Damn her, she’s right.
Yet again.
“I’m sorry we had to make this so early this morning,” she adds, “but they’re on a plane tomorrow morning to California for three weeks. I didn’twant to waste any time or delay this meeting with them.”
I wearily nod and sip my coffee.
Perfect.
I motion with my cup. “You trained him well, Case,” I joke.
She smirks and raises her own cup to take a sip. “I know.”
“Please tell me there’s nothing tomorrow.”
“Nothing tomorrow. I already emailed the kids and warned them Dad’s wiped out.”
I feel like a shitty father, but I nod and takeanother sip of coffee. “Thanks.”
Something about her quiets me. She’s not Ellen, but she knows me almost as well as Ellen did. Not in all ways.
Then again, Case knows me in ways Ellen didn’t, because of work and politics. She gets to see the brutal guy who can’t back down and who has to win a case, who has to negotiate like a cut-throat mafia consigliere to get shit done for the greater good.
Ellen got to have the personally darker side of me, which I can never admit to in polite company—or anywhere else, now that Ellen’s gone.
Case gets the professionally darker side I was too ashamed to let Ellen see.
But Casegetsit, because she’s in the same place I am. I’ve seen her at her most darkly vicious, a side of her Ellen never got to see, either. We have to maneuver ourselves throughthe good ol’ boys’ network. Hands wash hands in politics.
As a politician, I’ve had to make backroom deals I wasn’t happy with to get myself votes for the big-picture items. I have to wear a chameleon skin of a white Christian conservative dude when the truth is, much of what I deal with makes me sick. I focus on the endgame and do what I have to do to make positive changes for my state thatwill stick long-term and outlast the dinosaurs in office.
It’s all fine and well to scream, “Change the system, then.”
That only works as long as there are people within the system willing to change.
On that front, Case and I are working toward helping groom younger Republican candidates for office who are more moderate and liberal-leaning in their views. Who are willing to break from the agingold white guys who’ve had a stranglehold on our state’s politics for decades while mostly helping to fill each other’s pockets at the expense of everyone else.
Casey-Marie Blaine has saved my life every bit as much as Susannah Evans did. Because now that my children are on their own, politics is all I have left.
I take a deep breath and sigh. “Thank you, Case. In case I haven’t said it lately.”
Her smirk fades as she watches me. “Just keep breathing, George. I wish you’d let me find you someone to talk to.”
I shake my head. “We can’t risk it. I can see those headlines now.CrazyGovernor Sees Shrink.”
“How aboutGovernor Prioritizes Destigmatizing Mental Health Issues? That would play far better. You have the sympathy factor.”
“Yeah, and an insanely unsustainable eighty-two-percentapproval rating. Which will sink faster than that airplane did if people think I’m going crazy two years out. The bounce has a limited hang time, and it’ll start its descent any day now.”
“I think you’re underestimating the sympathy of people in this state.”
I arch an eyebrow at her. “Seriously, Case? Maybe in the beginning, sure, no one looked too closely at what I was doing. But once I becameGovernor Forrester and started taking political heat, I lost that extra cachet. The widower card can only be played so many times before it gets weaponized against me. They’ll start seeing me as weak instead of stoic. If I was a woman, sure, I could still squeeze juice out of that.”
She scowls. “Dammit, I hate it when you’re right.” That finally draws a soft laugh from me, which makes her smile.“There’s my buddy.”
I draw in a ragged breath. “I’m so…fuckingexhausted, Case. How am I going to do this?”
“Xanax?”
