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“Oh, Elliot,” she sighs. “Did they get a good scan of your head? Did those…those…criminals…did they hurt your precious brain?”
“I said I’m fine.”
She seems relieved at first. But then, true to her nature, she can’t help herself. “Well, if you think she’s coming, darling, you need me more than you know.”
“How could this happen?” my mother demands for the umpteenth time since delivering me to my apartment. “It’s turned my whole life upside down.”
“I’m pretty sure whoever attacked me didn’t do it with the intention of personally assaulting your schedule.”
“Well, you never know. People are always trying to test this family. Speaking of which, we were supposed to have dinner with the Thompsons, and you know your father doesn’t handle things like that alone.” She pauses and looks up at me. “I need you to think, Elliot. You really have no idea who could have done this?”
“I said I don’t.”
“And the cops…what have they said? Useless as they are…”
“I think they have more pressing matters than some guy getting beat up in a parking garage. Have you seen the news lately?”
“I have, and quite frankly, I don’t think you’re taking this very seriously…”
“What is it you expect me to do, mother?”
“Well, I don’t know. But we can’t just sit around twiddling our thumbs. We have to do something. We have to speak up. Otherwise, these…these…criminals will start assuming they’ll get away with it and then what?”
Assumptions are more often right than not.
“They won’t get away with it. I assure you, someone knows something,” I reply. There’s a hard edge in my tone, one that she is not immune to.
This is probably why she ignores me and continues to busy herself straightening my living room. It’s particularly painful to watch because there isn’t much to straighten, so she is basically doing the same thing over and over. I’m trying to be patient. My mother is difficult on a normal day, but any upheaval is prone to sending her into a tailspin. “You can’t imagine how hard your father is taking this. He’s just beside himself.”
She likes to deflect. I sigh. “And yet he’s not here.”
“Of course he’s not. You know he’s busy with the campaign.”
In the kitchen, I fill a glass with water.
“Maybe this is for the best,” she says. “We can swing it in our favor. Play the whole thing up for sympathy…point fingers at the incumbent…no one is safe…start an initiative to crack down on certain—”
“We can’t blame anybody. There’s nothing to crack down on.” My glass of water overflows, and I scramble to locate a dishtowel. We’ve been here all of an hour, and she’s managed to rearrange half my kitchen. “We don’t know who’s responsible.”
“Well, let’s leave that up to your father. He’ll know what’s best.”
My family’s roots run deep—its connections deeper still. My father is a politician. His father was a politician. Old money. Stifling people.
Which is why I’m not surprised that my mother has holed up in my apartment, hell-bent on babysitting me. My father needs this situation managed. He has promises to keep.
Like him, I was supposed to go into politics straight out of college. But I had enjoyed flirting with science too much, have been able to skirt by pretending I’m saving the world with my inventions.
I am not saving the world. I am using family connections to secure deals for drugs that have the potential to save lives. They have the equal potential to destroy them. Do you know what drug companies do with that kind of power? They use it to control. They use it to control everything.
Even politicians. Especially politicians.
I have zero inclinations to follow in my father’s footsteps.
I am sitting at my dining room table, hunched over my laptop, when the light flicks on behind me. “Elliot, darling,” my mother whispers. “Are you okay? It’s 3:00 a.m.”
Footsteps creep up. I’m too mesmerized by what’s in front of me to acknowledge them.
Emily’s face fills the screen.
