Anton rubbed his face, feeling a creeping sympathy. “Thought we were supposed to be out of that mess years ago,” he muttered.
She shrugged. “Sometimes I wonder if it will ever end.” She fell silent and he felt compelled to say, “It must be really tough. With the kids and all?”
“He was home for a week about a month ago. That was good. And my parents live twenty minutes away. That’s a huge help.”
“Your parents,” he said. “How are they?” He frowned, remembering something. “Your dad still goes on those overseas trips?”
“Not really. He’s getting old.” Her face brightened. “That’s how I met Mike, you know. He was volunteering at the clinic in Haiti when we were last there. He’s a physician’s assistant.”
“Really? That’s cool,” he said, not knowing what to say but thinking, If you’d married me, you would’ve been the wife of a governor. Instead, here you are, in a suburban home, the mother of two children, the wife of a man who is ten thousand miles away. It was amazing how the currents of destiny had taken them to such different places.
As if she’d read his mind, Carine said, “But enough about me. What about you? You’re not married, right?”
He laughed, but it rang hollow to his ears. “Me? God, no.” He said it as if she’d asked an absurd question.
“But you have someone?” Carine’s voice was gentle but persistent. “A sweetheart? I think I read that in the article?”
“I do.” And then, seeing that she wanted to know more, “Her name’s Katherine. She’s a human rights lawyer. We’ve been going steady now for—Gosh, it’s been over two years.”
“But no wedding bells on the horizon?”
Why was Carine suddenly sounding like his mother? What was it with happily married people that they felt the answer to all of life’s problems was marriage? Did she even know that he was about to become the youngest governor of his state? Wasn’t that accomplishment enough? “Well,” he said, “it’s hard to run a political campaign and plan a wedding at the same time.”
“Oh, but that’s great,” Carine said, misunderstanding him. “Congratulations.”
“Congrats? Jeez, Carine. You’re as bad as my mom.” His grin took the sting out of his words. “I—we—Katherine and I don’t have a date planned, for chrissake. I haven’t even asked her yet.” All the while thinking, Does she even care that sitting in her living room is the man who could be governor?
Carine smiled warmly. “Your mom,” she said. “How is she?” There was not a trace of wariness in her voice, as if she had no recollection of her last disastrous meeting with Delores.
“She’s good. She’s great.”
“And your dad?”
He felt a heaviness in his heart at the thought of David, their earlier conversation coming back to him with vivid ferocity. “He’s okay. A little frail. He’s never been the same since he had his heart attack . . .” He trailed off.
There was a short silence, as if they were both thinking about David and his mortality, and then Anton heard himself saying, “Actually, I’ve had a very strange day today. You’ll never guess why I’m in town.”
“Wasn’t it for a fund-raiser or something?”
He pulled on his right ear. “I wish. No, actually, I came to see . . . her. My birth mom. She lives around here. Out in the country. Just outside of Ronan. Do you know where that is?” He didn’t wait for her response. “It’s kind of funny, really. That both of you—that the two of you, my mom and my former . . . you . . . live less than two hours from each other.” He stopped abruptly and stared at the floor, suddenly teary, the events of the day catching up with him.
“You met her?” Carine said sharply. “Today? Oh, wow. Anton. That’s huge. But why now?”
He forced his eyes upward to meet her gaze. “She wrote to me. There was an article about me, and she saw it. So she wrote to me. Turns out it was just to say hello, like.” He gulped and forced himself to go on, feeling like he was confessing something. “But I didn’t know. I thought that maybe—perhaps, you know, since I was running for governor—I thought that she—”
“You thought she was blackmailing you or something,” Carine interrupted. Her voice was flat.
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, I did. And so I slipped out of town this morning. And met with her.” He heard the tremor in his voice and couldn’t quite account for it. God, he was tired, really tired.
“Oh, Anton.” Carine rose from her chair and came to sit down next to him on the couch. She took his trembling hand in hers. “Oh, baby. What a mess. I could’ve told you she wasn’t after anything.”
His hand felt cold, dead, in hers. “How could you know?”
She turned to face him, and for the first time since he’d gotten here, the look in her eyes reminded him of the old Carine. Not the fiery old Carine who mouthed off whenever he was being hopelessly conventional, but the Carine who sometimes looked . . . disappointed in him. “I just know,” she said at last. “How could she hurt you? How could a poor black woman living in rural Georgia go up against . . . someone like you?”
He flinched, hearing what Carine was too polite to say: To Juanita Vesper, Anton Coleman may as well be a powerful white man. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have necessarily registered as an insult, but today, his feelings bruised by David’s deceit, he resented the association. “Well,” he said. “Paula Jones was a nobody, too. But she almost destroyed a president.”
Carine’s eyes were watchful, her voice gentle. “Yes. But Paula Jones wasn’t Bill Clinton’s mother. A mom would never deliberately hurt her child, Anton.”
He sat still, blinking back the tears that burned in his eyes. “You’re right. Turns out I misread the situation.”
Carine squeezed his hand. “So it went okay? The visit? I can’t even imagine what that would feel like—for either one of you. How many years had it been?”
How many years? Too many. “I was nine when I last saw her,” he said. “So it’s been a long time.”
“And how was the reunion?”
He looked back at her, his brain processing her question, unsure how to answer. Had it gone okay? It had, in fact. He had liked Juanita, and none of his fears about her had been realized. But he had learned something about David that had shaken him to his roots, that had made his whole life with the Colemans seem as if it had been built on someone else’s back. Carine was looking at him, expecting his answer, when his phone rang. The ring sounded loud in the silent room, and as if on cue, he heard a tiny voice call from the upstairs bedroom, “Mom?” He mouthed an apology to Carine as he silenced the phone and saw that it was Katherine and that it was past eleven-thirty. “I have to take this,” he whispered, getting onto his feet. “Hi, baby,” he said.
“Anton? Where the hell are you?” Katherine’s voice sounded close, as if she were in the room with him.