At seven thirty that night, I’m parked outside a firehouse in Elsmere. I need sleep, and I can tell that my patience is nothing more than a spark. It will disappear in an instant; then I will flame up. So I stop, standing in the middle of the large parking lot behind the building. The wind has picked up and with it a deep chill. My hands are in my pockets. I bring them together, closing the jacket across my chest.
The lot is fairly full, a ton of pickups. Most are nicer than mine, though. I see her Jetta near the front. She would have gotten here early for setup. I keep looking until I see my brother’s Mustang. It’s a 2016 Ford Mustang Shelby 350, blue with a black stripe. It had to cost him around sixty thousand dollars. He said he wanted a BMW but needed to buy American. It would make him more relatable, which I think is utter horse crap, personally. To me, sixty grand is sixty grand.
A couple, both gray-haired and stooped, enter the building as I stand there in the cold. A warm yellow glow pours out, along with the sound of a large and loud crowd. The smell is strong enough for me to picture the plastic mugs of lukewarm beer and thinly sliced roast beef stewing in its own juices.
“Liam, is that you?” someone says behind me.
I turn and see one of my brother’s campaign staff. He’s a friend of mine, too. Has been for years. In fact, I think he likes me better than Drew, but he would never admit that. Not even to me.
“Hey, Bob, long time. Thought I’d see you at the coffee today.”
Bob looks like the prototypical government employee. He is in his late fifties, with thin, curly slate hair and spreading male pattern baldness. He wears V-neck sweaters all the time and out-of-date tortoiseshell glasses. He single-handedly keeps Dockers in business, but I like the guy. He makes me laugh, even when I don’t want to.
“Ha! That Lauren never invites us old guys. Am I right?” His eyebrows rise and I know I’m in for a corny joke. “Hey, I was thinking about you the other day. That day it was raining, you know. Yeah, I looked under a rock, and I thought, ‘Where’s that Liam been?’”
“Hilarious,” I say, but I laugh. For some reason, I get a kick out of it.
He takes a little bow. “Well, thank you.” He cups my shoulder and almost forces me to start moving toward the door. “I assume we’ll be seeing you more now that the campaign is ramping up. No one pounds a sign like you, buddy.”
“You mean I’m the one with the pickup,” I say.
Bob waves a hand in a looping gesture over the parking lot. “You’re not the only one.”
“Yeah, but you can’t fit much in the trunk of my brother’s car.”
“Does it even have a trunk?”
Bob cracks himself up. It is a great sound, deep and rolling and strangely nostalgic, like the ocean or an old movie. I glance at him and I realize that I can’t for the life of me remember his last name.
“Is that thing infected?” he asks.
“What?” I ask, before realizing I am scratching the tattoo on my forearm again. “No. It’s fine.”
“Just noticed you’ve been worrying on it a lot lately. You okay?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You sure you okay?”
I laugh it off. “Of course I am. Yeah. Why?”
His eyes squint behind those thick glasses. “I don’t know. I just . . . You two getting along?”
“Me and Drew?”
“Yeah.”
I look away. “Sure. Yeah. Of course.”
“Like always, right,” Bob says, laughing again. But this time I don’t like the sound as much.
I STAND AGAINST the far wall and watch her. Not Lauren. She’s somewhere in the room. The air stinks of too many people and too much drink, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t feel like thinking about Lauren right now. Instead, I push off the wall and make my way toward Patsy.
She shines among this crowd of unionized men and hard-eyed women. Where the glaring lights hanging from the high ceiling wash everyone out in an overabundance of detail, they only make her light hair shine like silver. Her neck is so long, so straight, that she can look over the three people grouped around her. Her eyes are raw, like the sky just as the sun has fully set. Yet it is her smile, given so freely as I watch, that draws my eyes, tugs at my chest. Not in its beauty, not in her perfect teeth, not in her warmth. Something else, something darker, something only I can see.
Patsy sees me coming. Her eyes shift to me and then back to the man speaking to her. He is the state representative for this district, a retired auto worker, shorter than my brother’s wife but so sturdy that he looks rooted into the floor like a tree stump. I can hear him from a few steps away.
“She can’t stop talking about your speech at the United Way luncheon last week. Inspiring. That’s what I keep hearing. All the women were so impressed. They keep saying that they wished it was you running for governor.”
Patsy laughs politely. “I think we have a pretty good candidate fielding that one already.”
“Sure, yeah,” he says. “But he’s lucky to have you, that husband of yours. He’s walking a tight line, if you know what I mean, with all those young people he has working for him. Delaware’s a small place. We do things a certain way. Your daddy knows that, doesn’t he? He should talk some sense into your husband. That young man’s charming smile isn’t going to be enough. Let’s be honest, half the reason the party okayed Drew’s run is because of who his father-in-law is. Great man. Great.”
Patsy flares that smile again. I pause, awkwardly, to give her a chance to answer a new version of the same comment Representative Marks makes every time I see him, to anyone associated with Drew who will listen.
“I’ll tell him you think that. In fact, I told him I was coming tonight and he asked me to say hi to you—and you, too, Mrs. Marks. I think he misses it all.”
Marks nods with soberness that borders on bravado. “It hasn’t been the same since he decided to retire from public office. Is he well?”
“He’s fighting,” Patsy says. “He doesn’t know any other way.”
Marks’s wife, I forget her name, gives Patsy a hug. After, Marks puts out a hand and she places hers atop it. The contrast in their texture is mesmerizing.
“He’s a lucky man,” Marks says. “Brennan is. And give your father our best.”
I step up to the conversation. Marks turns and looks up at me.
“Liam. That brother of yours finally got you to come out again.”
We shake hands. I nod to his wife.
“He needs my truck,” I say with a smile.
Marks laughs like he’s sitting in someone’s basement playing poker. Patsy turns away, scanning the crowd.
“That’s why I like you. Real as the morning. Keep that brother of yours straight. Got it?”
“Sure,” I say. “But that’s what most people say to him, about me.”
Marks nods. “Yeah, it probably is.”
He and his wife walk away, leaving Patsy and me alone. We stand next to each other without speaking. She checks out the crowd again, looking for Drew.
“Does he know you’re here?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Have you talked to him?”
“Not today.”
She looks at me. The intimate smile is gone, replaced with something different, more practiced. Seeing the change, I’m caught off-balance, like my head is traveling through time.
“Does he ever talk about our mother?” I ask.
“No,” she says softly.
I suddenly feel light-headed.
“You remind me of her . . . sometimes.”
Patsy looks away quickly. I shouldn’t have said that. I know she wants me to move on. She has work to do, candidate’s wife that she is. That label is such a joke, though. And everyone knows it. A year before, she had been running a nonprofit for battered women. The local magazine, Delaware Today, had done a huge exposé on her when she stepped down to run Drew’s campaign. That wasn’t too surprising. A woman who had been dubbed an “under thirty person to watch,” the daughter of one of the most respected politicians in the state, running her husband’s gubernatorial campaign. Stories don’t get more intriguing than that.
A lot can change in a year. People whisper about it. Try to figure it out. But she plays the part well: the good wife, hanging at my brother’s side. That work, however, is not the only reason she wants to move on. It’s more than that. My proximity makes her nervous, but I can’t let it go. It almost feels like an addiction. Like it can take over my actions. I can’t give it up just yet. I want a little bit more.
“How are you?” I ask.
“Good,” she says, not looking at me. “I . . .”
Something stops her midsentence. She takes the slightest of steps backwards. I follow her eyes and see him, Drew. He’s staring at us. Then he waves Patsy over. Her smile returns and she hurries away from me without saying good-bye.
AS THE NIGHT drags on, I can’t stop watching Patsy. Everything about her is polished and smooth, like one of those worry stones. She glides among the people, from one conversation to another, and everyone watches her go. She is so distracting that I fail to see him coming over.
“Really, Liam?” my brother asks.
I startle, which really pisses me off. My brother and I are the same height. I look him up and down, the perfectly pressed and tailored pants, the red tie and white shirt, the hair slicked back. I showed up in a pair of jeans and a collared shirt, but I never took off my army jacket or gray hoodie. My hair is longer, darker, and looks like I used my fingers as a comb. His eyes are dark, almost black, and mine are lighter, closer to slate. But we share a blocky Irish face.
“What?” I ask, my voice weaker than I intended it to be.
He checks out the crowd, nodding and smiling at the people there, all of whom paid fifty dollars to his campaign for the privilege of attending. He looks like some king holding court. I have to turn my head to keep from saying something stupid.
“The numbers are still bad,” Drew says.
I look at him. “Okay.”
“Don’t act like it doesn’t matter to you.”
I see Bob. His eyes catch mine and he walks toward us.
“Hi, boss,” he says. “Did Karen get you the numbers?”
Drew’s expression changes. A smile appears on his face as he nods and pats the older man on the shoulder.
“How are you holding up? Patsy wanted to make sure you say yes to our dinner invite. A happy wife is a happy life, right?”
Bob laughs. “Definitely, as long as you’re not cooking.”
“Hey,” my brother says, charmingly hurt.
“Just kidding, boss. Back to the numbers, though. It’s not as bad as it looks. In the city you’re dead even.”
“With a Republican,” Drew says, slowly shaking his head.
“Well, yeah. But remember what we talked about. He’s an incumbent. And he’s been around for a long time. As we ramp up and more people see you, things will change. I was talking to Lauren about the new messaging, about you two losing your parents and how you took care of Liam. It’s testing well with fund-raisers.”
“You mean with the old schoolers.”
“They’re important, Drew.”
“I know. Hopefully, my father-in-law can help there,” Drew says.
“We’ll see. Lauren mentioned that the two of you were working on something. Something viral, she said. Hope it’s not catching!” He laughs. My brother does, too. Bob puts an arm around me. “Plus, we have the best signpost digger in the state working for us.”
That gets Drew genuinely laughing, harder than it should. My cheeks turn red. Bob seems to notice my reaction. I can see him rethink what he just said, and how my brother took it.
“Not to mention,” Bob adds, “the unions love this guy. I was just talking to the head of the building trades and he was going on about how real Liam is. They love that. Real men.”
“It’s all good,” I say.
Drew just stares for a second before speaking. “Can you do me a favor? Can you have Karen call that nonprofit on Orange, the one that helps orphans?”
“Children and Families First?” Bob asks.
“Sure,” Drew says. “See if they have an event in the next couple of days that I can attend. It’d be a good chance to see how it plays.”
“Karen?” Bob asks. “Not Lauren?”
Drew shakes his head. “I have Lauren working on something else.”
“Oh, yeah. The virus. I forgot.”
“And, Bob, I want you getting more involved in our social media.”
Bob nods. “I’ll see what I can do. You ever think about making wacky YouTube videos?”
I laugh. When Drew does, I can tell it’s fake, but Bob has no clue. He just thinks everything is fun and games. That everything is just great.
“Gotta go,” he says, walking away with a huge smile on his face.
I turn to Drew. He’s watching Bob. I have so much to say to him. The words feel like the tide rising inside me, like if I stand here for another minute, there won’t be any stopping them. In that moment, I see Lauren Branch. She is across the room but watching the two of us. She heads toward us.
“I have to go.”
I take a step but his hand falls on my shoulder, fingers pressing into the fabric of my jacket. I will not turn. I will not look at him.
“Should I be worried about you?” he asks.
I pull away without answering. Because if I did, it would bring with it a tidal wave of pain.