The Wrong Side of Right(4)

“For a paternity test?” I asked, and everyone ignored me.

The senator waved one hand in my general direction, the other raking through his thick hair. “This is a foregone conclusion. We need an action plan. Where’s Elliott?”

Nancy motioned to the kitchen with a dramatic sigh and the senator rose from the armchair and strode from the room. As soon as he was out of sight, my body went pins and needles in one big rush, and not just from the blood that the nurse, doctor, whoever she was, was tamping down with a cotton ball.

“This isn’t possible,” I said. My aunt and uncle shook their heads, mouths agape in helpless agreement. “I don’t understand how this is possible.”

Nancy crouched in front of me, her skirt stretching across her knees.

“Seventeen years ago, your mom worked on a state senate campaign for Senator Cooper. That’s how they met . . . ?”

She paused, head cocked, as though she were hoping I’d continue the story myself.

“A . . . campaign?” I shook my head, starting to squirm with pretty, red-haired Nancy squinting at me, with the voices of the press roaring low outside the front windows. “I’m sorry—that’s not right. My mom hated politics. It’s not her, there’s some confusion, or . . .”

Nancy pressed her lips together, rocking onto her heels. “So you didn’t know. She never told you who your dad was.”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out, just this hiss like white noise. I swallowed hard. “No.”

“There might have been a reason for that, Kate.” Her voice was bedtime-story soft. “You see . . .” She glanced at the door to the kitchen before continuing. “Senator Cooper was married at the time.”

Married. For one hazy second, I thought she meant to my mother. But why would she keep that from . . . ?

Oh.

“No.” I clamped my hand over my mouth, shocked by the sound I’d made, the sound my brain was making, and stood up, away from her, away from this. “That’s not my mom. It isn’t possible—there’s been some misunderstanding.”

My uncle had his head bowed.

“That is not my mother.” I let out a shrill laugh. “Barry, tell—”

Tess sighed. “Tell her. Or I will.”

My uncle stepped forward, hands clenched in his pockets and shoulders stuck in a shrug. “Your mom did work on that campaign, Kate, when she was in college, in Massachusetts. I remember our folks were so glad she was helping the Republicans. And then one day she quit, just like that. Said she was going out to California, didn’t tell us a thing else. We lost touch with her for a couple months and then she told us she was pregnant with you. We asked and asked, but we never could get out of her who the daddy was.”

Neither could I. She’d told me so much about her childhood in the South, about going off to college. How she fell in love with California. But never why she’d moved there. And never, ever, would she speak a word about my father. Deep down, I’d always assumed he was dead, that one day she’d admit it to me. She was so moral, so focused on how she treated others, on the impact she made in the world. The thought had never for a second crossed my mind that my father might be out there. That my mother would have ever been “the other woman.” She’d always said she’d tell me one day, when she felt I was ready. But that day never came.

I don’t know what happened around me or how much time passed, but the next thing I noticed was Nancy taking a call and the senator and his entourage heading for the front door.

“We’ll have a statement for you tomorrow, Tom . . .” Nancy followed the group as if pulled by the tide, phone still pressed to her ear. “That’s all I can tell you, and you’re lucky I even answered on a day like this. My first call tomorrow. Yes.”

Bird of Prey was murmuring into the senator’s ear, just loud enough for me to make out. “Don’t say a thing. Look confident. This is great news. Non-news. A wave, a smile, nothing guilty, and don’t engage.”

The nice bodyguard had his hand on the front doorknob.

“Wait!” Everyone turned to look at me. “You’re leaving?”

And then, it cracked. All the numbness, the strangeness, the sheer lunacy of this day shattered like a frozen pipe, and out came the waterworks.

I covered my face with my hands. I was not supposed to be bawling. Not in front of these strangers, not rocking back and forth, saying, “I don’t understand this, I don’t . . .”

And then an arm was around me, a silk tie brushing against my cheek. Not Uncle, went my brain. I blinked up into the senator’s face. He wasn’t looking at me, just holding me up, patting me like I was a baby, saying, “Shhh . . . there, there. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll figure this thing out.”