“It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”
Zach Turner and his wife settled on the couch after a home-cooked dinner, after they put their son Colt to bed. Kymbra Turner was already cozy in her flannel pajamas and was ready to settle in for the night with Zach to watch the election returns. Zach had prepared her that the deciding results might not be apparent until deep into the night.
By 10:30, Zach became so agitated that he couldn’t sit still.
“Something ain’t right,” he told Kymbra as she struggled to stay awake. She had chased after Colt all day, along with housework, and the election results were not enough to overcome her fatigue.
“Damn, they are starting to call it,” Zach said in a distressed voice.
Kymbra had just fallen asleep, but Zach’s tone shocked her awake.
Zach scooted up onto the edge of the couch, clicking the remote to check all the major election coverage on Fox, CNN, ABC and others.
“I’m telling you, this stinks,” he growled.
“Yes, it does, baby,” said Kymbra, knowing how disappointed he was as she played with his short-cropped hair.
“Not for the reasons you think, sweetheart. She has either got to be the luckiest candidate in history or something else is going on here. I mean, heck, she was down in almost every swing state, some with sixty or seventy percent of the precincts already reporting. That just doesn’t happen.”
“Well, it did this time. Zach, you can’t get yourself so worked up,” she said soothingly, knowing that her protests about his anger would likely be ignored.
Zach’s cell phone rang.
“Turner,” he answered. He never said “hello.” He looked at his watch as he listened for a few seconds. “Right. 0700 at the Bunker.”
Kymbra knew it was useless to protest, but tried anyway. “Baby, try not to get so worked up. I can see your mind already working overtime. What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“I just don’t understand this. It doesn’t look right. The odds of that happening like it just went down is astronomical, yet everyone is praising Bartlett for the great comeback. I don’t buy it,” he said as he stood up and began to pace around the living room.
“You’re scaring me… Zach, there’s nothing you can do.”
“It ain’t right. Somebody has to look into this. Not one pundit on TV said a damned thing about the odds of this happening. Something happened. I don’t know what happened, but I don’t trust it one damned bit.”
“My hero,” she said, “always taking on the weight of the world at any opportunity he can.” She stood and put her arms around him, kissing him on the cheek, partly in genuine admiration and partly to calm him.
“I can’t be the only one who sees this,” he kept saying.
“Come to bed, baby. I’ll settle you down,” offered Kymbra in the sexiest voice she could offer.
“I can’t take this. I’ve got to find out. I’ve got to do something.”
As they crawled in bed, Kymbra snuggled up to Zach and started kissing him slowly, all over. She was determined to put him at ease.
He tried his best to get into their lovemaking, but his mind wandered at times. Shortly afterward, Kymbra fell asleep. Zach quietly got up from bed and went back into the living room where he turned the election coverage back on.
“This stinks. I don’t trust it,” he murmured to himself.
Finally, Zach went back to bed, crawling carefully under the covers so as not to wake Kymbra. But he couldn’t sleep; as he lay on the pillow, his brain ran in circles.
Staring at the ceiling, he continued to rerun the election in his head as he tried to discount the deep nagging feeling that the election had possibly been stolen somehow―some way.