“Clay, I—”
“Look at what’s at stake here. You can do more good to more people if you get reelected. This was a blip—a misstep. Everybody in public life has ’em. You’re luckier than most—yours wasn’t public.”
Mom’s ringtone sounds. “It’s Malcolm from the office,” she says. “I’d better take it.”
“Hold on,” Clay says. “Listen to yourself, sugar. Listen. Your first thought is for your duty. Right in the middle of a personal crisis. You really want to deprive people of that dedication? Think about it. Is that the right thing to do?”
I hear the tap of Mom’s heels moving into her office, and I start to edge back up the stairs.
“Samantha,” Clay says quietly. “I know you’re there.”
I freeze. He can’t know. The stairs are carpeted, I’m barefoot.
“You’re reflected in the hall mirror.”
“I was just…thirsty and I…”
“Heard all that,” Clay concludes.
“I didn’t…” My voice trails off.
He comes around the corner of the stairs, leaning against the stairway wall, arms folded, a casual stance, but there’s something unnaturally still about him.
“I didn’t come here by chance,” he tells me softly. He’s backlit by the kitchen light and I can’t quite make out his face. “I’d heard about your mother. Your mama…she’s good, Samantha. The party’s interested. She’s got the whole package. Looks, style, substance…she could be big. National. Easy.”
“But—” I say. “She hit him, didn’t she?” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. He turns slightly and now I can see him better. I want so much for surprise or confusion to cross his face. But they aren’t there, just that focused, intent look, a little grimmer now.
“An accident.”
“Does that matter? Mr. Garrett’s still hurt. Badly. And they don’t have medical insurance and they’re already broke and—”
“That’s sad,” Clay says. “Really. Good people struggle. Life’s not fair. But there are people who can change things, who are important. Your mother’s one of them. I know you’re close to those Garretts. But think about the big picture here, Samantha.”
In my head I see Mr. Garrett patiently training Jase, coming up behind Mrs. Garrett in the kitchen, dropping a kiss on her shoulder, making me feel welcome, reaching out to Tim, scooping up the sleepy George, his face in the shifting light of the fireworks, solid and capable, clicking his pen and rubbing his eyes over accounts at the store. “They are the big picture.”
“When you’re seventeen with your hormones in a riot, maybe.” He laughs softly. “I know that seems like the whole world now.”
“It’s not about that,” I argue. “Mom did something wrong. You know it. I know it. Something that hurt someone seriously. And—”
Clay sits down on the steps, tilts his head back against the wall, tolerant, almost amused. “Shouldn’t your first concern be for your own mother? You know how hard she works at this job. How much it means to her. Could you really live with yourself if you took that away?”
His voice gets softer. “You and me and your mama. We’re the only three people in the whole world who know about this. You start talking, you tell that family and everyone will know. It’ll be in the papers, on the news—might even go national. You wouldn’t be the privileged princess in her perfect world anymore. You’d be the daughter of a criminal. How would that feel?”
Bile burns the back of my throat. “I’m not a princess,” I say.
“Of course you are,” Clay responds evenly. He waves his hand, indicating the big living room, elegant furnishings, expensive artwork. “You’ve always been one, so you think it’s normal. But everything you have—everything you are—comes from your mama. From her family money and her hard work. Fine way to pay her back.”
“Couldn’t she just—explain—I mean—come forward and—”
“You can’t talk your way out of leaving the scene of an accident you’ve caused, Samantha. Especially if you’re in public office. Not even Teddy Kennedy managed that, in case you haven’t heard. This would ruin your mother’s life. And yours. And, just to put it on a level you can understand, I don’t think it would do much for your romance either. I’m not sure your fella would really want to be dating the daughter of the woman who crippled his dad.”
The words drop from Clay’s mouth so easily, and I picture trying to tell Jase what happened, how he’d look at me, remembering his face in the waiting room at the hospital, the lost expression in his eyes. He’d hate me. What kind of a person could do that? he’d asked. How can I possibly answer: “My own mother.”
Clay’s calm face wavers through the tears that have rushed to my eyes. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a cloth handkerchief and hands it to me.
“This isn’t the end of the world,” he says gently. “Just one boy, one summer. But I’ll tell you something I’ve learned in my time, Samantha. Family is everything.”
Leaving scene of accident: One of most serious felonies in the state of Connecticut. Up to ten years of prison time and 10,000 dollars fine. I stare at the information I’ve hunted for online until the stark black words mallet against my eyeballs.
What would happen if Mom went to jail for a decade? Tracy’d have college, then she’d be off, somewhere…But where would I go? It’s not as if I can throw myself on the mercy of my father. Since he didn’t stick around for me to be born, I’m guessing he wouldn’t be thrilled to have me show up on his doorstep as a teenager.
But Mr. Garrett…It was Jase’s night at the hospital tonight. He called me to say, “Dad’s awake, and that’s good, and he recognized us. But now he’s got something called ‘deep vein thrombosis’ and they can’t give him drugs for it because of the head thing. They don’t want bleeding into his brain. I listen to the medical jargon…don’t get why they don’t just say it in English. Maybe because it’s so damn scary.”
I can’t tell him. I can’t. What can I do? Be there for them is vague and meaningless. Like a T-shirt slogan or a bumper sticker making a statement that never needs to be backed up with action.
I can babysit. All the time. For free. I can…
What? Pay the hospital bills? I pull my savings book from my desk drawer, scanning the numbers I’ve saved working, and hardly spent, in the last three summers: $4,532.27. That’ll probably cover some Band-Aids and aspirin. Even if I could find a way to give it to them without them knowing.
I spend the next few hours coming up with ways. An envelope in the mailbox “from a sympathetic friend.” Slipping money into the cash register at the store. Forging documents indicating the Garretts have won the lottery; lost a sick, elderly, unpleasant, unknown relative.…
Dawn comes without any brilliant ideas. So I do the least I can do, the only thing I can think of…run across the yard, around our fence, flip-flops slapping up the drive, let myself in with the key the Garretts keep under the kiddie pool, sharp and jagged, nearly buried in the too-long grass.
I make coffee. I pull out cereal boxes. I try to make sense of the clutter on the kitchen table. I’m wondering who’s here and whether to go up to Jase’s room when the screen door slams and he walks in, rubbing his eyes, then starting at the sight of me.
“Training?” I ask, although at a second glance he looks too tidy for that.
“Paper route. Do you know there’s actually a guy on Mack Lane who waits to catch the paper every morning when I throw it? He yells if I’m five minutes late. What’re you doing here, Sam? Not”—he comes up next to me, dipping his head to my shoulder—“that I’m not glad to see you.”
I wave at the table. “Just thought I’d get a head start. Didn’t know if your mom was home or…”
Jase yawns. “Nope. I stopped on my way back. She was going to stay at the hospital all day today. Alice rented that pump thing.” He flushes. “You know, for Patsy. Anyway, so she’s taken care of. Mom didn’t want to leave Dad since he was finally talking.”
“Does he—remember anything?” If he does, he can’t have told Jase, whose open, expressive face never holds a thought back.
“Zip.” He opens the fridge, pulls out milk, drinks directly from the plastic gallon. “Only being out there, after a meeting, deciding to walk home for some fresh air, thinking it was going to rain, then waking up with tubes everywhere.”
Is it the disloyal or the loyal part of me that’s so relieved?
Jase lifts his hands over his head, bending from one side to another, stretching, closing his eyes. Very softly, almost under his breath, he says, “Mom’s pregnant.”
“What?”
“I don’t know for sure. I mean, not exactly the right timing for the announcement, huh? But I’m pretty sure. She’s been sick in the mornings, chugging Gatorade…let’s just say I know the signs.”
“Wow,” I say, sitting down hard in one of the kitchen chairs.
“It’s a good thing, right? I should be glad. I’ve always been glad before, but…”
“Not exactly the right timing,” I echo.
“I feel so damn guilty sometimes, Sam, lately, for the things I find myself thinking.”
For some reason, well as we know each other, I’ve never thought about Jase feeling things like guilt. He just seems too healthy, too balanced for that.
“You know how much those people piss me off,” he continues, still in such a low voice, as though he doesn’t even want to hear what he’s saying. “The ones who come up to Mom in the supermarket or wherever and tell her there’s such a thing as birth control. Or this a**hole guy who fixed the generator at the store last month. When Dad asked him if he could pay in installments, the guy said, ‘Didn’t you know you’d be broke all the time if you had so many kids?’ I wanted to deck him. But…sometimes I think that too. I wonder why my parents didn’t ever…imagine…what having another kid would mean each of us not having. I hate myself for it. But I think it.”
I take his face in my hands, holding tight. “You can’t hate yourself.”
“I do. It’s just wrong. Like, who would I want to do without? Harry? Patsy? Andy? None of them…but…but Samantha, I’m only kid number three and there’s already no money for college. What’s gonna happen when we get to George?”
I think of George’s somber face bent over his animal books, of all the facts at his fingertips. “George is like his own college,” I say. “Garrett U.”
Jase laughs. “Yeah. You’re right. But…I’m not like that. I want to go to college. I want to be…good enough.” He pauses. “For you. Not that guy from the quote-unquote wrong side of the tracks, Samantha.”