It was not an image that made me feel good.
“Okay, right. Let’s keep it in perspective,” I said. I rubbed my hands on my pants, finding them a bit sweaty. Stick placed his hand on mine, flat against my thigh. Much as I loved the contact, I pulled my hand away and put it on the table, taking up my pen.
Just as there was no room for sweet at the table, there was also no room for comfort.
“Caro and I will do the interview together. Appear together when needed.”
They were nodding, making notes. “We’ll play up the ‘family comes in all shapes and sizes angle’ and appeal to all those coming from nontraditional families,” Grayson said. “I’ll have Elliot pull the numbers on that. How many families in Maryland are nontraditional.”
“Have him pull current divorce and infidelity rates in both Maryland and the US while he’s at it,” Caro added, and Joe nodded, typing into his laptop. “It would be good to have those numbers.” She looked up, as if off into space. “You see, we’re just like X percent of the people in Maryland—we’ve made mistakes, moved on, and are doing our best for our families.” It was said in a dreamy voice, and I realized she was doing a practiced answer for a possible interview question.
“Yes. Exactly,” Joe said, beaming at his ex-wife.
“It was always more of a political partnership than anything else. I don’t know why I was such the bad guy for just bringing a little love into the man’s life,”my mother had said countless times.
She was right: Joe and Caro made great partners. But there was something in my father’s eyes when he looked at Caro that I’d never seen with anyone else.
“Andourfamily has grown and bonded over Caro’s latest battle for her life. It has really brought home to us the importance of acceptance,” Joe said in his politician’s voice, answering the same nonexistent reporter that Caro had.
He kind of shook himself out of it, and they smiled at each other.
I was both fascinated and appalled. And so, so on the verge of losing it, thinking that this was my future, and half my gene pool.
Thegoodhalf!
“I can’t thank you enough for bringing Jane out here…Stick, is it?” my father said to Stick. “Getting her to bond with Caro is going to make this so much easier. It’s going to look so authentic.”
My body jerked. Grayson looked at Joe like he was an idiot. Caro laid her hand on mine and said, “That’s because it is…authentic.”
I slid my hand from underneath her cool one and looked at Stick. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What?” he said. His eyes were pinballing around from person to person, not getting that they’d totally outed him as part of some undercover assignment.
To use me.
Chapter22
“You know,I thought I had my eyes wide open. I thought I knew exactly what to expect with those vipers in there,” I said, pointing back to the dining room as I walked through the house, toward the kitchen.
All I really wanted to do was leave, but I’d wanted away from the table so badly that I’d left my stuff in the dining room and had turned toward the kitchen instead of the front door.
“I even knew Caro was capable of…befriending me for the greater good.” I was in the kitchen now, the scene of all those afternoons of sharing tea with Caro. Of laughing with her over memories of her kids and my father—memories I had no right to, but wanted desperately to hear.
Desperate. The word I most conjured up when thinking of my mother.
And that thought—that I was my mother’s daughter after all—sent me into a near rage. Which I directed at Stick.
I whirled on him, and he nearly ran into me. “And you,” I said, sticking my finger into his chest. “Howdareyou sell me out.”
I went to push at him again, but he grabbed my arm. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I don’t know whatanyof you are talking about.”
I wrenched my arm free, wanting to jab at him again, but also wanting to be away from this place. Away from that room of political scheming, where you never knew what was sincere and what was just positioning.
“God!” I turned and walked away from Stick—further from the dining room. I looked outside to the estate grounds. What snow had fallen had now melted, and though you couldn’t really call the landscape green, it was promising to be so very soon.
I went to the French doors and walked outside, the breeze cool, but not as bracing as it had been just weeks ago when I’d started coming here with Stick.
Which, apparently, was all part of some master plan.
