The Senator
“The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf.”
— Edwin Hubbel Chapin
TOM HAGAN WATCHES the video of his wife getting into the taxi, noting the tall, wide-shouldered man getting in behind her. Ex-military. You could spot it a mile away. It wasn’t just the build or the haircut. It was the way he held himself, straight, alert, as if he’d prepared his entire life to sense when danger was around the next corner.
He plays it through again, noting the smile of invitation on his wife’s face, then sends a text to the assistant who had messaged him the video.
Find out who he is.
A second later:
On it.
One o’clock in the morning, and he’s wide awake. He sits down at the desk in the middle of the Hart Senate Office Building and pulls a bottle of Glenfiddich from the side drawer. He picks up a glass from the round tray at the corner of the desk and pours himself two inches.
The single malt Scotch burns going down, but he relishes the sensation and the alcohol’s almost immediate ability to smooth the edges of his anger.
Does he have a right to be angry?
By a normal husband’s expectations, yes.
But then he isn’t exactly a normal husband. Hasn’t been for a very long time. And they don’t exactly have a normal marriage.
Although it had started out that way.
They’d met in college, both in law school at the University of Virginia. He’d gone to undergrad on an academic scholarship and used college loans to get his law degree. She’d attended as the daughter of one of the university’s most noted donors, her family name featured on a plaque on one of the academic buildings.
They’d had absolutely nothing in common other than a passion for the club where they’d met, the Virginia Law Democrats. They’d met at a meeting where students had volunteered to work on a pro bono case for an undocumented family facing deportation. Until that point, their lives could not have appeared more different.
He takes another sip of his Scotch, remembering how passionate they’d both been about winning that case, how it had planted the seed for his own desire to get into politics where he could actually make a difference in the laws that affected such things.
And God, she’d been beautiful. Fresh and full of life. He remembers the first time he realized she was flirting with him. How he’d hardly been able to believe it. Because why would a girl born to everything she’d been born to even look at him?
She’d told him later that it was his passion for the law and his desire to right the wrongs that other people accepted as part of life. By other people she meant the family she had rebelled against, the father she hadn’t spoken to in a year.
They were old tobacco money. The South Carolina family home had been built when slaves were still used to harvest the crops. The first time Savannah brought him home with her for a long weekend, he’d felt as if he were walking around in a dream. He’d never met anyone who actually lived in such a setting. The house looked like a set for Gone with the Wind with the enormous white columns spanning its front and the four century-old-oak trees marking its entrance.
Until that weekend, he’d had no idea her family was in politics. She’d never talked about it, and he’d had no reason to ask. As it turned out, her father had been a senator for the state of South Carolina. The seat he himself now held. That weekend had been a defining point in his life, although he certainly hadn’t realized it then. He’d encouraged Savannah to make amends with her family, and he supposed that was what had made her father take note of him when he had apparently been dismissive of the other boyfriends she’d brought home.
They’d actually nearly broken up over her father’s approval of him. But in those early days, there had been something real and hard to find between them. And for the first few years of their marriage, they had stayed hungry for each other. They’d moved back to her hometown of Greenville, opened a law practice with her family’s support and approval. And for a good long while, life had mostly been everything he’d once dreamed about.
He wonders, not for the first time, what would have happened if he’d never gone to work for her father, never agreed to run for the senator’s seat when he’d been forced to retire because of his health. Would he and Savannah have stayed in love? Would he be less tarnished in her eyes?
Maybe.
How many times during his early years in Washington had she accused him of letting it change him? And how many times had he denied it?
She’d been right, of course.
It had changed him.
Power does that.
He’d resisted at first. Tried not to be influenced by the doors that continued to open for him, doors behind which he found things offered to him that he’d never thought to imagine. Temptations he’d proved to weak to resist. Savannah was no fool. She recognized the changes in him. He denied them at first, but eventually, there was no point in denying it. He didn’t want to go back. Not even for her.
He opens the top drawer of his desk, reaches to the back and pulls a cell phone from a hidden compartment at the back. He turns it on, hits Contacts, scrolls down to Hotel California and opens it. He stares at the number, his finger itching to tap the screen. A late-night visit would certainly even the score. But the proprietor frowns on impulsive appointments, prefers a certain restraint in her clients.
And he likes being at the top of her preferred client list. She believes in rewarding those who go by the rules, and the bonuses are worth the good behavior.
So, no, not tonight. Let Savannah have her fun. He’ll make sure the guy doesn’t get a repeat performance.