44
I stared at Larry without responding. He hadn’t come to the house to see Robbie off. Did he even remember it was the first day of school for his son?
“I have work to do,” I said eventually, starting to walk past him. “Take it up with my lawyer.”
He shook the envelope at me. “I thought you might want to handle this one yourself.”
I turned to face him. “Why?”
“Let’s go sit somewhere.”
My hands went to my hips. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me what this is about.”
Larry shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He opened the envelope and removed a series of photographs, holding them out to me. “Look familiar?” he asked.
I took the stack and then dropped them like they had burned my hand.
They were taken in Georgetown a few nights earlier. The top one was of me and Michael kissing. Another that I could see on the ground was his hand on my cheek, us looking into each other’s eyes. I could hear him telling me it wasn’t so long until November.
Shaking, I looked up at Larry. “It’s not what it looks like,” I said.
“I don’t care what it is,” he said. “But I warned you I wasn’t going to play nice if you didn’t leave this campaign. And taking him to the Wainwrights?” He made a tsk-tsk noise, shaking his head as he bent to gather the photographs.
The last shreds of what could have been affection for this man, purely because he shared genetic material with my children, turned to stone. “What do you want?” I asked coldly.
“You know what I want,” he said. “Drop out of the campaign. Now.”
“And if I won’t?”
“Then my lawyers present this as evidence that you’re the adulterer.”
There was a slim chance he could get the kids. But based entirely on a kiss that Michael would testify was nothing—especially when Larry had never changed a diaper, didn’t know who their pediatrician was, and would continue to work full-time with no one to raise the children—I didn’t see a judge ripping them away from their mother over one kiss.
Okay, two kisses.
And if kissing alone had been adultery, well, I’d probably have a much easier time proving to a court that Larry had cheated.
Moreover, I was done letting Larry threaten me. He had assumed (correctly) that I knew nothing when he said he would have to sell the house. But I wasn’t so naive anymore.
“Go ahead and try,” I said, turning to leave again.
“I thought you might say that,” he said. I stopped walking. “Which is why I gave Sam a copy of these this morning.”
I turned back around, the wheels spinning rapidly in my head as I connected the dots between what my lawyer had told me about Sam’s first Senate campaign and what was happening now. “That story,” I said slowly. “Six years ago. The illegitimate baby. That was you, wasn’t it?”
He shook his head but wouldn’t meet my eye.
“Even if it wasn’t you—you knew. You knew none of that was true.”
“As far as I know, it was all true,” he said, putting the photographs back into the envelope. “And if it worked then, it’ll work now.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Me?” he chuckled. “Of course, I wouldn’t. I’m the one who cares about our children’s well-being while their whore mother is sleeping with her boss.”
I had never hit anyone in my life, but I drew my hand back reflexively. He caught it before it made contact.
“Do you really want to add assault?” he asked as I struggled to free my wrist. “You have until tomorrow morning to resign,” he said. “After that, Sam can do what he wants with the pictures.” He dropped my wrist, and I rubbed at it. “Here,” he said thrusting the pictures at me. “I have extra copies.”
Then he started to walk away, pausing only to call over his shoulder. “Do the right thing, Beverly. For everyone.”