43
Election Night
“You really didn’t have to come,” I told my mom, opening my arms to hug her. I stood outside Lee’s house at dusk, stars shining weakly above us in the deepening sky.
“Nonsense.” She shut the passenger door and squeezed me. “I was planning to come the minute the news broke about you and Logan breaking up, but Lee said to give you time.”
“We’re always happy to make the drive.” Mom’s boyfriend, Ethan, climbed out of the driver’s side. “Nothing makes your mom happier than seeing you girls.”
I pulled back. “I’m sorry for lying to you about being in a relationship with Logan. For what it’s worth, I also wasn’t lying. It’s complicated.”
She kissed my forehead. “Alexis, honey, I’m your mother and your director. And I hate to break it to you, but you’re not that good of an actor. I knew you were really in love.”
Before I could feel too chastened, Ethan interrupted, pulling an aluminum-wrapped casserole dish out of the back seat. “Where do you want the seven-layer dip?” The man was a wizard in the kitchen. Lee liked to say he’d wormed his way into our hearts through our stomachs. He also always dressed like a professor, which was not only endearing but a one-eighty from my father, who I remembered in business suits more often than not. I squeezed my mom’s hand. Sometimes the people who ended up being right for us were not the ones we expected.
“You can put it out in the living room,” I told Ethan. “The gang’s already here. Votes should start rolling in any minute.”
As Ethan hurried to deliver his dip, Mom turned to me. “How nervous are you, on a scale of one to ten?”
“Fifteen.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. All of Logan’s hard work and sacrifice came down to tonight. I’d never wanted anything so badly for another person.
“I’m feeling hopeful,” she said, tugging me toward the house. “He’s been doing great since the second debate. And since the commercial aired, not to toot my own horn.”
I laughed. “Toot away. I’m sure any gains he’s made this last week all come down to the commercial.”
Everyone had come to Lee and Ben’s election party: Claire and Simon, Mac and Ted, Muriel and Carmen, Gia and her husband. Even Will, that class act. Only Zoey and Annie were missing, off in the Maldives on their honeymoon.
Part of me was glad I wasn’t invited to the official campaign party. I didn’t think I could’ve handled this level of pressure while putting on a smile. It was hard enough wearing a brave face now. When my mom and I walked into the living room, every pair of eyes swung to me like I was the one whose fate would be decided tonight. Which, in a way, I guess I was.
As expected, Logan had been gone by the time I woke up in the hotel room, escaping in the early morning hours to minimize the chance someone would spot him. He’d left a note on the hotel stationary that said One last push.
“Pundits are saying Logan is polling really high.” Lee pointed her wine at the talking head on TV. “This last week since the debate has been huge for him.”
Ben nodded. “People liked his honesty at the debate. I think he could pull off an upset.”
They both sounded like they were trying hard to be optimistic.
“Why don’t you help me find serving dishes,” said my mom, steering me into the kitchen.
For a few minutes we combed through Lee’s cabinets in companionable silence. “I guess you were right about Ethan not taking it hard that you didn’t want to move in with him,” I said. “He seems cheerful as ever.”
Mom was silent for a moment, pushing past some of Ben’s protein mixers. But when she spoke, her tone stilled me. “Honey. What makes you think love is such a precarious thing?”
I drew up, letting go of the cabinet door. Wasn’t it obvious? “You and Dad. When he cheated, then left.”
She gripped the counter as she stood. “Your dad and I divorced, true. But none of the love our family had for each other went away.”
“But...” How did she not understand? “He stopped loving you. And you said it was because you stopped giving him what he needed.”
“I said that?”
“Yes. One night when I was crying and came to sleep in your bed.”
My mother shook her head. “I don’t remember that. The truth is, I was so afraid your relationship with your father would be damaged after what he did—Lee was already so angry—that I tried to find ways to talk about it without blaming him. I’m sorry if I made you think your dad left because I’d stopped... I don’t know, appeasing him.”
“You never blamed yourself?”
She actually laughed. “Not for a minute. The dissolution of my marriage, as much as you can ever say these things are anyone’s fault, certainly wasn’t mine. It wasn’t due to some failing on my part. It was about Richard falling in love with another person and making a choice. I could no less have stopped that from happening than I could’ve stopped that drunk driver from running the red light.”
The grief that lurked ever present in my heart rose to the surface. “But I was like you. I couldn’t get Dad to love me either, not as much as he loved Lee. No matter what I did.”
“Alexis.” My mother was so surprised it sounded like an admonishment. “Your father loved you just as much as Lee. So much. If there’s one thing I admired about Richard, it’s that you girls were always his first priority. When things got heated with our lawyers over custody, Richard put a stop to it immediately. He said he’d do whatever it took to share custody of you two. He was willing to give me anything I wanted. Even not move in with Michelle if that’s what it would take.”
“Are you serious?” I remembered the cold feeling of my father drifting away, not fighting to keep me.
“I wanted you to have good relationships with him,” Mom said. “The only time I put my foot down was when he came to ask if you could live full-time with him. He really begged.”
I blinked at her. “Me? Dad wanted me to live with him?”
She smiled wistfully. “He said getting you half the time wasn’t enough. He missed you when you weren’t together. He used to say he didn’t know what he’d do without you, that you were the light of his life, his anchor. Little Lex, his most constant source of love and joy. But I had to tell him no, because you were mine, too.”
I stood stock-still as my mother’s words filled the whole kitchen. As they sank under my skin. The truth had been so different than I’d realized.
When I started to cry, it was for not knowing how much he loved me while he was still alive. For the version of me who’d tried so hard when what she wanted was there all along. It was almost painful, feeling long-broken pieces of my heart finally mend back together. My mother swept me in her arms and held me.
“Alexis!” Lee yelled. “The votes are coming in!”
“Go on,” my mom said. “We’ll talk more later.”
I pulled back and wiped my eyes, then joined the party huddled around the TV screen, still feeling shaky.
“The first few counties came back fifty-fifty,” Mac said, chewing her nails.
Together, we watched the results leak in, cheering when a county went blue, throwing popcorn at the screen went it went red. My stomach roiled. The race was maddeningly close.
“No matter what, it’s amazing Logan put up this kind of a fight against an incumbent Republican in Texas,” Ben said. I narrowed my eyes at him.
Another county came in for the governor. Then another. Finally, a blue county. “Ha!” I yelled, pointing triumphantly. Lee’s answering smile was halfhearted.
“An astonishingly close gubernatorial race this evening,” said the news anchor. “No one could’ve predicted even a week and a half ago that the race would be this tight. We’re coming down to the last two counties.”
“I think I’m going to faint,” Ted said. “Stoner, where are your cats? I need emotional support animals.”
“Shh,” Mac said, because now the anchor was saying, “And here they are, folks. The tallies are in. It looks like it’s fifty-one, forty-nine Mane in Williamson County, fifty-two, forty-eight Mane in Tarrant. NBC 17 is officially calling the Texas governor’s race for incumbent Grover Mane. Wow, what a close one, folks.”
Lee scrambled for the remote and shut off the TV. Painful silence filled the room.
Logan lost. Dear God, after everything he’d given. I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. My heart dropped into my stomach.
“Alexis?” Ben’s voice was gentle. “Are you okay?”
I staggered to my feet. “I have to go.”
The official campaign party was at the Hotel Saint Cecilia on the other side of the river. I drove as quickly as I could. By the time I got to the hotel’s famous courtyard, all lit up with celebratory twinkle lights, banners, and balloons, the crowd was sad and thin except for around the bar, where the campaign staff had flocked to drown their sorrows. A lone figure dressed in a three-piece suit floated on his back in the pool: Cary, staring morosely at the night sky. I kicked stray silver tinsel out of my way as I crouched near the edge. “Hi, Cary. You look how I feel.”
“Rudy,” he said miserably. “We failed him.”
“Where is he?”
Cary sighed. “He had to give a concession speech. That man shouldn’t have to concede a damn thing in his life. He’s the real deal, you know? A genuinely good person. Not Matt Bomer on the outside, but on the inside, where it counts.”
“I know.” I spotted someone out of the corner of my eye and rose. “Nora!”
She was in the farthest corner, idly pulling streamers up from the ground, though there was no way cleanup was on her list of responsibilities. I ran to her and she dropped them. “I’m so sorry,” I said, and rushed into her arms.
“Me too.” Her voice was thick. “But we put up a hell of a fight. We can be proud of that.”
“If it was my fault—”
She shook her head. “Stop. It wasn’t.”
“Where is he?”
She pulled back and gave me a sad smile. “He gave it everything, you know? It was too hard. After the speech, he left.”