The Wrong Side of Right (7 page)

“Lou!” a guy down the hall shouted, as if cued. “I need your signature.”

I waited until he’d gone before I opened the laptop. One last look at Andy Lawrence’s abs, then I cleared the search history, shut it down, and shoved it in a drawer.

• • •

The campaign left me alone for the next few hours—or so I thought.

Around three, as I was flipping through binders, learning a series of sound bites that impressively avoided expressing any opinion at all, I heard Nancy’s muffled voice in the office next door. The sound filtering through was like what dogs must hear: “Hmfm, hmf, hmm, KATE! Hrm KATE! . . .”

Lou’s advice rang in my ears—but this wasn’t listening to my own press. This was the campaign itself. I rolled my
chair over and leaned my head against the wall. The staffers’ conversation became instantly clear—and really unpleasant.

Apparently the fact that I was orphaned was “polling” well. They were brainstorming what demographics would respond best to hearing about it. Even without me in the room, Nancy was careful in the way she brought up my mom, using her full name with a respectfully lowered voice. But I couldn’t mistake the casual, almost cheerful tone with which everyone talked about her accident.

“Tragic,” one of them said. “We can work with that.” Nancy herself noted that the fact that Mom had run a food bank and soup kitchen for ten years and that I’d volunteered at the Cocina almost every day after school made for a “great backstory.”

There was something so hollow about hearing Mom described as a backstory that my breath caught cold in my throat.

Elliott was the only one who sounded dubious.

“Soup kitchen, huh?” Even through the wall I could hear him snort. “How did
she
vote?”

I mouthed “Democrat” just as a staffer chuckled, “What do
you
think?”

“Look into it,” Elliott said, and the room fell silent.

I rolled my eyes. If they were worried about my mom being some kind of left-wing activist, I could’ve told them right then not to bother digging for problems. Beyond impressing upon me the importance of voting, my mother was probably the least political person I knew. For years, her friend Marta would try to engage her in debates or get her fired up about
whatever issue had sent Marta’s lefty flag flying, but my mother always smiled and said, “I can see both sides of it.”

I wondered what Mom would think if she could see me here, in the middle of a presidential campaign office, memorizing Do’s and Don’ts for Interactions With the Press. And then, of course, I tried to imagine her, not much older than me, working for a campaign. His campaign.

It was strange. I’d tried for months to keep the thought of my mom at bay, and now it wouldn’t come. The harder I tried, the more she seemed to blur.

As for the senator, he was even blurrier. I heard his voice in the corridor late in the afternoon, but he was gone before I could even get up from my roller chair. Peeking out the office window, I watched as he got into James’s waiting car and drove away.

Libby poked her head over my shoulder.

“He’s got meetings with donors and RNC officials all week,” she divulged in a giddy whisper. “
Closed-door
meetings.”

No public events. Not until our press conference. The family press conference. The “Hey Everybody, Meet My Love Child!” press conference.

Four days away.

The thought was paralyzing, so I decided to pretend it wasn’t actually happening—that it was all for the girl on the long row of whiteboards, the hypothetical Kate Quinn, all her best qualities shined up and imperfections removed. Lou was half right. I was most definitely squirmy. But Whiteboard Kate wasn’t.

“Kate’s a great kid,” mustached Chuck said into his cell phone, passing my cubby without so much as a glance as he left for the day. “Whip-smart, solid—you’ll see.” Whiteboard Kate
was
solid—an A-student, a volunteer, a sad orphan.

None of those things were wrong, exactly. Still . . . I wasn’t quite sure how I saw myself, but this wasn’t it. If you’d asked Penny to describe me, she’d say, “She’s got a weird obsession with songs about wolves, and if there were a competitive staring circuit, she’d at least make regionals.” Or maybe, “She’s loyal. She cares about other people. She rescued a baby squirrel from the on-ramp of the 101 when we were ten.”

But my limited understanding of politics was enough to make me realize that none of those things would interest voters. They didn’t want to hear about how weird I was. They wanted me to be just like them.

I couldn’t help but wonder whether the Coopers felt the same way.

8

“Dinner!” Meg called from the house, and my pulse jumped.

As Gracie and I got up from our Monopoly game, I whirred with anticipation. The senator had worked late last night at the campaign office. But tonight he was right in front of me, jacket off and sleeves rolled up over tanned arms, settling into a seat at the head of the table.

Back in California, my mom and I used to eat on trays in front of the TV, or huddled silently over textbooks and Cocina paperwork. I imagined that tonight would be more like the family dinners I’d had at Penny’s house, the Diazes laughing together around a messy table—and, I hoped, a special meal too, an acknowledgment that I was part of the Cooper family, if only for the summer.

• • •

But as soon as our plates were down, the senator pulled a printout from his briefcase and scowled over it in concentration, a stubby pencil in his hand.

“Daddy,” Gracie called. “Is that a speech? Can I hear it?”

“Let your dad work.” Meg scooted her chair so that it faced away from her husband. “Now, today was a big day, wasn’t it?”

I put down my fork, beginning to glow.

“What was special about today?”

My smile wavered. Something about Meg’s singsong tone told me that this was not a new topic of conversation.

“I dove into the deep end,” Gabe said.

“That’s excellent,” Meg said.

“I dove like seven times,” Gracie countered. “And I did a flip in the water.”

I took another bite of Brussels sprouts, feeling smaller and smaller the more they talked. I watched them and waited—for a look, a nod, a question. Anything. But when the plates were empty, the family meal complete, it was official. Nobody had said a thing about me—or even to me—at all.

When I went to bed, I told myself that the Coopers were comfortable enough around me to revert to their usual dinner routine. And wasn’t that a good thing? That they didn’t see me as an outsider who needed to be entertained? But the sensation of being a ghost in that dining room had sunk in so deeply that at 2:00
A.M.
, I got up and splashed cold water on my face just to make sure I could feel it.

• • •

On Tuesday, two days and twenty hours until the press conference, Elliott poked his head into my office, squinted past me at the stack of binders, and stormed away bellowing for Nancy.

Out in the hall, they had what looked to me like the start of a massive blowout fight, daggers shooting from their eyes, their whispers like whip cracks.

“Get rid of that shit,” Elliott said. “She doesn’t need talking points. She’s not gonna be talking.”

“She needs to be prepared,” Nancy said. “They’ll be coming at her from every angle.”

“It’s your job to
keep that from happening
.”

And then, just as I expected one of them to lunge, they slid past each other and kept marching in opposite directions.

Elliott had gotten the last word. Did that mean he’d won? Was he going to have a gag order placed on me?

Part of me relaxed at the idea. A small part. The rest of me seethed. I kept studying, feverishly now, waiting for somebody to take my binders away.

It turned out I wasn’t being paranoid. When I came in Wednesday morning, my workspace had been transformed into a lounge, the desk, office chair, laptop, and binders removed, replaced by an Ikea sofa and coffee table, with a new flat screen mounted on the bare wall. As I hesitated in the doorway wondering if I’d been relocated, Libby ducked in behind me with a shopping bag full of DVDs.

“You can relax today! Mr. Webb said!”

I popped in the first episode of some show called
Triple-cross
. But as soon as I heard the team start a meeting next door, I left the TV playing and silently snuck down the hall to help the volunteers stuff letters into envelopes.

An hour later, the senator made an appearance. I froze, wondering what his reaction would be—angry that I’d disobeyed or proud to see me helping? I grabbed the next envelope and started to stuff.

He patted an older gentleman on the back and crouched to share a joke with a couple of college-aged helpers, his cheeks crinkling as he smiled wide. He stood, his round blue
eyes traveling across all of us. Then he raised his hand in a wave, turned, and left the room.

I couldn’t get the paper into the envelope. I held it in front of me until my arms began to droop.

Louis appeared in the doorway, forehead creasing as he watched the senator walk down the hall. His eyes darted to me.

My face felt heavier than usual, but with great effort I forced it up until my mouth clicked into Stock Smile Mode. When I trusted my prickling eyes enough to lift them from the table, Louis was motioning me over.

Outside the volunteer room, the hall was empty. Lou gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You doin’ all right?”

“Of course!” I swallowed. “Everyone’s really nice and . . .” I couldn’t think what else. The lunch selection was good. The building was well lit.

Lou just nodded. “Good.”

He looked like he wanted to say more but hadn’t found the right words to start, and just as his mouth was opening, mine blurted: “Did you know my mom?”

“Yeah, I did.” His shoulders shrunk in on themselves. “Not well. Just for those few weeks, but—she was a nice kid. I was really sorry to hear about what happened to her.”

Just as I was mentally cursing myself for making both of us so uncomfortable, he squinted at me.

“You’ve got a lot of Emily in you, if I’m remembering her right.” I flushed at her name, realizing that he was picturing
her as a college kid, just as he’d last seen her. “But you’ve got a
lot
of your dad, too. I can tell already.”

I glanced up, surprised. He raised his chin, daring me to contradict him.

“Not just looks. Personality too. You’ve got more in common with him than you know.”

Something about the phrasing struck a raw nerve. Complimenting my poise was one thing. But how on
earth
would I know whether I had anything in common with that man, besides our eerily similar styles of shooting a thumbs-up? Several snarky retorts came to mind, but Lou didn’t deserve them. Instead, I said, “Okay.”

“Listen.” He lowered his voice. “Your dad is a tough guy to get to know in the best of times. Always has been. Believe me, I’ve known him since we were both young and stupid.” He laughed. “We’re still stupid, but you know what I’m saying.”

I nodded, trying desperately to brighten, but Lou’s face was serious.

“Stick it out.” He patted my arm kindly as he walked away. “He’s worth it.”

• • •

Libby drove me to the Coopers’ house on Wednesday, singing softly along with a Christian rock station, while I thought back to Monday night’s family dinner—and what I could have done differently. By the time we’d pulled past the camped-out reporters and through the front gates, I’d come to a decision.

Tonight, I would participate. Even if the conversation had
nothing to do with me, I would butt in, ask questions. Maybe they were just waiting for me to get over my politeness. Well, tonight I would.

Especially where Gabe was concerned.

From day one, Gracie had embraced me as a long-lost sister, latching on to my arm and chattering away whenever I walked into the room. But Gabe still watched me from oblique angles, like I was one of his backyard birds—and watched Meg too, gauging her reaction to me before he dared one of his own.

Meg met me at the door wearing a classic Chanel tweed suit, her hair elegantly styled.

“You look nice,” I said, eyeing her curiously. Seemed a little much for a Wednesday night.

She groaned. “Long story.”

Before she could tell it, a knock sounded on the door and she hurried past me to answer. A pretty twenty-something girl wearing a Georgetown hoodie stood grinning on the doorstep.

“Hiiiiii,” she cooed. I heard the kids scrambling out of their rooms upstairs. “Where are my favorite twinsies?”

“Sarah!” Gracie barreled down the stairs and clung to the girl’s arm. “I have so much to tell you!”

Okay
, I realized, sinking.
Maybe she’s like this with everyone.

Gabe didn’t even give me his usual sidelong glower, too busy grinning at Georgetown Sarah to notice I was there.

“Donor dinner tonight,” Meg said to Sarah over Gracie’s chattering. Sarah sighed sympathetically, as if she’d been
to a million donor dinners herself. “We won’t be too late.”

I caught Meg alone in the kitchen. “You didn’t have to hire a babysitter. I’ve taken care of kids before—I’d be happy to watch them.”

Meg looked uncomfortable.

“They’ve known Sarah since they were four. She’s great with them.” She must have seen the wind knock out of me, because she forced a smile and clapped me on the shoulder. “But good point. I’ll take you up on that next time.”

Sarah was indeed great with the twins. Me? Not so much. She spent a few awkward minutes trying to figure out how to interact with me before deciding that the best approach was to pretend I wasn’t there. After our pizza was delivered, she and the twins set up a board game with only three players. I crept up to my room and tried calling Penny.

“Kate? Kate! Wffmm . . . !” There was so much noise, I could hardly hear her—a bass beat, people whooping. She must have been at a party. I finally gave up shouting
“What?”
and texted her that I’d try her tomorrow.

I flopped back on my bed. If I were in California, I’d be at that party with her. She’d be forcing me to dance, mussing my hair, complimenting my outfit, even though she looked a million times better in her thrift store finds. I’d be relaxed, distracted, maybe even confident if I were at that party with Penny.

But if I were at that party, it would mean that I was in California—and that would mean Mom was still alive. When I got home tonight, she’d be in the front room watching
some old movie with her feet on the coffee table, pretending that she wasn’t waiting up. And she’d share her popcorn as I curled up next to her— I felt my limbs aching heavy, my eyes burning shut. With a deep breath, I forced myself upright and grabbed the dog-eared copy of
The Fountainhead
that Cal had loaned me.

So far, it was sort of a romance novel, the story of a fiercely independent architect and the woman he loved. They were matched in their disregard for the opinions of others, their complete self-reliance.

It got into my brain. That night I dreamed that I was knocking down the Coopers’ house and building a new one where I would live all by myself. In my dream, I was proud and alone. But the feeling of independence evaporated when I woke up.

I just felt alone.