Three
Three
JUNE 2021
“I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” my campaign manager, Mara, says. “Take some deep breaths and review the financial stimulus talking points. You flubbed those earlier.” Mara closes the door, her sensible loafers echoing down the hallway.
I’m sitting in the hotel conference room, waiting to be called to the stage for the first debate. The national party representatives have left. Mara has cleared the room, giving me a few minutes of quiet.
Mara can do anything: motivate volunteers, mount a successful grassroots campaign, strategize with representatives across the state. She can do anything but smile. She is the most serious person I have ever met. Dean thinks she’s good for me. I never would have made it this far without her. My two major goals are to win this campaign and to make Mara laugh. Winning the campaign is the easier task.
One of her strengths is that she can sense my moods. She knows my nerves are rising but doesn’t probe too deeply into the reasons.
The ground floor of the Homestead Resort is a cavernous maze. I’m hoping Mara gets a little lost and I’ll have twenty minutes to myself. I need every precious moment to quell this mixing bowl of anxiety.
The Homestead has traditionally hosted the first debate. It’s one of the oldest resorts in the country with a storied history of visiting presidents and social scandals. It is also the place my mother worked throughout my childhood. She spent time in every kitchen of the massive property, washing dishes, chopping, and prepping. Eventually, her muffins and scones earned her a place in the market making baked goods for resort guests to purchase before their afternoons of tennis and golf.
One of those guests was Madeline Milton, and after biting into one of my mother’s treats, she offered her a job on the spot. It was the first domino that kicked off the summer that changed everything.
I take three deep breaths, still trying to calm my nerves. This debate is a big deal. My first major appearance, standing on the stage of a resort where my mother used to scrub dirty dinner plates. There’s so much pressure to do well at this full-circle life moment. But that’s not why my heart is skipping irregularly, my forehead beaded with slick, queasy sweat.
The reason I feel like sprinting to the bathroom is because of him. I look at the posters for tonight’s event, Grant’s face unsettling me more than I expected. It has been twenty-five years since I’ve stood across from that face, never imagining that Grant and I would meet again on a stage in front of hundreds of voters.
A month after I announced my campaign, Grant’s name surfaced as a potential opposition candidate. I ignored the sinking feeling in my gut because the Republicans had a crowded field; the likelihood that Grant would emerge as the top contender was slim. But as the months passed, Grant’s campaign gained momentum. I could have dropped out. And maybe I should have. Grant always had a way of making me second-guess my decisions. When it became clear that he was going to be the Republican nominee for governor, I should have told my campaign manager that I met Grant when I was seventeen. I should have told my husband—everything. But I didn’t say a word. I kept quiet and stayed in the race because I promised my mother I wouldn’t let my past control my future. I wanted to be stronger as an adult than I ever was as a teenager.
I know that Grant is going to alter my life again. No matter how hard I try, I can’t escape him and our secrets. I tell myself it’s only one lie, but when you unwind it, I realize that most of my life is tied up in that lie.
Suddenly, I’m running across the room. There’s a back door with quick access to the bathrooms by the video game arcade. My years of exploring the hallways while my mother worked have their benefits. The preparations for the debate are on the opposite end of the expansive property. No one will be near this bathroom to hear the first female candidate for governor vomit her nerves away.
I narrowly make it in time, wondering if the voters of Virginia care about a candidate’s ability to puke in a ladylike way. Afterward, I walk to the sink to clean myself up, relieved there is no trace of this embarrassment on my carefully selected blue sheath dress. I blot the corners of my eyes, the rest of my makeup having sufficiently survived.
My hands are braced on either side of the sink, my eyes shaking with worry at my reflection, when there’s a knock.
I turn into Candidate Tess immediately, straightening my posture, smoothing hairs that can’t possibly be out of place given the amount of hairspray used.
Someone clears their throat on the other side of the door. It’s deep and unquestionably male.
It must be Dean coming to check on me. But I remember that can’t be the case. Dean is sitting with his parents in the auditorium, handling a slew of pre-debate interviews to bolster my family values polling. A childless woman in her forties seems to skew negative on those issues.
This mystery man tentatively whispers, “Tess, are you in there?”
“Who’s there?” I ask.
The door opens slowly, and it takes a few seconds for my eyes to focus. Because this should be a visual hallucination. Grant Alexander, standing in front of me, in the basement bathroom of the Homestead. But it isn’t.
Grant sheepishly walks inside the bathroom, looking over his shoulder, before he turns and locks the door to the outside.
My heart cracks. I’ve seen pictures of him through the years, but this is the first time I’m staring into his eyes since that fateful summer.
His hair is shorter. It used to be a sandy blond, falling across his forehead. I can’t count how many times I swept hair out of his eyes while his arms wrapped around me. But it’s short now, so there is no need for that anymore. It’s gray at the temples, which somehow makes his eyes greener. There are faint lines around his mouth from countless smiles that I had nothing to do with.
“Grant, what are you doing here?” My voice is steady despite the blood rushing out of my beating heart. “This is the women’s bathroom.”
“We need to talk,” he whispers.
“Here?”
“You have a better idea? We are constantly surrounded by our teams, our spouses. We need to have a private discussion.”
The sterile room suddenly feels too small for us to share. My fleeting nostalgia is replaced with simmering anger. “This is so typical of you. Thinking you can corner me in the bathroom and get exactly what you want.” I stalk toward the door, my hand reaching for the lock, when Grant steps in front of me, blocking the exit.
“I don’t want anything from you, Tess. I never have.”
“Yes. I know. You made that clear,” I spit back.
Grant slowly shakes his head as he says, “You’re unbelievable. I’m here to do us both a favor and you’re ready to dig up fights that should be long buried.”
“No, Grant. You no longer have the right to make any judgments about what I do or don’t say. Move out of the way.”
“Five minutes, Tess. That’s all I’m asking.”
“You always ask too much.”
Grant’s face pulls and he looks at the bathroom floor. He kicks at the black-and-white tile and I wonder what he’s thinking. I never knew what Grant was thinking, even when our bodies were wrapped together. “Pretty sure I didn’t ask enough,” he says.
My eyes begin to water. Why is it that the words we need to hear come too late? If I let myself think about what Grant has just said, I’ll never make it on that stage tonight.
My voice stumbles as I try to find a new subject. “How did you find me in here?”
“I was playing Pac-Man and saw you run in.”
“You were playing Pac-Man the hour before our first debate?”
“Yeah. I was. It was helping with the nerves,” Grant admits.
I find myself softening. Of course Grant Alexander was playing a game of Pac-Man before he took the stage as the Republican candidate. He’s full of surprises. It used to be one of my favorite things about him. But then I remember everything else, and my eyes turn frosty.
“Grant, let me leave. There’s nothing for us to say to each other.”
“I’m not interested in rehashing old fights. We need to discuss the present, this situation we’ve gotten ourselves into. We need to discuss how to handle it.”
“Handle what?”
“The truth,” he says, wincing.
“And what exactly is that, Grant? What truth are you so worried about?” I’m not sure why I’m pushing him. I don’t want to think about what happened and I certainly don’t want to hear Grant’s version of the events. But I’m angry that he’s been able to ignore it for half of our lives.
“Tess, someone from your team is going to come in any minute now. Do you really want to explain the two of us together or do you want to end this discussion as soon as possible?”
I sigh, knowing I need to reserve my fight for the stage. “Fine. What did you have in mind?”
“Nothing. We say nothing about our past.”
I look away. Days ago, I would have quickly agreed, but I’ve been lying awake at night, wondering whether we can get away with this—wondering whether I’m capable of keeping this up. “I’m not sure I can do that. I can’t keep lying.” I stare at Grant, desperate hope seeping into my voice. “What if we admit we met as teenagers? We can laugh about it, and then move on?”
“That’s a mistake,” Grant says definitively. “How do you think those follow-up questions are going to play out? Don’t you know how many journalists would salivate over our past, eager to uncover every dirty piece? I don’t want that. I’m pretty sure you don’t either. There are things that happened …” Grant trails off, unable to find words to describe that summer.
There’s a part of me that knows he’s right, but a bigger part of me that refuses to admit it. “I know you are used to getting away with things, Grant, but I live in the real world. We will be found out.”
“How? It was just you and me that summer. No one else knew about us.”
I shake my head. “There were other people. Other people knew, not everything, but they saw us together.”
“Is your mother going to say something?”
“No,” I say softly. My voice hitches as I explain. “My mother died.”
He looks up, shock across his face. “When?”
“It’s been a long time, Grant. She died of cancer when I was in college.” I say it with the same emotion as if I were describing my dinner. I can’t let my feelings surface in front of Grant, even though that year was one of the hardest of my life.
He reaches for my hand and I know why. I know that despite the way things ended, Grant understands how difficult it was for me to lose my last relative. “I’m sorry you were alone, Tess.”
“I wasn’t alone. I had Dean.”
I see him flinch, and I suddenly realize that my comment may have hurt him in a way neither of us knew was still possible.
“What about Madeline Milton?” I ask about the woman who brought us together simply by hiring my mother. I think for a moment, about that world I temporarily inhabited. The elaborate parties at country estates. Grant’s mother and her best friend, Madeline, laughing and plotting their social calendars. I was mostly in the background except when I was with Grant.
I take a deep breath. I’m not seventeen anymore. I’m no longer in Grant’s world, a place where I spent one summer trying to belong and then decades trying to forget.
“The last I heard, Madeline was in assisted living,” Grant says. “Alzheimer’s.”
Even if Madeline’s memories were intact, she probably wouldn’t remember me or my mother. We were just the staff, dismissible and disposable, as she proved to us that summer.
Grant continues. “Besides, my mother kept our relationship a secret.”
I shrug. “Or she was embarrassed of me.”
Grant swallows, his voice deep as he says, “My mother was never embarrassed of you. She loved you; you know that.”
I nod, small nods, afraid of the emotions bubbling up. “I loved her too, Grant.”
Grant’s mouth pulls tightly as he says, “Everyone who knew about us is gone.”
I feel a moment of sympathy for him, knowing that he is thinking about his mother’s death and questioning whether everything would have been different if she’d lived. I look at Grant, my own grief tangling in the air with his, and I think maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have handled it all differently. But then I remember Grant’s words from that summer and I force my doubts away.
I bring up the topic both of us have been avoiding. “What about your father?”
I watch as Grant’s face turns to stone. I know this reaction, anytime his father is mentioned. There was a time when Grant talked to me. Sometimes I wondered if I was the only person he ever talked to about the cruel things his father said and the pain he felt as a boy. I see that as a man, Grant’s pain has been replaced with anger.
“My father won’t say anything.” There’s a coldness to Grant’s tone that stops me from asking more.
“You really think we can pretend we’ve never met. And get away with it?”
“Yes,” Grant says. “I hope so. The alternative would destroy everything. Our careers, our—”
I cut him off. “You could drop out of the race,” I say. “This matters to me, Grant. I don’t know why you’re even running. To punish me? To prove your father wrong? Those aren’t good reasons.”
“I’m not dropping out, Tess.” Grant’s arms are folded across his chest. I want to reach for his shoulders, to shake him, to shove some sense into him, but I keep the distance between us.
“Fine. We’ll try your approach. We say nothing.” I’m doubtful it will work, but I can’t think of a better alternative. If anyone can get away with something like this, it’s a golden boy like Grant. For a long time, I thought that kind of good fortune rubbed off on everyone in his orbit. I hope I’m not wrong twice.
“It’s worked for twenty-five years. What’s a few more months?” Grant says, smirking. It infuriates me that he still feels like it’s a game. That our lives, our pain, can be so easily dismissed. “Here’s my private cell,” he says, passing me a slip of paper. “Just in case we need to speak.”
“Let’s be clear, Grant. I have zero interest in joking with you or having any type of discussion. You were removed from my life decades ago, and having you back is an unnecessary distraction at a critical time in my career. I’m not your friend. I’m your opponent.”
He looks like I’ve slapped him. It’s the same expression that was on his face the last time we spoke. “Understood, Tess. We always did what you wanted, anyway. Isn’t that right?”
I look away, unable to meet his eyes.
“We’ll stand on that stage and pretend we’re strangers,” Grant says.
My voice hitches. “But we are strangers, Grant. At least we are now.”
Grant looks into my eyes, his face somber as he slowly nods once. “Good luck,” he says, before flashing a quick smile. I watch him open the door and walk out, and then stare at myself in the bathroom mirror.
I feel the flood of a million conflicting emotions, because the teenager inside me could never resist Grant’s smile and the woman I am now is so goddamn resentful of everything about him.
I don’t have the luxury of dwelling on any of these feelings because it’s almost time for the debate. I take a deep breath and go find Mara.
There’s a flurry of last-minute instructions and makeup application and spritzes of hair spray as my heart races in the wings of the auditorium.
Mara nods, I reciprocate, and I push my shoulders back and walk on stage, waving confidently. I approach Grant and shake his hand. Zero emotion. It is a handshake of formality, as if I’ve accepted my high school diploma. I don’t let my body react the way it used to when Grant’s skin was pressed up against mine.
I turn toward the crowd, and the spotlights heat my face and blind my eyes. It’s impossible to see anyone in the audience, but I know Dean is in the front row, sitting next to his parents.
The moderator is a female national news correspondent who has clear aspirations for the presidential debate in three years. It was the subject of heated negotiations with Grant’s team. Mara pushed hard for a female moderator, sure that it would bolster the significance of the first female candidate and assure a friendly debate. I wasn’t so sure. It could cut both ways.
The moderator starts with easy, somewhat neutral topics, from education to infrastructure. The first hour is smooth. Grant and I both deliver a handful of zingers and it feels pretty even. But it certainly isn’t natural. I keep having flashes from the past. It’s hard to see Grant now and reconcile him with the boy I knew. I find myself smirking when he says something so overtly adult that it’s unsettling. I still expect him to be a teenager. I hope that no one notices and I focus even harder on keeping my face indifferent.
When the moderator moves to juvenile justice, I’m ready. It’s a central issue of my platform and I’m grateful for the easy question she’s asked that allows me free rein to present my ideas.
“We need a comprehensive overhaul of our juvenile justice system,” I begin. “Kids should be allowed to be kids, to make stupid mistakes without derailing their futures. I guarantee if you poll the audience here, there isn’t a single person who didn’t make a bad decision when they were a teenager. The difference is, when you’re caught making those bad decisions and you enter our state’s justice system, the consequences are dire, even more so for offenders of color. In our state, young people of color are 43 percent of the intake population and 70 percent of the commitments to the system. For every year spent in youth prison, a person’s probability of being arrested for another crime increases by a third. The reconviction rate in Virginia for juvenile offenders is almost 75 percent.”
Grant blinks in an exaggerated manner. “Wow. My eyes glazed over. That was a lot of statistics, Ms. Murphy. Numbers may sound impressive, but when you break down what’s behind that information, the facts are clear. Criminals repeat offenses. The only time they stop repeating these crimes is when they are behind bars. I strongly believe that the youth of Virginia need clear consequences. Otherwise, we’re creating a pipeline of crime in our state. I am and will always be tough on crime, no matter the offender.”
I look in his eyes, unable to believe the blind privilege underlying his position. Before I can stop myself, I say, “You seem to have a clean record, Mr. Alexander. Are you telling us that you never made any stupid mistakes as a teenager? A mistake you were lucky enough to get away with so that you could be standing on this stage tonight?”
Grant hesitates for a moment, unsettled by my question. It’s a delay that most won’t notice; only those that know him best will see. I’m not naive to think that I’m alone on that list. Does his wife know his face better than I do? Of course, she does.
Grant retorts, “There’s a difference between stupid mistakes and breaking the law, Ms. Murphy. There is a difference between typical teenagers and juvenile offenders. I doubt the people of Virginia want to hear us trading stories of teenage antics. I want to focus on the future and how we can create a state with the most opportunity for our good, law-abiding citizens.”
The moderator moves to another topic, but not before I see Grant staring at the side of my face, and I wonder if he gets it. If he ever understood how lucky he was.
The next day, our exchange on juvenile justice fills the papers and begins to divide the state. It is the same cracks Grant and I felt decades ago. But we were only kids then, our eyes filled with stars and haze, able to overlook differences. Those differences could have bound us together, but instead we split apart.
He edges ahead in the polls. I’m not surprised. He’s a new candidate, and for most people in the state, this debate was their first impression of Grant Alexander. I know all too well that he makes excellent first impressions. But maybe the voters will see the other side of Grant. The man who makes promises he never plans to keep.