Page 119 of Hello, Summer
“You must have been devastated,” Conley said.
Toddie’s eyes welled up with tears. “Sorry,” she said, dabbing at them with a tissue plucked from her pocketbook. “You know, this is the first time in all these years I’ve ever talked about this.”
“You didn’t tell your girlfriends? Or your mom? Or your lawyer?”
“God, no. It was so humiliating. At first, I didn’t know what to do. I kept thinking there had to be a rational explanation.”
“And then?”
“I kind of lost my mind. I threw her stuff in a bag and cabbed over to the House office building. I walked into Symmes’s office unannounced, and his secretary’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. She said the congressman was in a committee meeting, and I told her I wasn’t looking for my husband. But I did have urgent business with Vanessa Monck.”
“How did you know her name?” Conley asked.
“It was on the label of a bottle of antibiotics. Right next to the prenatal vitamins. That poor secretary! She babbled something about Vanessa not being available, so I said I’d wait. Two hours later, Symmes showed up, and he was even more flustered than the secretary.”
“Did he try to deny the affair?”
“Not after I threw the nightgown and pills in his face,” Toddie said.“It was all so ugly and sad. He said he’d made a mistake and let things go too far with Vanessa. Claimed he still loved me and the children. He said he wanted to do the decent thing by her. I think he actually believed he could stay married and keep me and the children down here in Florida and be a D.C. daddy to Vanessa and their baby.”
“Have his cake and eat it too?” Conley asked. “I’m still astonished how this didn’t cause more of a scandal. I mean, a sitting, married U.S. congressman impregnates an aide nearly half his age?”
“It was a different time back then. This was way before the Bill Clinton scandal. Before social media. I’m sure the Washington press corps knew about the baby, the same way they knew about all the other politicians who’d had affairs, but I guess that wasn’t considered fair game.”
Conley’s phone dinged softly. She glanced at the screen. It was a text from Roger Sistrunk.
How’s my story coming?
As fascinating as this interview was, she needed to wrap things up.
“After the divorce, did Symmes see the children? Did you share custody?”
“Not really. They were teenagers by then. For the first couple of years or so, he’d come out to the farm and see the children occasionally when he was back in the district. Bring them birthday gifts, maybe take them out to dinner. He’d drop off gifts on Christmas Eve, always alone. Then the visits tapered off. Hank pretended not to care, but in fact, he resented Symmes so much that he’d refuse to talk on the phone or even see Symmes on his irregular visits, which infuriated Symmes. The whole situation broke Rebecca’s heart. She’d always been such a daddy’s girl.”
“And then the visits stopped?”
“Yes. There was one last Christmas Eve, probably in the late nineties; he called the day before to say he was coming. Even Hank was looking forward to it. They waited all day, and finally, at ten o’clock, we all realized it wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t coming. No call, no show.”
“You said earlier that your children weren’t estranged from him. But it certainly sounds like…”
“Everything changed after his cancer diagnosis last year,” Toddie said.
“Who told you about the cancer? Both Charlie and Vanessa said it was a closely guarded secret.”
“Charlie’s fiancée reached out to me,” Toddie said.
“Kennedy McFall?”
“That’s right. It was back in March. Out of the blue. She told me about Symmes’s diagnosis and said that she’d been nagging Charlie to let Symmes’s other children know how sick he was.”
“Did you talk to Charlie?”
“Eventually, yes. I guess he listened to his girlfriend. Until that day, I’d never spoken to him. I’d seen photos, of course, over the years, but that was all.”
“Did Vanessa know you were in touch?”
Toddie hooted. “God, no! She never would have allowed that. As I say, Kennedy private-messaged me on Facebook, and after I said I was willing to talk to Charlie, he called.”
“How did that go?”
