Chapter 18
The boiled peanut sign was what got him.
Georgia unrolled around them like something from a nature documentary—pine forests thick enough to hide bodies, hills that rolled without ever quite committing to being mountains, the occasional field where cows stood around looking philosophical.
It was beautiful. It was also deeply, unmistakably not his.
Hank drove the way he did everything—carefully, both hands on the wheel, checking mirrors more than necessary. But his shoulders were different here. Lower. His accent had thickened somewhere around the state line, the vowels stretching out like they’d been let off a leash.
“You’re staring,” Hank said.
“You’re different here.”
“Different how?”
“Looser. Like someone untied something.” Chad watched another small town appear and vanish—white steeple, gas station, dollar store, gone. “In DC you always look like you’re waiting for someone to ask you a question you haven’t prepped for.”
Hank considered this. “That’s... not inaccurate.”
“Here you’re just driving.”
“I’m just driving.” Hank’s mouth twitched. “Don’t tell Patricia. She’d have a stroke if she knew I was ‘just driving’ three days before an election.”
Chad turned back to the rental’s window. A hawk was doing slow circles over a mown field, patient and purposeful, hunting something Chad couldn’t see.
Three days. You’re meeting his ex-wife in three hours. His people. His whole world. And you’re wearing a jacket you bought at a thrift store in Adams Morgan.
Reel it in, Chad.
Riverside BBQ was a cinder-block building with a gravel lot, a tin roof, and a hand-lettered sign promising the best pulled pork in Forsyth County.
The parking lot was pickups and SUVs, a few sedans with FORTNER FOR GEORGIA bumper stickers, and one minivan with a Jesus fish and a Braves decal that pretty much summarized the electorate.
“Ready?” Hank asked, cutting the engine.
“Define ready.”
“Willing to exit the vehicle.”
“Then yes. Barely.”
Hank leaned over and kissed him—quick, firm, the kind of kiss that was half affection and half pep talk. “You’ll be fine. If anyone asks you something uncomfortable, just say you’re glad to be here supporting me and change the subject.”
“That works?”
“About sixty percent of the time.”
“And the other forty?”
“Find me.” Hank opened his door. “I’ll be the one sweating through my shirt.”
Inside was warm, loud, and smelled of woodsmoke, vinegar, and cinnamon. A banner over the buffet read FORTNER FOR GEORGIA in letters that were enthusiastic, if not precisely aligned. Maybe forty people, paper plates, the easy noise of folks who’d known each other since birth.
Hank moved through the room, and Chad watched it happen—the transformation from the slightly bumbling man who couldn’t order at a restaurant without listing every option to someone who remembered every name, every mother’s surgery, every kid’s scholarship.
Jimmy, how’s she doing? Betty, that pie was something else.
Frank, you must be so proud. His hands found elbows, shoulders, the small of backs.
He laughed more. Touched more. The accent was fully deployed now, not an affectation but a homecoming, and the people responded to it the way flowers responded to the sun—they turned toward him.
This is who he is, Chad thought. Before the Senate. Before DC. Before you. This.
He loaded a plate at the buffet because it gave his hands a purpose and because the pulled pork smelled like a religious experience. Found a table near the window. Ate. Watched.
A woman with an iron-gray perm and the posture of someone who’d spent decades commanding classrooms studied him for a long moment and said, “You’re younger than I expected.”
“I get that a lot.”
“I imagine you do.” She pursed her lips. Then a small, grudging smile. “Go get some banana pudding before the Hendersons eat it all. They do it every time.”
Chad got banana pudding. It was heavenly. He was contemplating a second helping when a man settled into the chair across from him—mid-fifties, Braves cap, the kind of face that had opinions and wasn’t shy about them.
“I’m Earl.” No handshake offered. “I’ve known Henry Fortner since he was in diapers.”
“Chad. Nice to meet you.”
“I know who you are.” Earl leaned back, arms crossed. Not hostile exactly. Assessing. The way you’d look at a dog you hadn’t decided to trust yet. “Whole county does.”
Chad set down his fork. “I figured.”
Earl was quiet for a moment. The noise of the room filled the space—laughter, forks on Styrofoam, Hank’s voice somewhere behind them, easy and warm.
“I’m not gonna pretend I understand it,” Earl said finally. “A man loving a man. That’s not how I was raised.”
Chad waited. Three years behind a bar had taught him when to talk and when to shut up. This was a shut-up moment.
“But Henry’s been carrying something heavy his whole life. I could see it, even when I didn’t know what it was.” Earl pulled the brim of his cap lower. “He’s not carrying it anymore. That’s all I’ll say.”
He stood. Tipped his cap. Walked away.
Chad sat there with his banana pudding and the strange, tight feeling of having been seen clearly by someone who didn’t understand him at all.
Hank appeared at his elbow. “What did Earl say?”
“He said he didn’t understand it. But that you’ve been carrying something heavy your whole life, and you’re not carrying it anymore.”
Hank stole a bite of pudding from his plate. “That’s Earl’s version of a standing ovation. He’s a deacon at First Baptist and the most influential opinion in the county. If he sat down at your table voluntarily, that’s significant.”
“I liked him.”
“He liked you. He just doesn’t know it yet.” Hank’s hand found his knee under the table and squeezed. “You’re doing great.”
“I’m eating banana pudding and trying not to say anything stupid.”
“That’s the whole game.” Hank grinned—the real one, the slightly goofy one that made him look ten years younger. “Welcome to campaigning.”
Shelby’s house was at the end of a gravel drive that went on long enough for Chad to reconsider every life choice that had led him here.
White clapboard, green shutters, a wraparound porch cluttered with potted plants and a tricycle missing a wheel.
A tire swing hung from an oak that looked older than the republic.
Norman Rockwell called. He wants his painting back.
A toddler burst through the front door before Hank had cut the engine, legs churning with the singular determination of a small human who has spotted his favorite person.
“Hank! Hank Hank Hank!”
“Hey, buddy.” Hank scooped him up with the ease of long practice, settling him on one hip. “Owen, did you get bigger? I think you got bigger.”
Owen responded by grabbing a fistful of Hank’s beard. “Fuzzy.”
“Still fuzzy. Yep.”
A man appeared on the porch—big, broad, wiping his hands on a dish towel with the resigned expression of someone who’d given up on controlling the situation roughly two years ago.
“Lowell,” Hank said. “This is Chad.”
“Good to meet you.” Lowell’s handshake was firm, brief, no-nonsense. He had the dry, settled energy of a man who was comfortable in his own orbit. “Fair warning—she’s in a mood.”
“The good kind?” Hank asked.
“Is there another kind?” Lowell’s mouth twitched—barely, but Chad caught it. A fellow satellite, recognizing another. “She’s in the kitchen. Been cooking since dawn. There’s enough food for the county and possibly the next one over.”
They climbed the porch steps. Owen was telling Hank something urgent and unintelligible about a truck, and Hank was listening with the grave attention of a man receiving a national security briefing.
Chad followed them through the screen door into a house that smelled like roasting meat and cinnamon and bread.
You are about to meet the woman your boyfriend was married to for fifteen years. The woman who figured out he was gay before he did. The woman who knows every single thing about him that you’re still learning.
Don’t be weird, Chad. Just don’t be weird.
“So you’re the one who’s been making my ex-husband smile like an idiot.”
Shelby MacPherson turned from the stove with a wooden spoon in one hand and an expression that was equal parts curiosity, amusement, and something sharper underneath. Honey-blond ponytail, laugh lines, barefoot in jeans and a Vanderbilt sweatshirt. Prettier than her photos. More formidable, too.
She crossed the kitchen and pulled him into a hug before he could decide whether to offer his hand. Vanilla and fabric softener and the confidence of a woman who had never once in her life wondered whether she belonged in a room.
“It’s so good to finally meet you,” she said, stepping back but keeping her hands on his shoulders, examining him with frank appraisal. “Hank talks about you constantly. To the point where I’ve considered blocking his number.”
“All good things, I hope.”
“Mostly.” Her eyes were doing something—reading him the way he read customers, the way Frannie had read him at the gallery. Different method, same purpose. “Hank, honey, go help Lowell with the grill. Chad and I are going to talk.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Deeply.” Shelby’s smile was sweet and absolutely lethal. “Go.”
Hank caught Chad’s eye—you okay?—and Chad nodded. The screen door banged shut, and it was just the two of them, the kitchen, and the smell of whatever was in the oven.
“Sit,” Shelby said. “Sweet tea?”
“Please.”
She poured him a glass. Cold, startlingly sweet, nothing like the unsweetened iced tea from the Manassas kitchen he was not going to think about right now. Shelby settled across from him with her own glass and studied him for a moment that went on just long enough to be deliberate.
“So,” she said. “Tell me about my ex-husband.”
Not tell me about yourself. Not how did you meet? Tell me about Hank. The test was immediate and specific: Do you see him? The real him?