Page 243 of Because I Killed Him
Dad sits beside me on the couch. His light brown hair is mussed, and his tie is loosened at the collar, as if he stayed beside me all night. He doesn’t notice I’m awake. His phone hangs forgotten in his hand as he stares out the window at a young Green couple waltzing on the neighboring balcony. His expression is wistful, tinged with sadness, as if remembering how he and Mom used to waltz after dinner every Saturday, humming the music when they’d had too much wine to care how off-key they sounded. Sometimes Mom would take the lead, teasing Dad for dragging his feet through the turns, until he’d finally scoop her up, laughing, and carry her upstairs three steps at a time.
But that was before the knife of politics carved their bodies into shapes that they no longer seem to recognize. I haven’t seen my parents dance in years, since I was ten and small enough to crouch behind the porch bench, watching them waltz through the garden as though, if only for a moment, they’d forgotten the color blue.
“Dad,” I say softly.
He stirs, blinking out of his daze, then smiles at me. “Hi, honey. How’d you sleep?”
“Good.” I rub my eyes and sit up. “Did you always want to be a politician?”
He frowns, caught off guard. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m just curious.”
He rubs his mouth and thinks for a moment. “Honestly? No. If it were up to me, I’d have played sax in a jazz band. But I figured out pretty quickly that I was good at politics—really good. I won the political theory award at the end of my first year here, and then again in my third and sixth years. I was shocked to come out on top, but even more shocked that I was happy about it.” He shrugs, then lets out a short laugh. “I was so happy that first year, I tap danced down the stairs from the stage.”
I smile as I picture it. “Got any footage of that?”
“Reeve does. Why do you think I try to stay on his good side?” Dad winks, then lifts his leg and flicks his shoe. “I’ve always had two left feet. Your mom’s the real dancer.”
I nod slowly, remembering she gave up her own dreams, too. Before marrying Dad and working with him to raise Vivian, Hillaire, and me, she’d wanted to be a professional dancer.
“I made plans,” Dad goes on, “but life makes its own. I saw there was a need, and I thought… well, maybe I wasn’t half stupid enough to screw it up.”
“Do you think you were called to do it?” I ask.
He smiles faintly, then reaches over and takes my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Sure. You could say that.”
For a moment, I want to tell him how much I’ve grown to like politics this past year, how it’s become more than his world; it’s becoming mine, too. Instead, I ask, “And what about Reeve? Do you really think he can stand up to so many of his own and win?”
Dad leans back on the sofa, his arms loosely crossed over his chest. He remains silent for a while, his eyes fixed on a dried dirt stain on the carpet that my Pinkie missed. Finally, he says, “An old Brasscoat friend of mine once told me something I never forgot. He said everyone’s got a chain of weakness hidden somewhere. Find it, tug it once, and they break. That’s how you control them. The Blues who hate Reeve have been hunting for his chain since the day he set foot in politics. They’ve never found it. I’ve known him for more than twenty years, and even I don’t know what it is.”
“You think he doesn’t have one?”
“He probably does. We all do. But Reeve’s better at hiding it than anyone else I’ve known.”
“What about you, Dad? Do you have one?”
His eyes narrow on me, and a grin breaks across his face. “Sure, I do. Got four of them, in fact.”
I know who he means. I smile, rest my head on his shoulder, lace my fingers with his, and hold on for the last few minutes before we dress for the Ovation Ceremony. Like Dad, I have chains of my own. But the one I carry for him, wound around the center of my heart, is the only chain Iknow I couldn’t survive if it were pulled and broken. As long as Dad is standing, I’ll have hope, because as long as he’s whole, the world feels whole, too.
We loved as fiercely as we loathed and erred as deeply as we triumphed. Yet perhaps our gravest folly lay in the lie we told ourselves and repeated to each other with equal conviction:
that all love is righteous and all hatred wicked.
—THE DANDIES
CHAPTER 61
At noon, when Dad and I head to the Ovation Ceremony, I get vivid, jarring flashbacks of my first few days at Grandmaster University. A hovercar with bulletproof windows and armored doors takes us to the Civilized Hall, a massive amphitheater on the southwest side of campus. When we exit, an armed security detail forms a protective perimeter as we move through the crowd of students.
Every student wears their Fraternity uniform, most with their parents by their side. Some slow to stare at Dad as we pass; others lean over the barricade of guards, phones raised for photos, voices breaking through to ask for autographs. Dad smiles and humors them, even as the security detail pushes us forward, their eyes tracking rooftops and upper windows, their voices clipped as they murmur status checks into their earpieces.
I draw a deep, nervous breath, and Dad squeezes my hand.
“Don’t worry, honey,” he whispers. “Being back here is the safest I’ve felt in months.”
I force a smile, trying to appear reassured, but the tight, grinding knot in my stomach refuses to loosen. I still don’t understand why Phillipa invited Dad to serve as the guest speaker at the Ovation Ceremony. Given how much she hates him, it feels like a starving snake inviting a plump mouse into its hole. My only comfort is that Dad and I are wearing Winston Glass’s energy shields.
