Chapter 7 #2
She was happy. That fact, which had once been complicated, was now simply true.
He thought of Chad. Not the physical absence—though that was there—but something Chad had mentioned over dinner at Ted’s. His mother in Manassas. The estrangement. How carefully he’d said it, and how quickly he’d moved on.
Chad didn’t have this. Didn’t have a kitchen table where someone made him pimento cheese and demanded details about his love life. Didn’t have a mother who called, or a toddler who grabbed his face, or any of the ordinary mess of family that Hank was marinating in right now.
The thought landed and stayed.
He reached for his tea.
The afternoon stretched out, golden and slow.
Lowell went back to the barn. Shelby put Owen down for a nap and returned to the porch.
They sat on the swing together, watching the light shift over the fields the way they used to, years ago, in the other house, in the other life. Some things carried over.
“Can I ask you something?” Shelby said.
“Always.”
“The election. The secret. The closet.” She tucked her feet up. “Are you scared?”
He could deflect. He could say I’m managing it in his committee voice, and she’d let it pass.
“Terrified,” he said.
“Of what, specifically?”
He considered. His political brain wanted to rank the threats: electoral exposure, career damage, party fallout. His actual brain offered a simpler answer.
“Losing this,” he said. “Not the election. Well, also the election. But this new thing. This version of myself that I didn’t know was available.
” He looked out at the field. “I’ve been awake for two weeks, Shelby.
Forty years asleep, two weeks awake. And I’m terrified something is going to come along and put me back under. ”
She was quiet for a moment. The swing creaked.
“You know what I think?” she said.
“You’re going to tell me, regardless.”
“I think you’ve been awake longer than two weeks. I think you’ve been awake for years. You were just very good at pretending to be asleep.” She looked at him steadily. “I should know. I was in the bed.”
Hank flinched. Not because it was cruel—it wasn’t. It was precise.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The old reflex.
“Stop apologizing. I’ve told you.” She nudged his shoulder with hers. “You being happy doesn’t cost me anything, Hank. So stop acting like it does.”
He nodded because he didn’t trust his voice.
“And Hank?”
“Hmm?”
“You told him you’re a senator. During sex.”
“I told you that in confidence.”
“And I will treasure it in confidence until the day I die, and probably also at your funeral.” Her smile was wide and unrepentant. “Tell me he at least laughed.”
“Eventually.”
“Good.” She patted his knee and stood. “More tea?”
The campaign event that evening was a fundraiser at a country club—a hundred and fifty supporters at eight hundred a plate, rubber chicken with aspirations, and the same conversations Hank had been navigating for years.
He worked the room on autopilot: handshake, eye contact, county-specific talking point, grateful nod, move on.
His campaign smile ran on its own, which freed the rest of him to calculate the number of hours until he could call Chad.
Very senatorial. Very focused on the people’s business.
A woman from the Chamber of Commerce told him he seemed different lately. “More relaxed,” she said, patting his arm. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”
“Thank you,” Hank said, in his most senatorial voice. “I’ve been sleeping better.”
He had not been sleeping better. He had been sleeping less, thinking more, and lying in bed staring at the ceiling. But the woman didn’t need to know that.
He got back to the hotel at ten-thirty. Chad would be late-shift—Saturday at BJ’s, which meant three deep at the bar and no time to talk. Hank texted anyway.
Survived the fundraiser. How’s your night?
The response came twelve minutes later.
Chaos. Birthday party in the back room ordering drinks with names I swear they’re inventing. Miss you.
Those two words at the end, tossed off like nothing. Hank read them three times.
Call when you’re off?
Will be late. 2ish.
I’ll be up.
You don’t have to.
I want to.
A pause. Then: Okay. Talk soon. And a heart emoji—small, red, the first either of them had sent.
Hank stared at it. A cartoon heart. The kind of thing a teenager would send. He was a forty-year-old senator sitting in a Marriott in Cumming, Georgia, staring at a cartoon heart like it was the Rosetta Stone.
He set an alarm for 1:45 a.m. and turned off the light.
The phone rang at 2:17.
Hank had been awake since 1:45, but dozing.
“Hey.” Chad’s voice was tired, with the rasp of someone who’d been talking over music for six hours.
“Hey. How was the rest of your night?”
“Profitable. Exhausting. Blake only dropped one tray, which we’re counting as growth.” The sound of movement—a door closing, bedsprings creaking. “How was the chicken?”
“Rubber, as promised. The green beans had potential.”
“High praise from a senator.”
“I have low standards and high hopes. It’s a dangerous combination.”
Chad laughed. Hank closed his eyes and let the sound lift him.
“How’s Georgia?” Chad asked.
“Warm. Familiar.” He paused. “Shelby says hello, by the way.”
“Does she actually say hello, or did she say something more specific that you’re sanitizing?”
Hank considered this. “She may have offered some unsolicited advice. About our relationship.”
“What kind of advice?”
“The kind I’m not repeating.”
“Now I definitely need to hear it.”
“You definitely do not.”
“Was it sex advice? It was sex advice.” Chad sounded delighted. “Your ex-wife is giving you sex advice.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t you dare. This is the best thing that’s happened to me all week.”
Hank pressed his free hand over his eyes, smiling in the dark. “She’s concerned I’m being too... conventional.”
“Conventional.”
“Her word was vanilla.”
“Oh my God.” Chad was laughing now—really laughing, the kind that came in waves. “I love her. I haven’t met her and I love her.”
“She’d love you too. That’s what worries me.”
The laughter faded. Hank could hear Chad breathing.
“I miss you,” Hank said. It came out plainer than he’d intended. No qualifiers. Just the fact of it, floating there between them.
“Yeah.” Chad’s voice had gone quieter. “Same.”
Silence. Not empty—full of the distance between Cumming and Foggy Bottom.
“I should let you sleep,” Chad said. “Campaign stuff tomorrow?”
“Church. Then a luncheon.”
“Church.” A beat. “You go to church?”
“I’m a Republican senator from Georgia, Chad.”
“Right. I keep forgetting you’re—” He stopped. “Well, not forgetting. I just forget what it means sometimes. The whole...” He trailed off.
Hank waited.
“Anyway,” Chad said. “Church. Be good.”
“I’ll try.”
“And think about what Shelby said.”
“Goodnight, Chad.”
“Goodnight.” A pause. Then, quieter: “Hey, Hank?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you called.”
“You called me.”
“Details.”
The line went dead. Hank set the phone on the nightstand and lay back. The hotel room hummed with air conditioning and silence.
Sunday. Luncheon. Monday. Flight home.
He could manage that.