Chapter 12 #2
Catherine’s lashes shadowed those pretty eyes.
“Sometimes I’m glad she put me through all of it.
It definitely got me further than I would have gone in life otherwise.
Sometimes, though…I resent her for it because I wasn’t enough for her.
Then I feel guilty for resenting her because she did everything she could to give me a good life.
But she used me to get him to notice us and I hated that.
Still, when I was a kid, I wanted to know my father.
Sometimes I still do. Sometimes I hate him. ”
“Grief sucks,” I said.
Catherine swallowed. “Yeah.”
I looked down at the worn toes of my boots.
“My parents died in a car accident three days before Christmas. They spun out on black ice, crossed the center line, and got hit head-on by a tractor trailer. They had gone out to buy my Christmas presents and I was home with a babysitter. I’ve gone through every scenario of wishing that they hadn’t gone out that night.
Sometimes I resented the fact that they went out.
Or that they had waited until that close to Christmas. I know what that guilt feels like.”
“I’m sorry,” she said as she rested her head in the crook of my arm and chest.
“It was a long time ago,” I said, though we both knew that the old saying about time healing all wounds was a dirty lie.
Cath looked up with those devastating eyes. “Time doesn’t change how it feels. My mom hasn’t been gone nearly as long as your parents but I can’t imagine it getting any easier. My father is still alive, but I’ve grieved his absence for decades.”
“You don’t have to invite him to the wedding, you know.” I held her closer and rested my temple on top of her head. “You don’t have to have someone to walk you down the aisle.”
“I should,” she said as she brought her knees up and hugged them. “This is about optics, right? That’s why you picked me. Because I fit the bill of someone who’d marry into your family. Him being there would sell it.”
Her words were sharp like a lance, cutting deep. Guilt dripped from the entry wound. Catherine wasn’t wrong. That was the exact conversation I’d had with Hallie. But hearing her say it after what she had gone through with her father stung.
“Who’s your father?” I asked.
Catherine looked at her knees. “Governor Grant.”
Holy shit.
“That stays between us,” she said with a tone that was not to be crossed.
Governor Maxwell Grant had a soaring approval rating, a stellar record as a former senator, and a picturesque family with two grown children who were around Catherine’s age.
He came from a long line of political royalty.
Rumors of Maxwell being on the short list of vice presidential candidates for the next presidential election had already started to swirl.
He had also run out of my granddad’s funeral like his ass was on fire when Catherine came close.
He knew exactly who she was.
“You’re telling me that the governor’s daughter was crowned Miss Virginia and he still said nothing?”
Catherine let out a sharp laugh. “Not even a note in the mail. When I was younger, Mom said it was because his political career was just getting started. He won his US Senate seat at thirty. That’s…
unheard of.” She clenched her jaw. “And then he had an affair with his office aide and got her pregnant while his wife was back in Richmond with their newborn. Mom didn’t want to ruin him.
That was never her plan; but she did want me to reap all the benefits of being the governor’s daughter.
Some days I wish she had wrecked his life.
” Hissed vitriol radiated from each staccato word.
“Your mom worked for him?”
Catherine nodded.
“And she never told anyone what he had done?”
Catherine looked up at me like I was the dumbest man to walk the earth.
“When my mom got pregnant with me, Monica Lewinsky was still being dragged in the headlines five years after that story leaked. She did what she had to do to prevent herself from being the martyr for a married man who couldn’t keep it in his pants. ”
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“Life isn’t fair,” she said as she pulled a piece of hay from the bale and wrapped it around her finger.
“Rather than being painted as a home-wrecker or a scorned woman or an obsessed employee who was delusionally in love with her filthy rich boss, who just so happened to be the next generation of the Grant political dynasty, she got out of DC and moved to Honey Hollow.”
“But he knows who you are.”
“He does.”
I held her a little closer and tried to ignore how natural it felt for the two of us to be snuggled together. “You tried to talk to him at my granddad’s funeral.”
Catherine nodded. “I was there to pay my respects, but I may have had ulterior motives. I had a hunch the governor would be there. He never passes up a photo op or a chance to rub elbows.” She rolled her eyes.
“Sounds like he wouldn’t pass up a Wilder wedding,” I said.
A caustic laugh slipped out of her mouth.
“You’d be surprised what he’ll do to avoid being near me.
I can’t even get in touch with him these days.
I was going crazy up at the house, trying to figure out how to invite him.
It’s…why I came down here. I hate having to go through his office with its assistants and gatekeepers.
The last time I did it was when my mom died.
I got a condolence card in the mail a month later.
He had his secretary sign it. The mother of his child dies and that’s all he could muster… ”
“If it makes you feel better, I didn’t vote for him,” I joked. “Granted, I couldn’t because I’m still technically a Maryland resident, but my granddad didn’t vote for him either.”
She smirked. “Then that makes two of us.”
“You sure you want to invite him? That you want him to walk you down the aisle?” I asked.
“It’s tradition.”
“Fuck tradition.”
Catherine trailed her finger along the ripped edge of her shorts. “I feel like I’ll regret it if I don’t. If he says no, that’s on him. I just have to psych myself up to do it.”
“Let me.”
“It’s my problem. I’ll figure out some way to ask him.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through my contacts. “I’m more than happy to make him my problem.” I showed Catherine the governor’s cell phone number that he had given me at the funeral. “He might not answer your call, but he wouldn’t dare not answer mine.”