The Best-Kept Secret. Melinda Curtis
and Casey from last summer. Heads close, they had the same black curly hair, dark brown eyes and energetic grins. Was she letting him down as Ms. Phan always seemed to imply? Sometimes Rosie felt as if she were trying to sail the SS Motherhood beneath the Golden Gate Bridge without a working rudder. No matter how hard she tried to be a good mother, life seemed to conspire against her.
Rosie dutifully penciled the play on her calendar and assured Ms. Phan she’d be there this time.
“And I’m sure you won’t be late tonight to pick up Casey. It is New Year’s Eve, after all,” Ms. Phan added. “Once parents begin picking up their children Casey becomes a clock watcher.”
To her credit, Rosie didn’t snap a pencil or a sharp retort. She did, however, reach for her coffee. Just holding the warm ceramic mug settled her nerves.
Planning strategy, drafting legislation and writing speeches for candidates and incumbents often meant Rosie was late to pick up her kindergartener. She’d learned to leave money in her budget for the late fees she incurred from Rainbow on a weekly basis. What she hadn’t completely mastered was the art of filtering all the advice she received about parenting without taking offense or feeling as if she and Casey needed to go to counseling. They were doing the best they could.
Rosie told Ms. Phan she’d be there before five o’clock closing, then paused to take a sip of coffee before she shifted back to professional mode.
Pressing the button for line one took her to California’s power player. “Walter, how are you?” She caught the dinosaur Democrat in midcough. He was currently serving as the chairman of the Democratic Party for California. With Walter’s approval—and increasingly Rosie’s—candidates were groomed by the party for various positions throughout the state.
“A day short of the grave, as usual. Can’t seem to shake this cough,” he grumbled. “How’s it feel to be a backup singer for Senator Alsace?”
“I’m just biding my time until the next political race.”
“Ha! Your search for the right candidate is over. Win this one and you can write your own ticket.”
“You’re going to run for office?” Even as Rosie joked, she was intrigued. Deals were how the American political system worked and how those involved got ahead.
Walter chuckled, a gruff sound that dissolved into another fit of coughing. “Perhaps you’ve noticed that San Francisco needs a new mayor.”
“There’s an opening for a squeaky clean candidate with aspirations of glory.” Rosie fidgeted in her seat, excited by the prospect of something new. “Who did you have in mind?”
“You win this one, Rosie, and you’ll have a spot on the presidential campaign.”
She’d dreamed of working on a presidential campaign since she was a kid. “Who?”
“Hudson McCloud.”
Rosie looked at the picture of her son again. The McClouds were the California equivalent of the Kennedys. Media followed their every step. Anyone who worked for the McClouds would receive the same scrutiny, and Rosie was fiercely protective of her privacy. She had to turn Walter down.
And yet, part of her yearned for the challenge. Pundits had dismissed Hudson McCloud’s career. The campaign would make national news and, possibly, a strategist’s career, as well. She would just have to work that much harder at keeping her professional life separate from her life with Casey.
“Rosie? Rosie, don’t play games with me. You won’t get another chance like this anytime soon.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Had Walter lost his mind? Had she? Rosie couldn’t quell her curiosity. “Why me?”
“Because you excel at advancing the underdog. Because you don’t sugarcoat things.” Walter coughed. “And because Vivian McCloud requested you.”
HUD SAT AT WHAT HAD once been his father’s desk, in what had once been his father’s chair, and perused a file of faded newspaper clippings by the light of a small desk lamp. Usually, his Queen Anne home, built after the 1906 quake, was never quiet. It groaned and shifted like a living thing. Tonight though, as if sensing Hud’s somber mood, not a board in the one-hundred-year-old house dared creak.
Tomorrow he’d find out if the party considered him salvageable. He’d left the string-pulling to his mother once she’d agreed to inquire about the Democratic leadership’s feelings toward him. But he had no idea who or what he’d face tomorrow. Would they welcome him back or challenge his interest in running?
Hud read the headlines of the articles he kept to remind him why he’d turned his back on his personal goals in the first place.
Hudson McCloud Flexes Power on First Day in Senate.
McCloud Accused of Conflict of Interest on Child Labor Bill.
Questions Increase, McCloud Influence Disappears.
Another Bill by Senator McCloud Crushed.
McCloud Stepping Down from Senate.
Who was Hud kidding? He may have saved McCloud Inc., the clothing conglomerate his great, great grandfather had founded, and their employees from ruin, but he’d done so at the sacrifice of his own career, tarnishing the family reputation in the process. The party wanted untouchable candidates who could influence policy. Hud’s political power no longer existed. He’d best remember that and not get his hopes up about what tomorrow’s meeting might bring.
SOMETHING SMELLED good enough to get out of bed for.
“I smell morning,” Casey whispered from the other side of the bed. Sometime during the night, he’d padded into her bedroom complaining of a bad dream that only a dog or a little brother could protect him from.
Eyes still shut, Rosie rolled over and drank in the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. It was Friday. One more day until the weekend. An easy day. Casey was still on holiday from kindergarten.
No! She sat up and her head spun. It was the Friday, the day of her audience with Vivian McCloud. Rosie scrambled out of bed full of regret over agreeing to go in the first place. She was meeting Walter for breakfast at nine before their appointment at the Pyramid Center at eleven.
“Wake up, Case! We can’t be late today.”
Rosie dreaded what she had to do, but what choice did she have? To turn down Vivian McCloud outright was political suicide. So Rosie had done her homework. She had all the ammunition she needed to sink Hudson’s political aspirations. Walter would find someone more suitable for the race and the tension that had been sitting in Rosie’s stomach since Walter’s call would disappear.
The next hour was a blur of activity in between gulps of hazelnut-flavored coffee and making sure Casey ate all his cereal. There was a small ceremonial moment—a lull in the morning chaos—as Rosie unwrapped a pair of new Jimmy Choo pumps. They’d been incredibly expensive but when she’d seen them at lunch on Wednesday, she knew she had to have them, so she’d used the money her parents sent her for Christmas. This morning they felt like success as she slipped them on her feet.
One last perusal in the mirror confirmed her springy curls were still half-tamed, pulled back from her face and anchored simply by a clip just below her crown, and her clothes lacked major wrinkles or stains. Rosie loved the way her midnight-blue pantsuit projected confidence with a feminine touch provided by long, slightly belled sleeves.
Less than an hour after bolting from bed, keys jingling in one hand, her briefcase, umbrella and raincoat slung over her other arm, she was ready to leave.
“Case, let’s go.”
“Mommy, I can’t go to day care today ’cause I don’t have any shoes that match.” He lifted his pants legs to show a sneaker on one foot and a sock with a hole in the toe on the other. “It’s only a short day anyway.”
Rosie slid out of her heels, dropped her briefcase to the floor,