Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
JANUARY 2022
INAUGURATION DAY
“Can I have a few minutes?” I ask Mara.
She gestures toward the desk in the center of the room. “You want to spin in the big chair, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mara. That’s the first thing I want to do as governor.” My voice is sarcastic, but she’s not wrong. Spinning around in that giant office chair looks very tempting.
“Take all the time you need,” Mara says. “You earned this, Tess. You’re going to be a phenomenal leader.”
She leaves, and I’m grateful for her words. I’m grateful for so much from Mara. She stood beside me on the stage this morning as I was sworn into a position I’d only dreamed of reaching. She’s been by my side as I navigate this new life.
I’m the first. The first woman governor. The first divorced governor. A year ago, when my campaign was ramping up, I imagined a very different ending.
I walk toward the giant picture window framing my new office, providing a view over the expansive gardens that surround the governor’s mansion. Perfectly manicured boxwoods border a brick patio that leads into rows of bare beds, just waiting for an explosion of springtime tulips.
Kay’s words echo in my mind. Maybe someday you’ll live in a grand home that you earn yourself.
I know I didn’t become governor on my own. There are countless people who got me here, donating their time and money and faith.
But this isn’t a life I was born into, like Kay. And I didn’t marry into it either, like my mother hoped.
I earned this, both the good and the bad. I earned the votes that brought me to this office. And I earned an empty home because I never let go of my teenage insecurities.
I walk around the room, its two-hundred-year-old history of male occupants evident through ominous oil paintings and dark wood covering almost every surface. I don’t feel like I belong. It’s a feeling I’ll always have. But I don’t mind it much anymore. I finally figured out that everyone feels the same.
Some days I wonder if I’d feel less lonely if Dean were by my side. But in our months of minimal contact, conversations mostly focused on logistics, I’ve realized that the absence of a person doesn’t make you lonely. I hid myself away from Dean. Honesty and acceptance are better companions. I’ve been working to make sure I never lose them again.
For weeks after the election, I wrote letters to myself, trying to make sense of how I’d strayed so far from the person I wanted to become. I might be governor, but that’s in spite of my mistakes. My teenage bravery was replaced with decades of fear. I don’t want to spend the second half of my life afraid. I wrote down every memory I had of the summer I met Grant Alexander, hoping to make sense of the love I felt and the hope I held. I wanted to understand how I fought to have a bigger life but didn’t take the time to figure out what that meant to me. I was too busy proving everybody wrong instead of figuring out my feelings on what is right.
It was only after I’d written everything I could remember that I realized how much I hid. Another person deserved to read about that summer. I wanted Grant to hear my story, full of messy truth and without insecure lies.
I didn’t expect a response. But I packed up my letters describing the moment I arrived at Madeline Milton’s home until the day I lost the baby. I mailed those letters to Grant, knowing they would probably sit unopened in his mother’s empty home. But I hoped to feel some relief in finally being honest with someone I loved.
Instead, I got something better.
In December, Grant wrote back. He wrote about his side of that summer. My heart broke and healed reading his letters.
Then we kept on writing. Some of our letters are sharp. We both have decades of unsaid feelings. Some letters are simple, what we ate, an article we read, something that reminds us of the other. Our lives are very different than we imagined, but through our letters, I’m getting to know the man he’s become. I’m figuring out the woman I want to be. As teenagers, we sat by a river and shared our dreams. Now we write them down, not any less hopeful, but more aware of the work required.
Grant moved into his mother’s home. His sons visit often, filling the house with laughter. It’s what Kay would have wanted. Grant left his hedge fund to focus on being a father, a luxury unavailable to most parents, but he seems to know that. He wrote about the day the boys surprised him with breakfast and the number of hours he spent scraping dried egg off his kitchen ceiling. He wrote about the trip to the emergency room after Declan fell off the patio wall and the sleepless nights that followed, Grant hoping that more vigilance would prevent future accidents. He sent a picture of a fort he built with his sons out of fallen limbs and a picture of the boys digging in Kay’s garden. She would have loved it and hated it at the same time. Grant hasn’t made up for the years he spent too little time with his sons, but he’s trying. And that’s all kids want.
I take one last look around my office before I walk toward the door to find Mara. But my eyes are drawn toward the table in the corner filled with flower arrangements. Elaborate bouquets from donors and interest groups, former colleagues, and people already in line for favors. I walk over and survey the explosion of color, but my eye is immediately drawn to the center.
Surrounded by symmetrical arrangements of expensive roses and flashy, exotic orchids is a simple wooden vase filled with yellow blooms. I push the other flowers aside as I reach for the goldenrod.
Kay was right, it is a weed. It blooms on the side of highways and in empty fields before it’s mowed away. But it has always been my favorite. It’s abundant in fall, but in the middle of a cold January, it can’t be found. It’s not important enough to sell in a flower shop. But someone sent me a bouquet and it means just as much now as it did the last time.
My fingers hover over the card. There are only a handful of people who know about my love of this flower.
I open the small envelope and read the message inside.
Maybe someday, it says in Grant’s scrawl.
I clutch his note. Not yet. But I can imagine it. A day when Grant and I are finally together. When we sit on the back patio and sip a glass of wine as the sun sets over the Blue Ridge Mountains. When the pain has faded and we’re strong enough to stay woven together despite the differences that try to crack us apart.
But for now, I have a job to do. And that’s my focus.
“Mara,” I shout with a smile. “What’s next?”