Chapter 27
Jane
Amanda Teller was supposed to be the next Diane Sawyer. She was looking for that big interview that would catapult her into Katie/Diane/Barbara status, and so Grayson gave her our interview. I was guessing that he assumed she would be…manageable because she’d be grateful to get the gig.
She was, and it was pretty much a puff-piece interview, but I still felt incredibly uncomfortable.
Because, after trying not to my entire life, I was totally selling out.
We were shooting it in Caro’s living room, with as small a crew as possible, and they’d all had to hand their cell phones to Elliot so there would be no photos of Caro—and her obvious decline—leaked before the interview aired.
At first they interviewed Joe alone. Caro and I sat in chairs along the far side of the living room. Stick and Grayson stood behind us, Stick leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest, his dislike of my father obvious.
I was okay with that.
Grayson stood behind Caro, and occasionally she would wave him down and whisper something to him about whatever Joe had just said, or Amanda had just asked. Grayson would nod his agreement.
Much as I assumed they had in years past, they put their personal power struggle aside for Joe’s benefit.
And my father had pissed all that away all those years ago by falling prey to my flighty, yet incredibly calculating, mother.
As if thinking about my mother had some kind of physical effect on me, Caro looked over at me like I’d twitched or something. Who knows, maybe I had.
She leaned over and said quietly, “Jane, you have told your mother about this, right? About your involvement in the campaign and especially the interview?”
No, I hadn’t. I honestly didn’t know how she’d react.
One part of her would rejoice thinking about the time I’d be spending with my father, and how she could get in on that.
The other part of her would totally lose it thinking of me spending time with Caro—putting forth a united front with the woman my mother felt was her nemesis.
She wasn’t, of course. My mother wasn’t important enough to my father to be Caro’s nemesis, but she’d never understood that.
The problem was, I wasn’t sure what part of my mother would show up when I told her about working on the campaign and going out on the trail this summer.
“Umm…” I couldn’t outright lie to Caroline Stratton, but maybe I could hedge a little bit.
“You really need to tell her, Jane. She should not have to find out by watching Amanda Teller.”
“When’s the interview going to air?” I asked, trying to buy time.
“I’m not sure.” She looked up at Grayson.
“Four weeks,” he said with absolute certainty. I could tell by the way Caro sat up straighter, and moved a bit away from the back of her chair, that she didn’t like that he knew something she didn’t.
Four weeks. Four more weeks of pseudo-anonymity at Bribury. Four more weeks of not having to tell my mother. Four more weeks before my life as I knew it would change forever.
“But they’ll probably start running promos for it in a week or two, once they make sure they’ve got all the footage they need,” Grayson added.
Shit.
“I’m kind of surprised that Amanda Teller would do an interview for just a candidate for governor of Maryland. Seems like it would be more of a local news thing.”
Caro looked over at me like I was a total newbie. Which, of course, I was, though I had picked up an awful lot about the political world in the last couple of months. More than I’d wanted to know.
“This is bigger than Maryland, Jane,” Caro said, a bit of hurt in her voice, like I should know that fact. “Joe is bigger than Maryland.”
Wow. All these years later, with the man’s infidelity by-product sitting right next to her, she was still sipping heavily from the Joe Stratton Kool-Aid.
“Tell your mother, Jane,” she said again.
“I find it interesting that you care about my mother finding out from someone else, about her feelings at all,” I said to her, still speaking quietly even though my father and Amanda had wrapped up and were now out of the living room chairs and the crew was setting up for Caro to join them.
“She certainly wouldn’t care if you found out something the hard way.
She wouldn’t care about your feelings at all. ”
Caro looked off into the distance, out the side windows, and for a moment I thought she’d lost her train of thought. That was happening more and more regularly. That and her not being able to remember certain words; it was incredibly frustrating to her—a woman who knew her way around a thesaurus.
“At one time I wouldn’t have cared about hers either,” she finally said, turning back from the window, but not looking at me.
“At one time I would have relished how she’d take the news.
” She took a deep sigh, then continued, “But I find that staring the grim reaper down has made me a bit more compassionate toward your mother.”
“Yeah, that’s probably what it would take for me to be compassionate toward her too,” I said before I thought better of it.
She looked at me, shocked. After a second she burst into laughter, and I couldn’t help but laugh along with her.
* * *
Stick
Caro and Jane laughing over whatever Jane had said (and with Jane, who knew what that could be) was about the only truly honest moment of the whole damn day.
Caro and Joe were interviewed together, and the topics of forgiveness and second chances played a big part. As did Caro’s illness.
She was forthcoming about her health and how much time she felt she had left.
And damned if she didn’t spin it to help Joe Stratton by saying things like dying had made her see what was really important, and it was the future for “our kids.” And that Joe thought so too, and that was why he was reentering the political world—to make a difference.
Shit like that.
They really were something. Even in Caro’s diminished state (mostly physical, but they did have to stop a few times because she had stumbled on some words), the respect and affection they had for each other was evident. And genuine.
At one point the interviewer asked Joe about losing Caro and never marrying again. I couldn’t quite hear his answer, but it must have pleased Caro, judging by the look on her face.
Jane was added to the mix last. I tried to get her alone first. Not that I could give her a pep talk or anything, but just in case she wanted to vent or rage or whatever so she wouldn’t lose it on camera.
But I shouldn’t have worried about her. She was dynamic, with her father’s natural charm, and the savvy she’d picked up along the road that had been honed by Caro over the past few months.
She was witty and sincere and talked about family coming in different shapes and sizes, and that everybody needed to look out for each other, and that was what Joe Stratton stood for.
She was magnificent.
But she wasn’t Jane. Not my Jane. Not the Jane I held in my arms, or verbally tussled with. Or, hell, physically tussled with when it got real interesting.
We hadn’t been together since the night of her birthday, when we’d spent the whole night in the guesthouse. And even though that had only been a few days ago, I missed it. Missed her.
Waking up with Jane, feeling her intense energy around me first thing in the morning, was more exhilarating than a triple espresso.
And certainly more arousing.
We took our time that morning, a slow, drawn-out session that almost had me saying words to her that I’d never said to any girl.
I’d wanted to that night, too, as I looked down at her, buried deep in her soft body. I’d almost told her that I loved her, but I didn’t.
I could tell myself it was because I wasn’t sure of my feelings, but that wasn’t completely it, or at least not only it.
The truth was, I had no way of knowing how Jane would respond if I told her I loved her.
I thought she felt the same way, but that didn’t mean she would ever admit it.
Jane would never show any signs of weakness, and I think she had some fucked-up logic that to tell me she loved me would be a weakness.
She wouldn’t be wrong—she sure as hell had made me weak in some ways.
But stronger in others. And I was grateful enough to her for that to keep my mouth shut and not put her in a fight-or-flight moment.
“God, get me out of here,” she said after she’d finished with the interview and come over to my side of the room.
I wanted to take her in my arms, hold her close, kiss the top of her head and tell her how well she’d done.
But the crew was packing up while Amanda Teller spoke with Elliot and Grayson.
Joe and Caro were still in their seats, their heads bent together.
Probably planning how to take over Russia or something.
But, much as I wanted to, I didn’t take Jane in my arms in front of everybody. She would have hated that. Instead, I said, “You were really great.”
There was doubt in her striking green eyes, and just a tiny movement of the shield when she looked at me and said, “Really?”
Aw, fuck everybody else. I pulled her to me, and she only tried to pull away a little bit. I ran my hands up and down her back and whispered in her ear, “You were…fierce.”
I felt her smile against my chest, and for just a second she relaxed into my embrace and her hand came up and rested at the small of my back.
But this was Jane, and in the next second, she took that hand and tugged at my belt loop at my back, pulling me away from her as she stepped back.
“Fierce? Like gay-designer fierce?” She said it with a finger snap and hand movement that looked, okay, yeah, just like a gay designer. Or maybe a diva.
I laughed. “No. Like you-are-not-one-to-be-fucked-with fierce.”
She smiled. “Yeah, okay. I like that.”
“You should. It’s you.”
I noticed Amanda Teller watching us with interest the same time Jane did. She took another step away from me. “I’m going to take off. I’ve got a class this afternoon that I wasn’t sure if I was going to make or not. Looks like I’ll be able to.”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
She went over and said her goodbyes to Caro and her father—hugging them both. I wasn’t sure if that was for Amanda’s benefit or not. Maybe not. Jane and Caro had grown pretty close over the past months, and she had even seemed to make strides with her father.
Jane was no dummy, and she knew she’d be spending a lot of time with him in public over the next few months. And if he won, and was truly back in the political world, it would be years. It was in everyone’s best interest to bury resentment hatchets now.
At Yvette, Jane let me really take her in my arms and kiss her silly. In fact, she seemed to cling to me more than she ever had before.
“Was I really…fierce?” she whispered in my ear when we came up for air.
“Absolutely. Fierce. Fearless. Ferocious.” I kissed her after each word, then went in for a long, languid tangling of tongues and mashing of lips. “Flawless,” I added when I finally pulled away.
She smiled, and cupped my cheek with her hand, a very un-Jane-like move. After placing a gentle kiss on my lips she said, “Thank you for being here today. It helped.”
Yeah, very un-Jane.
“Anytime,” I said, meaning it.
She stepped away from me and got into the Vette. Leaning out the window, she said, “I may take you up on that.” And I think she meant that, too.
The crew and Amanda Teller made their way out shortly after, the crew packing up their van and Amanda getting into a waiting limo.
When I went back inside, Grayson, Elliot, Joe and Caro were around the dining room table, where they strategized for another hour.
The dining room had pretty much stayed as command central ever since that day that Jane had joined them.
The day I took Jane’s virginity. The day she gave it.
When the men left, Caro called me in to the dining room.
“Sit, Stick,” she said, indicating the seat next to her.
My feelings for Caroline Stratton—much like my feelings for Jane—were incredibly complex.
I respected and admired Caro for the way she’d lived her life, the way she’d raised her children and for doing what she felt was the best thing for them even though it might not be the best thing for her.
But I also knew she was a shrewd woman who wasn’t above manipulating people for what she probably considered the greater good.
I wasn’t absolutely sure that her bonding with Jane hadn’t been part of her master plan to help her ex-husband’s campaign. And I knew she absolutely believed in Joe’s destiny for higher office, and that it would only benefit her children in the end.
I wasn’t sure she was right about any of that, but it wasn’t my place to say anything.
Not that she would change her mind even if I did.
I cared for her beyond being her caregiver. But it wasn’t as emotionally draining for me as doing the same things for my father. Yes, I had grown to like and respect Caro, but seeing her waste away was just very sad. Not emotionally devastating, as it had been with my old man.
The interview had taken a toll on her. She looked more tired than normal, even though she’d had her makeup and hair people in earlier today to get her ready for the interview.
They even did Jane. Their phones had been confiscated while they were here, and they’d had to sign non-disclosure agreements, but Caro had wanted them here.
“You’ve got to be worn out,” I said to her.
She just nodded and looked down at her hands, which were folded on the large mahogany table. I waited. She was at the point now where words sometimes escaped her. It had happened to my father too…at the end.
She took a deep breath, then reached out to put a hand over mine.
“I need your help with something.”
“Anything,” I said, thinking maybe she wanted me to carry her to her room or something. She really had gone past her limits today.
“I need to call Betsy and Joey.”
“Sure, let me get the phone.” It wasn’t unusual for her to call them in the middle of the day. She spoke with her kids quite often, but hadn’t Skyped or FaceTimed with them in a while, not wanting them to see her weight loss. I started to rise, but she put a hand on my arm, stopping me.
“It’s time for them to come home.”