Chapter Two
On the ride to my campaign headquarters, which is now my transition headquarters, I have a few minutes to myself to…reflect.
I never knew my father. Momma was only two months pregnant with me when he died in a boating accident. He never knew he was about to become a father. I was a late baby, and Momma was forty-five when she had me.
But we did okay. She was an attorney, and I wasn’t even two years old yet when she made her first run at public office in Tallahassee, for the city commission, followed by county commission when I was six. I was nine when she ran for the Florida Senate the first time.
We were a team.
While I envied kids who had dads, I never really felt like I was lacking anything growing up. Momma had lots of friends and coworkers, and they all adopted us. We never spent a holiday alone, always had places to go, or people to come over to spend the day with us. I had adopted aunts and uncles all over, attorneys, judges, lawmakers, and other political bigwigs.
At the time, this was normal, to me. I felt loved.
Honestly? I really didn’t have a lot of friends my age. Or any friends my age, come to think about it. I’m precocious and skip several grades in elementary school. I spend my teens helping research court cases for pro bono legal work for appeals, and in high school I wrote book reports on bills that passed the state legislature, just because I’m sort of a smart-ass and didn’t like one of my English teachers who said they didn’t vote for my mom.
Yes, the principal ruled my teacher had to allow the reports when it wasn’t a specifically assigned book. And the teacher wasn’t allowed to let the other kids have free choice in books and then assign me a specific one.
The principal later admitted to me in private that she voted for Momma.
Twice.
By seventeen, I’m already finishing my third year of college, with my eye on a law degree.
I graduate from law school at nineteen and pass the Florida Bar Examination on the first try. Fortunately, their minimum age is eighteen, so I’m good there. Unfortunately, some of the higher offices I want to run for have minimum age requirements. For example, state rep is twenty-one. US senator is thirty.
Thirty-five to run for president.
Momma encouraged my studies. She told me to never be ashamed of my goals, to never explain myself, to never apologize for going after what I wanted in life, as long as I stayed within the law and didn’t deliberately set out to hurt someone else in the process. To hold trusts when I promised to, and to protect the people who trusted me.
To fearlessly pursue what I want, and to stay true to myself in the process.
I worked my ass off. I knew from when I was a kid and old enough to understand what my mother did for a living, both being an attorney as well as the solemn duty of being an elected official, that I wanted to be president.
The first time I announced that, according to her, I was eight.
I remember Momma going really quiet and turning to me. She didn’t smile, didn’t laugh, didn’t humor me. She looked at me, and I’ll never forget what she said.
“You do that, then, Shae. You work hard, you don’t let people hold you back or stand in your way, and you don’t apologize for wanting it. Because anyone who tells you that you can’t do it is someone you don’t want in your life.”
I wish she was alive to see what I’ve accomplished. I know she’d be proud of me.
While I know I only did what she begged me to do, there are times I still lie awake at night and wish I could erase certain memories from my mind.
Thankfully, that’s what I have Chris, and now Kevin, to help me with.
* * * *
I am an only child with a beautiful, intelligent, driven mother who instills a fierce work ethic in me. I grow up doing my homework in conference rooms and State Capitol chambers and in law libraries.
I once asked Momma if she minded if people talked about her being a widow, and she told me no, because it was the truth. Once I was old enough to understand, she also let me know it wasn’t horrible to play to a truth if it helped you score points at the polls. Being a widowed single mother is political gold, a plucky underdog story that only the most heartless of bastards isn’t moved to tears by.
I didn’t understand at the time how easy it is to leverage that same political gold against an opponent. That there’s something distasteful involved with going after a widowed single mom and bad-mouthing her.
By the time I’m practicing law, my mother is already a legend in Tallahassee. I’m known as Marlene Samuels’ little girl, which is annoying when you turn twenty-one and hit a bar for the first time with a bunch of lawyers old enough to be your grandparents and even your server knows who your mother is.
Unfortunately, when I’m twenty I started noticing little…things.
Like Momma writes a lot more stuff down than she used to. Not on her phone, which was her standard before, but on paper. She carries a little notebook with her everywhere, and acts like she doesn’t want me to see it.
She begins to repeat herself.
Where I spent my early teens wondering what life might be like in the White House as the First Daughter, because Momma had once talked about running for US Senate and then POTUS, my late teens see my mother winding down her law practice and spending more time at home.
I’m twenty-two when she finally breaks down and admits to me that she has Alzheimer’s. Momma is sixty-seven at that point. The only reason she could hide it from me for so long was that she’d hired her long-time secretary from the law office to come to work for her when she was a state Senator, and then, after Momma left office, to be her caregiver, with the caveat that the woman couldn’t reveal her diagnosis to anyone.
Not even to me.
When Momma finally tells me, she’s still in the early stages, and has been on medications that have helped slow the progress, but won’t stop it.
I now have my first life-shattering secret to keep. And keep it I do, until she reaches the point she’s told me I’m allowed to begin revealing it to people.
I also make her two promises, which I faithfully keep.
The first one, that I would fearlessly follow my dreams, no matter what other people thought of me, and make a reputation for myself as ShaeLynn Samuels, and not just as Marlene Samuels’ daughter.
Done, even if I still have to sometimes convince myself I did it.
The second promise I made to her?
That I would kill her.
* * * *
Something else my mother instilled in me that I didn’t quite understand the full context of until much later in life—be careful in love. Don’t give trust carelessly. That it’s all right to fool around with someone if you want, but not to let them have leverage over you.
Especially pictures.
To never tell someone your worst secrets unless you were already convinced they’d die to protect you. Because secrets are a weakness, and you have to be diligent to protect yourself or the wrong person might use them against you.
While she never told me how she’d learned that lesson, I had the feeling it was one she’d received first-hand training in.
Momma told me she never remarried because she’d loved Daddy. I know she had male friends, but never remember her in any kind of serious relationship. None that I was aware of. In a way, I always thought it was sweet, if not sad. I tried encouraging her to go out, to date, but she said she had me and work, and that was plenty to keep her busy.
She rarely missed school events. We had it luckier than a lot of people, something that wasn’t apparent to me until I was older. Before being elected as a state senator, she tried a lot of corporate cases that made her a very wealthy woman.
I emulated my mother in many ways, including being able to support myself. I made over $400k my first full year practicing law.
I dated sparingly, and decided by the time I was twenty-five that I definitely didn’t want kids, with plans to get my tubes tied by the time I was thirty if I didn’t meet Mr. Right.
Except I really wasn’t hunting for Mr. Right.
I was diligent not to reveal much about my finances to men when I did date. I had itches to scratch, and my mother was beginning her slow downhill slide toward oblivion, so I was looking more for really great sex rather than a relationship I didn’t have the emotional energy to devote to anyway.
A smothering relationship and children wasn’t something I cared to have. My plate was overfull already. I needed simple, easy, and distracting, when I chose to have such things.
Momma was very private in some ways. I think it was due to losing my father when she did. She didn’t mind running for office, or stumping for friends, or giving a speech in front of people. But when it came to her private life, other than mentioning she was very proud of me, she never revealed any information about me unless I specifically okayed it first.
I didn’t realize how unusual that was until I was in high school. Normal parents would talk about their kids and brag about them. I’m not even talking the normal way politician parents protect their kids. I didn’t understand why until later.
Much later.
Childcare experts frequently say don’t treat your kids like they’re your friends, because they’ll run all over you and not respect you.
I respected my mother. I never feared her, but I think that’s because she raised me more like a business partner than a friend.
Don’t get me wrong—I felt loved and cared for. She was Momma.
But looking at my peers and their parents, I didn’t understand how a kid in high school didn’t already know how to balance a checkbook, or pay an electric bill, or figure mortgage interest, or understand how to read a contract.
Maybe it was because she was older when she had me. She was forty-five, and there are some women already becoming grandmothers at that age. Perhaps it was that perspective.
Momma was also very proud. She had an extremely short list of people for me to allow to see her as her disease progressed and I was forced to admit her to a specialized nursing home that cared for Alzheimer’s patients. Michelle and Benchley Evans were two of those people, old friends of hers from before I was born, and who were even my godparents, although I really didn’t know them very well. Benchley advised Momma on her campaigns, too, even though he was staunchly GOP and Momma was a Democrat.
I wish I had stayed in closer touch with them. When I decided to seriously eye my run for president, I didn’t feel right about simply calling Benchley to ask him for his advice, no matter how good a friend he was to my mother, no matter that he was my godfather. I didn’t want him to think I was simply using him.
When Susa was in high school, she spent a semester interning for Momma during her last year as a state Senator. Susa went on to get her law degree, and then married a great guy, Carter, who became the chief of staff to a friend of theirs, Owen, when Owen was elected governor of Florida.
Oh, and Susa was Owen’s lieutenant governor. Which set her up for her own gubernatorial run.
She won.
Susa had Benchley’s sage wisdom to call upon, even though she ran as an Independent. I have no doubt he helped her, because if there were two things everyone knew in Tallahassee, was that Marlene Samuels was proud of her daughter, and Benchley Evans was proud of his.
Two friends, two lawmakers, two driven people—two driven daughters.
I secretly envied Susa for a lot of years, because she married young but her husband helped her career, he didn’t hinder it. She also has both her parents alive and reasonably well. I’d already had my tubes tied by the time Susa survived a plane wreck and found out she was expecting their first child.
Susa said her ordeal taught her how precious and fragile life is.
That’s a lesson I secretly brought with me to my political career—I know how precious and fragile life is.
And, unfortunately, I personally know how ridiculously easy it can be to end one.