bucky.
“I have documents for some of your financial things, too,” she offered. “They’re in the office if you have another minute.”
I rose from the bench, wanting to beat a hasty retreat before a compulsion to ask blunt questions took hold.
“I gotta get back to Green Valley if I want to make my shift,” I lied. “But the next Sunday I’m not working, I’ll come for dinner.”
Probably to snoop and ask more questions, I didn’t say.
I kept myself together long enough to hug and kiss my mother, make it out of the house and into my truck, out of the front gates and down the street. Then, I pulled over to text Loretta.
What are you doing on Tuesday? My mom’s going to Hinckley. And I need to know why.