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Authors: Ellen Emerson White

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BOOK: The President's Daughter
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“I feel like making dinner,” she said, standing up yet again. “Who wants dinner?”
Cooked by her mother? No one with any damn sense.
“Kate,” Meg's father said, “we were going to send out—”
“I feel like it,” she said, testily. “How about omelets? We all like omelets.”
“I hate omelets,” Steven muttered.
“You love omelets,” their father said, cuffing him.
“Better not have any vegetable crap in them,” Steven said, and their father cuffed him again.
So, they all went out to the kitchen, Meg returning to her orange juice and graham crackers, consciously ignoring the sounds of laughter and ring-tones in the living room. And she didn't
actually
smell completely-forbidden cigar smoke; it was a figment of her imagination. The Candidate was glum and cranky and pessimistic, so, by God, she was going to be, too.
“Oh, great.” Her mother took the egg carton out of the refrigerator. “We only have two stupid eggs. How can I make omelets with only two stupid eggs?”
“We could go out and get some more stupid eggs,” Meg said.
Steven laughed. “Yeah, the smart ones don't get caught.”
Their father cuffed them both, then gave Meg some money. “Go find Frank, and have him send someone out for some intelligent eggs.”
“If he can catch them!” Steven shouted after her.
Someone dutifully ran out and got eggs, and her mother threw together soggy vegetable omelets. The frenetic burst of cooking only made her more tense, and she didn't eat hers, jittering around the room, instead. Meg wasn't hungry either, but she pretended to eat, and when Steven scraped his vegetables onto her plate, she stuffed them into her omelet so no one would notice.
“Maybe,” her mother gulped some coffee, “maybe I'll go brush my teeth. Yes. I think I'll—”
Glen came in and, damn it, he
did
smell like cigars. “Kate. The returns are starting to come in.”
Because the Senator had specifically said that she no longer wanted to hear
anything
speculative, or listen to spouting about trends or internal polling numbers.
Her mother rushed out of the kitchen, mug in hand, and they all followed her, leaving the omelets behind.
“Mom's like, flipped out,” Steven said.
Meg nodded. It was quite disconcerting, really.
The numbers on the screen gave Mr. Griffin an early lead.
“Well, that's it.” Her mother swigged some coffee, very grim. “I knew I didn't have a chance. Who wants to be President, anyway?”
“Katie, you knew you weren't going to do well in South Carolina,” Meg's father said.
Her mother nodded. “Terrific. They hate me in South Carolina.”
“Katie—” he started.
“Don't call me that! You make me sound like a poodle!” She blinked, as though surprised by the outburst, and put down her coffee. “I'm going to go brush my teeth.”
“How long is this going to take, do you think?” Meg asked, once she had left.
Her father looked very tired. “Probably all night.”
Official results continued trickling in, none of them too unexpected—especially her mother's early numbers in the Northeast. Every hour or so, the press pool was allowed to come inside to ask questions and take pictures and film the Candidate and Her Happy Family—even though they all started scowling and bickering again as soon as the media left.
Meg sat in a rocking chair by the fireplace, drinking a Coke and wishing she could go upstairs and read
Tennis Magazine
or something. Or play tennis, even better.
“And, with most of the polls still open,” a commentator was saying, “it's still too early to—”
“Oh, for God's sake,” her mother said. “Someone change the channel.”
Her father clicked to one of the networks—which concurred with the first channel. One minute, her mother would be ahead; the next, Mr. Griffin would be in the lead.
“Voter turnout so far has been much higher than predicted,” an
anchorman remarked, “and we have a live report from outside a polling center in Trenton, New Jersey. Susan?”
“Thank you,” a woman with a microphone said. “This is Susan Gaines, and I'm standing outside the—”
“They hate me in Trenton,” her mother said, and changed the channel again.
This time, they heard a male voice saying, “—too close to call,” and her mother shuddered, and moved on to yet another channel.
“Now, let's go to our correspondent in Chicago,” the lead anchor was saying. “Take it, Bill.”
“Boring, boring, boring.” Her mother gritted her teeth. “They hate me in Chicago.”
Someone knocked on the door. “Meghan, you have a telephone call.”
Thank God. Meg jumped up. “I'll take it upstairs.” She didn't pick up, until she was in her room, with the door closed. “Hello?”
“How's it going?” Beth asked.
Meg groaned.
“I don't know,” Beth said. “She's doing pretty well, so far.”
Meg sighed. “Everyone's in really bad moods here.” Well, with the exception of the campaign staff—about which she was still not permitting herself to think. “Mom, especially.”
“Sounds like you are, too,” Beth said.
And how.
“Whoa,” Beth said. “She just got a whole bunch in Virginia.”
“Really?” Meg frowned. The last she'd heard, Griffin was expected to take Virginia by two or three percentage points. “I'm not sure if that's good or not. I mean, some states, she's
supposed
to win.”
Beth laughed.
“What's so funny?” Meg asked uneasily.
“I don't know,” Beth said. “I guess this is just a pretty weird conversation.”
Well, yeah, it probably was, wasn't it?
“If she wins, are you blowing off school tomorrow?” Beth asked.
If her mother won, she would be too busy inhaling smelling salts and lying on the floor with a cool cloth on her forehead. “Either way, I'm blowing off school,” Meg said.
Beth laughed again. “No, if she wins, you have to come in and swagger around a lot. That way—”
“Hello?” someone asked, clicking on.
Meg sighed. God forbid she be able to have a private conversation—in her own bedroom. “I'm kind of on the phone.”
“Oh. Sorry.” The person clicked off.
“Sounds like you have to hang up,” Beth said.
Meg nodded. “Yeah. I should probably get downstairs, anyway. My father's heavily into us doing togetherness.”
“Sounds fun,” Beth said.
Yeah, so far it had been a complete blast.
Back downstairs, she found her family watching some dumb space movie involving lasers and jet-packs and what seemed like a very complicated battle sequence. The Candidate's Family being devil-may-care and embracing pop culture.
Actually, they
did
look somewhat more relaxed.
“You know,” her mother said, as one of the characters skillfully blew up several enemy fighters, and then swooped off deeper into the galaxy. “If I could do that, I would have won. People would have been afraid not to vote for me.”
“You haven't lost yet,” Meg's father said, putting a calming hand on hers.
“You mean, you think I'm going to?” She jerked her hand free. “Thanks a lot. I bet you didn't even vote for me.”
“Sorry.” He took her hand back. “I probably should have.”
Neal was completely mesmerized by the movie, his mouth literally hanging open, but Meg and Steven laughed, and her mother actually cracked a smile.
The mood in the room was sort of happy for a minute, but then Glen stuck his head in.
“Kate, New York's official,” he said.
Her mother instantly flicked over to CNN, which made Neal leap out of his chair and shout, “Hey!”
“—and New Jersey also seems to be going with the Senator,” one of the anchors was saying, as the huge map graphic on screen added another blue state to the tally.
Meg grinned. “I thought they hated you in Trenton.”
Her mother just looked nervous. “I did, too.”
As more and more votes came in—and more state polling places closed—her mother started to pull ahead.
“You're winning, Mommy!” Neal bounced delightedly in his chair, no longer upset about missing the end of the space movie. “Look, you're winning!”
She shook her head. “We haven't heard Texas. Texas is going to be big. And California. We won't hear California for hours, and—”
“Improbably,” a pundit was saying, “Georgia still seems to be in play. Certainly, none of us ever imagined—”
Her parents exchanged quick nervous looks, and Meg felt her stomach start churning around. Good thing she hadn't eaten dinner. A few more states like Georgia, and her mother might—Meg drank some of her Coke, which was now flat, as well as warm.
There was a knock on the door, and Glen came back in, sitting down next to her mother.
“The internals were right,” he said quietly. “You've got Missouri.”
Missouri, the notorious bellwether state.
Her mother gulped coffee. “I know, I was watching.”
“No way should you have taken Missouri,” he said.
Meg had to swallow, hard. This was starting to get serious.
“And the word we're getting is that they're about to call Florida,” Glen said.
Florida?
Christ almighty.
“Texas is going to be bad,” her mother said, a visible shudder jerking through her body. “He'll get me three-to-one in Texas.”
Glen just looked at her.
And the electoral map on the television was surprisingly blue. Shockingly blue.
Alarmingly
blue.
“It's early,” her mother said finally, nervously. “It doesn't mean anything.”
Except that the overall trend was in her favor.
Strongly
in her favor.
“—and preliminary returns from Illinois are giving Powers an overwhelming majority of the votes,” one of the anchors said. “It's still too early to project a winner, but we're getting closer to—”
Her mother sat down, trembling. “Maybe—maybe running wasn't such a great idea. Maybe,” she was watching her hands shake, “maybe I don't want to be—”
Glen changed the channel and they heard “we're now ready to call Wisconsin for Senator Powers, and we're also expecting—”
“Maybe,” her mother got up, heading for the door, “maybe I'll just go upstairs for a while.”
Glen switched to another station, where someone was saying, “At this point, I think we're just waiting for the polls on the West Coast to close before we—”
Her mother came back and then sat down, hands tight in her lap.
“—truly an unprecedented—” yet another pundit was saying.
Her mother was going to win. She was actually going to win. Meg watched more numbers go up, feeling dizzy.
Glen moved to the door. “I'll let you all have some time alone together. Then, we can head downtown.”
Meg concentrated on not listening—to anything. Her
mother
was going to be President. The thing that had never seemed plausible, that she had always dreaded, was now going to—or about to—or had already—
“—tentatively prepared to put Texas in Representative Griffin's column,” an anchorperson said, “but Powers continues to run very strongly in urban—”
Her mother clicked channels, stopping at a soccer game. “Ah. My favorite.”
Yeah, right. Her mother often seemed to enjoy baseball, and could be convinced to root for the Patriots now and again, but on the whole, she had never particularly been inclined to watch sports.
Gradually, the tentatively relaxed feeling came back as they watched the game, Meg
almost
able to convince herself that this was any old evening—despite the fact that she could hear almost non-stop shouts of excitement coming from the part of the house where Glen and the others had gathered.
She looked around the room, seeing that none of them were really focused on the soccer game. Her father was holding Neal on his lap, being told some long, involved story. Steven was lying on the floor, patting Kirby. Her mother was the only one who seemed to be paying attention to the television, leaning back in her chair, almost—not quite—slouching. Her shoulders were shaking, and Meg realized, horrified, that she was crying.
BOOK: The President's Daughter
3.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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