Chapter Three
Now
At forty-four, Casey-Marie Blaine is only two years younger than me. We went to college together and I met her when I started dating her best friend and roommate, Ellen Louise Turner.
Case has been there for me every time I’ve turned around, even though in the beginning things were kind of rocky between us. After she graduated from law school and passed thebar, at my behest she came to work with me at the same law firm I’d joined, which was run by a man who’d been friends with Dad since college.
By that time we were already inseparable as friends, and doubly so as coworkers. It became a running joke in the law firm to sic the two of us on opposing counsel if they wanted to end things quickly. Around the office, people called us work spouses, evenbefore I ran in my first election. That was because Ellen started joking with us about it and took great joy in spreading that title herself.
The funny thing is, I was the nice guy. Literally. Case was the one who was bloodthirsty and vicious. She had to teach me that cut-throat mentality because it didn’t come naturally to me back then.
Unfortunately, over the past two years, it’s become secondnature to me.
Case is also the one who convinced me I should run for public office when our district’s state Senator decided not to run for another term. Ellen had suggested it, but I really didn’t think I had it in me. Then Case jumped on board, agreeing with her.
I agreed, with a condition of my own. The deal was Casey had to be there by my side for all of it, running my campaigns and beingmy chief of staff. I damn well knew I couldn’t do it without her, and wouldn’t even want to try. She had no desire to run for office herself.
Honestly? I wouldn’t have run for office if Casey hadn’t been enthusiastically all-in from the start.
There’s never been anything inappropriate between me and Casey, either. We’re friends. Family.
Especially now.
The kids and I are the only “family”Case has left. She’s their adopted aunt and they grew up referring to her as their aunt. People who didn’t know any better assumes Casey was Ellen’s sister. We both bought our houses at the same time twelve years ago. Hers sits four down from mine. We live in a small, exclusive gated community of twenty mini-manors. There’s only one entrance, and an eight-foot concrete wall surrounds the entire perimeterof the development. I know all my neighbors, including two judges, four attorneys, two doctors, and a writer. We have lots of privacy with long driveways, tall fences and walls, a thick screen of trees and bushes. The location—so far—means I’ve been able to hold on to a modicum of personal privacy.
I don’t live in the Tennessee Residence because, at first, they were still in the process of tryingto move my predecessor’s stuff out in anticipation of moving in the guy whothoughthe was the new governor, and who technically was our new governor, for less than a week.
Fortunately, public outcry to install me as governor, once I was discovered alive and rescued, immediately overrode any chance of that guy trying to fight to stay in office. The State Assembly recalled his appointment andawarded it to me.
I also told the State Assembly that, considering the circumstances, I’d prefer to stay in my own home. I still had Aussie at home, and after everything that happened I wasn’t going to uproot her from home her senior year of high school. I’m not that far from the capitol building, anyway. Casey and Declan ran numbers and immediately released them, proving it would, in fact,savethe state money with me living in my own home.
That was all the press needed to declare me a man of the people.
Whatever.
We currently use the Tennessee Residence—the official governor’s mansion—as a museum and for special events, like state dinners and whatnot. Since I’m not living there, I authorized them to rent it out for applicable occasions, which brings in money. So not only am Isaving the state money, we’remakingmoney off me not living there. And I’m not asking that the state pay any expenses for my home, either, other than picking up the salaries for the EPU officers assigned to my detail.
Which are fewer in number because my house isn’t open to the public.
I’m sure that will piss off the governors who come after me, that they’ll have to find a way to justify livingthere—and if they don’t already have homes in or around Nashville, or if their homes are a logistical nightmare, I can see they’d have a valid argument for living there.
It saves our state money by needing less security at the Tennessee Residence, but it gives my head of security hives. I need my privacy and, unless the situation warrants, I don’t have full-time security officers stationed outsidemy house.
It was something that I frequently butted heads with them about when I was the Speaker, too. I wanted my kids able to be kids, and Ellen or I drove them to school.
But it wouldn’t have felt right to me, living there alone once Aussie left for school. My kids are all away at college now, and I wanted to remain where my memories of Ellen surround me.
One concession I made with my newjob is that I paid—out of my own pocket—for a new, upgraded, state-of-the-art security system for my house, including outside motion-detector lights and cameras, and several panic-button stations throughout my home. There are always extra officers from the Executive Protection Unit stationed at the development’s front gate for immediate response when I’m home at nights and on the weekends, and peoplecan’t randomly drive in and out of our community.
All visitors have to be declared and cleared first, all mail or deliveries coming to me gets screened, and even a simple pizza or Uber Eats delivery going to one of my neighbors gets an officer shadowing them while they’re inside the development. When I order anything like that, it gets delivered to an officer at the front gate, and they bringit to the house for me.
There have been a few times I’ve needed an officer stationed at the end of my driveway, but that was early on, right after my return. Fortunately, the news cycle quickly spun on, relegating the tragic widower governor to the back page and allowing me to dispense with that level of security.
Now that the media attention on me from the rescue has long since died down, myneighbors probably love me. We literally have the safest neighborhood in all of Nashville.
Case is tough, strong. After my rescue, she was the one who immediately stepped in and took over for me and helped me keep moving forward when I didn’t think I had the strength to go on.
Ironic, right? I survive a goddamned plane crash and being shipwrecked for three weeks, and when I finally return hometo my kids,that’swhat nearly does me in?
