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He could hear her cussing under her breath before answering. He could see the tears welling in Emma's eyes as Roberta answered in his ear. "You can be a real pain in my ass, you know that Jax? It's a damn good thing you and Chase make me a lot of money. I'm going to need it to recover later. I assume Chase is still with you, right? You'll tell him?"
"Yep. We'll see you in London on Tuesday, the twenty-eighth."
"No. On Monday, the twenty-seventh."
"Bye Roberta." He ended the call before she could pressure him more.
Not a word had been spoken when his phone rang again. "Dammit Roberta, We're coming back four days early. That has to be good enough."
"Hello Jaxson."
Fuck. He should have looked at his phone to see who it was.
"Father. I guess it's too late to hang up and pretend I missed your call."
"I've missed you too, son."
He was annoyed by his father's smug banter. "So what do you need today, Senator?"
"Can't I just call my son to see how he's doing? You haven't been home in over a year. Surely they let you have a vacation at some point."
He shouldn't get joy out of hurting his father, but he did. "As a matter a fact, I've been on vacation for several weeks now."
The silence on the line assured Jaxson his barb had hit home.
"Like I said, what do you need?"
Before his father answered, Jaxson heard a muffled argument at the other end of the line. The sound of his father cussing out the poor man in the process of shining his shoes for missing a spot reminded Jaxson of what a pretentious asshole his old man was.
His father returned to the call, unaware of Jaxson's growing anger. "I thought you'd like to know that I will be announcing my candidacy for President at a gala in DC next Saturday."
So the reports on the news had been right. Jaxson wasn't surprised. The only thing his father had ever cared about was power and money. He had proven that when the senator had sold his own mother's ancestral homestead for several million to a development group against her wishes. The cherry on the top had been his shoving the brokenhearted woman into a retirement home, never visiting her and leaving her to die an early death alone. Jaxson had sworn as he had stood at his grandmother's grave at the age of fifteen that he would be sure to treat his father with the exact same disregard he had shown his own mother.
"President, you say. I didn't know you wanted to be president of the PTA. I thought you had to still have a kid in school to be elected to the board of parents."
"I see you still haven't outgrown your angry phase, son."
"SorryDad, but I'm afraid this isn't just a phase. Thanks for the info. Tell Mom I say hi. Oh yeah, I forgot. You don't speak to her either unless it's in front of the cameras."
"How would you know? You're never here."
"Touché. Well..."
"Wait. Jaxson?" Here it comes. He always wanted something. "My campaign manager says it's critical that you be there on stage with your mother and me when we make the announcement."
Jaxson sighed, "Of course it is. Have to keep up the image of the All-American family and all, right? Maybe we can bake cookies afterwards and play a board game."
"You don't have to be such an ass about this, you know."
"See, that's where I think you're wrong. I'm assuming you'd look for my endorsement of your campaign?"
"Is that a rhetorical question?"
"Still voting against anything that might help minorities? How about your stance on immigration? Let me guess, still preaching that the LGBT community deserves to burn in hell?"
"Enough. You only support those causes to piss me off."
"I hate to burst your bubble, Dad, but I actually believe you and your cronies are wrong on almost every topic. It's life-long politicians like you that are driving our country into the ground."
