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“After talking to him, I feel like I should be with her constantly.”
“He said a few days of separation wouldn
’t hurt, and Mom knows what to do.”
“How did it happen?” Avery mused aloud. “How did she become so introverted, so emotionally bruised?” She asked the questions rhetorically, without expecting a response. Tate, however, took them literally and provided her with answers.
“You heard what he said. He told you how it happened. You didn’t spend enough time with her. What time you did spend with her was more destructive than not.”
Her temper surged to the surface. In this instance, Carole was getting a bum deal, and Avery felt compelled to take up for her. “And where were you all that time? If I was doing such a rotten job of mothering, why didn’t you step in? Mandy has two parents, you know.”
“I realize that. I admitted it today. But every time I made the slightest suggestion, you got defensive. Seeing us fight sure as hell wasn’t doing Mandy any good. So I couldn’t step in, as you put it, without making a bad situation even worse.”
“Maybe your approach was wrong.” Giving Carole the benefit of the doubt, she played devil’s advocate.
“Maybe. But I’ve never known you to take criticism well.”
“And you do?”
He set his glass on the nightstand and reached for the lamp switch. Avery’s hand shot out and grabbed his. “I’m sorry. Don’t… don’t go back to bed yet. It’s been a long, tiring day for many reasons. We’re both feeling the pressure. I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”
“You probably should have gone home with Mom and Dad, too.”
“No,” she said quickly, “my place is with you.”
“Today was just a sample of what it’s going to be like between now and November, Carole. It’s only going to get tougher.”
“I can handle it.” Smiling, she impulsively reached up and ran her finger across the cleft in his chin. “I wish I had a nickel for every time today you said, ‘Hi, I’m Tate Rutledge, running for U.S. senator.’ Wonder how many hands you shook?”
“This many.” He held up his right hand. It was bent into a cramped claw.
She laughed softly. “I believe we bore up very well during that visit to the Galleria, considering we’d just ended our visit with Dr. Webster and told Mandy good-bye.”
As soon as they had returned to the hotel from the psychologist’s office, they had given Mandy over to her grandparents. Zee went beyond being a white-knuckle flier. She refused to fly altogether, so they had come to Houston by car. They had wanted to start the drive home so they would arrive before dark.
No sooner had she and Tate waved them off than Eddy hustled them into a car and sped toward the sprawling, multilayered shopping mall.
Volunteers, under Eddy’s supervision, had heralded their arrival. Tate made a short speech from a raised platform, introduced his wife to the crowd that had gathered, then moved among them, shaking hands and soliciting votes.
It had gone so well that Eddy was mollified after having to decline the Rotary Club’s invitation. Even that had turned out well. The civic club had extended Tate an invitation to speak at one of their meetings later in the month.
“Eddy went nuts over all the television coverage you got today,” Avery said, reflecting on it.
“They gave us twenty seconds during the six o’clock broadcast. Doesn’t sound like much, but I’m told that’s good.”
“It is. So I’m told,” she hastily added.
She’d been stunned to see Van Lovejoy and a political reporter from KTEX at the longshoremen’s breakfast. All day, they’d stayed hot on Tate’s trail. “Why did they come all the way from San Antonio?” she had asked Eddy.
“Don’t knock the free publicity. Smile into the camera every chance you get.”
Instead, she tried to avoid Van’s camera. But he seemed bent on getting her image on tape. The cat-and-mouse game she played with him all day, coupled with the shock Dr. Webster had dealt her, had chafed her nerves raw. She had been so nervous that, later, when she couldn’t find a pair of earrings, she had overreacted.
“I know they were in here the day before I left,” she cried to Tate.
“Look again.”
She did better than that. She upended the satin pouch and raked through the contents. “They’re not here.”
