Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
OCTOBER 26, 2021
Grant drops me off a few blocks away from my headquarters. He smiles as he leans across the car, opening my door and depositing a kiss on my neck. My body stiffens unconsciously and he senses the change, squeezing my hand reassuringly.
“I could turn the car around. We could start driving and never look back.”
I cup his face in my hands. “We always look back. That’s our problem.”
Grant nods. “There’s a lot to talk about, Tess.”
“I know. Let’s get through this week. It will be tough for me to sneak away tomorrow, but I’ll try.”
Grant leans forward, reaching around my waist to pull me in for a kiss. I place a hand on his chest, glancing nervously at the people walking down the street, knowing they can’t see in the tinted windows of his car but cautious, nonetheless. “We have to be careful.”
“Practical Tess,” he says, poking my side like he did when we were kids.
“One of us has to be practical.”
“Nah, I think we’re due for some reckless behavior.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Everything about us is reckless, Grant.”
His easy smile appears and it affects me the same as always—a calming happiness and a jealous longing.
“I recognize that this is crazy, Tess. But I feel like I can breathe for the first time in years. Having you back in my life changes everything.” He kisses my forehead as he says, “Don’t overthink this. Don’t spiral into panic, Tess. I will see you tomorrow. We will find a way.”
I hop out of Grant’s car and walk briskly toward my office. I immediately ignore Grant’s instructions as my mind starts reeling with the countless ways in which our lives could spiral. I know Grant assumes what will happen next. He’s the most self-assured person I’ve ever met. I fell into his arms this morning and now he thinks that I’ve fallen back into his life.
But my gut churns in confusion. My seventeen-year-old self was so desperate to be loved by the boy who left her. Desperate to hear his regrets. Maybe it was that desperation that caused me to slip backward. I thought I was stronger. But I was wrong.
Even with so much uncertainty—the election, our marriages, our futures—it is still easy to imagine myself in his life. I saw the house he shares with Cecilia in a magazine feature of his family. If I’d been smarter, I would have ignored the article, but I didn’t. Instead, I studied the pictures of Grant and Cecilia Alexander, lounging in their mansion with the cedar shingles and stone columns. It was an effective article, displaying Grant’s strength as a master of wealth mixed with pictures of him building wooden train sets with his twin sons, Cecilia smiling lovingly in the background. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of father Grant had become. I studied those pictures, trying to parse out the kernels of truth and the manufactured facade. I’ve seen so many pictures of Grant and Cecilia together that those shots didn’t bother me. It was the one of Cecilia arranging flowers on their kitchen counter while Grant stood behind her. That was the one that made me light-headed. Because it was too easy for me to slip my face over Cecilia’s and wonder what could have been.
I open the door to my campaign headquarters and Mara is immediately at my side.
“What’s wrong? You have that constipated look on your face,” Mara comments. She’s wearing a simple black suit with a blue button-down shirt, her short brown hair parted down the middle, swinging above her shoulders. Mara always does the right thing and always looks put together.
“I’m fine. Just nervous about the campaign,” I deflect.
I ignore the calls of my name and walk straight into my office. I try to shut myself away, but Mara is too quick. She walks inside and asks, “Everything okay?”
“Close the door, Mara.”
She complies as she comments, “You don’t look so good.” Mara watches me closely, concern growing on her face. “Tess, did everything go okay at the doctor’s office? You’re as white as a sheet.”
“I wasn’t at the doctor’s office,” I say.
“Where were you?”
“I was with Grant Alexander,” I confess.
Mara’s eyes widen. “I have a million questions, so please start talking,” she barks.
That’s exactly what I do. I tell Mara everything, something I should have done months ago. Other than Grant, she’s the only person who gets the whole story, full of my deepest flaws and darkest regrets.
Mara listens. She doesn’t react when I tell her about the pregnancy or the money I took from Richard Alexander. Her face remains flat when I tell her about leaving the abortion clinic and looking for an adoptive family only to lose the baby. It’s when I tell her about the hysterectomy that I see a momentary softening in her eyes. But then she’s immediately back to business mode.
“I need to know where Dean fits into all of this,” Mara asks.
“He found the picture of Grant and me,” I say. “He was the anonymous source.” I see a flash of anger across Mara’s face and explain, “I never told him about Grant or the pregnancy. He found the photo and he found my ultrasound picture. Even when he gave me the chance to confess, I didn’t.”
“He never knew? About any of this?” Mara asks, not trying to hide her shock.
I shake my head, knowing it was a mistake to hide myself from Dean. I thought if I removed that part of my history, I could be the person I always wanted to become. I didn’t want to be the person who could be bought off. I didn’t want to be the person who put herself before the people she loved. Because that’s what I did. I resented Grant, but I hated myself.
I closed off that part of my life, hoping that I could move forward a better person. But I should have known I could never escape my worst self.
“Where do you and Dean stand now?” Mara asks. “I need to plan for every possible scenario and I need to know if he will be next to you in any of them.”
I shake my head again and then force myself to say the words out loud. Because I know I cannot deny reality any longer.
“Dean wants a divorce. He won’t say anything before the election. But our marriage is over.”
Mara nods but doesn’t ask more. Maybe she knows that the inner workings of a marriage are a mystery, sometimes even to their members. I’m not sure whether Dean will ever forgive me. I hope someday. But I know he gave me too many chances to ever trust me as his wife again.
Mara rubs the back of her neck as she stares at the ceiling. Finally, she asks, “What about Grant? Do you see a future with him?”
I hesitate, considering my answer but ultimately going with the truth. “I don’t know. He’s talking about a future, but I have no idea if that’s possible. Or if that’s the best thing for either of us.”
Mara seems to categorize this information, along with the list of confessions I’ve dumped on her this afternoon. I know her mind is swirling, but there is one thing I need to make clear. “Mara, I want to be governor. This election is important. What do I need to do? And will you still be the person to do it with me?”
She has every reason to quit. After everything I’ve hidden, after the political disasters I’ve opened myself up to, Mara would be crazy to stay. But when I see the flicker of an eye roll, I know she is exactly that crazy.
“For now, you need to focus on this evening’s events. I’ll work on our crisis plan …” Mara is interrupted by a knock on my office door, polite at first and then more frantic.
When Mara swings the door open, there is a pale-faced intern standing in front of us, her voice quivering as she stutters, “The news alerts. Check your phone,” she says as she walks away.
Mara hastily rushes over to my desk and reaches for her phone, turning on the ringer she’d silenced at the beginning of our conversation.
By this point, I can hear the televisions in our campaign headquarters and my name is being repeated again and again.
I walk into the room, my entire staff silent as a reporter says, “Virginia candidate for governor Tess Murphy had an abortion at seventeen.”
A few muffled gasps escape from embarrassed staffers, but otherwise the room is quiet. Mara is at my side. I know she wants to scream “I told you so” a few dozen times. But instead, we both listen as the reporter provides further details on this “breaking story.”
There are several cardinal rules for female political candidates. Purity is number one. It cannot appear as if you’ve ever had sex, told a lie, or broke a rule, because men may be able to survive those things, but women cannot. Election-eve scandals destroy campaigns, but an abortion is a nuclear bomb for a female candidate’s campaign.
The reporter says there are records from the clinic, confirming my ten-week pregnancy and the D this was my choice; this choice was not easy, nor without pain. Most of all, I, like every woman, am capable of making this messy, difficult, complicated choice on my own and without the interference of anyone else, most of all my government.
I give the press all the records my mother hid away—hospital bills and adoptions forms, even my school absence report for when I was hospitalized. I don’t want there to be any doubt about what actually happened. As I leave the newsroom, I hear the rumblings about press integrity and verifying sources before running with breaking news stories. But I know that won’t be the headline. The pregnant teenager is always juicier.
The entire night is a blur. I collapse into the front seat of Mara’s car before we can tell whether the press appearances made a difference. The pollsters are scrambling, watching numbers jump up and down. It is impossible to predict what will happen.
Mara insists Grant’s camp is responsible for the leak. She claims it’s a desperate move on their part to gain traction. I tell her she is wrong.
“This is too tidy, Tess,” Mara says as she drops me off at the hotel she booked so that I can avoid the reporters swarming my house. “Grant’s campaign carved out part of the scandal that left him clean and destroyed you. Can’t you see what he has done?”
Mara and I debate whether I should reveal my past relationship with Grant. I’m adamant that no good can come from sharing that information. I assure Mara the leak didn’t come from Grant’s campaign. I also tell her that it doesn’t matter. It’s the pregnant girl that causes the scandal, a boy’s responsibility seemingly irrelevant. No reporter even asked about the father.
Mara calls me foolish, unable to understand how I can protect Grant, even now. It’s because I know Grant. I know what he is capable of and it isn’t this. After all of our betrayals and secrets, I can’t believe he would ever hurt me again.
That’s why I’m blindsided when I look at my phone before falling asleep.
There’s a text message from Grant: I’m sorry. It was me.