Free My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick Page B

Tracy’s off-key singing in the shower or her heels hammering down the stairs.
    Mom pulls the filtered water out of the refrigerator and pours it into the teakettle. “Clay says I’m bigger than this position. I could be important. I could be something more than the woman with the trust fund who bought her way into power.”
    There were a lot of editorials that said exactly that whenshe won the first time. I read them, winced, and hid the paper, hoping Mom never saw them. But of course she did.
    “It’s been so long since anyone has looked at me and really seen me,” she adds suddenly, standing there holding the filtered water. “Your father…well, I thought he did. But then…after him…you get busy and you get older…and nobody really looks your way anymore. You and Tracy…She’s off to college in the fall. That’ll be you in another year. And I think…It’s their turn now? Where did my chance go? It only took Clay a little while to come to terms with the fact that I had teenaged daughters. He sees me, Samantha. I can’t tell you how good that feels.” She turns and looks at me, and I’ve never seen her… glow like this.
    How can I say “Uh—Mom—I think he might be seeing someone else too”?
    I think of Jase Garrett, how he seems to understand without me having to explain things. Does Mom feel that way with Clay? Please don’t let him be some skeevy womanizer .
    “I’m glad, Mom,” I say. I hit BLEND and the kitchen fills with the sound of pulverizing strawberries and ice.
    She brushes the hair off my forehead, then sets the filtered water down and hovers near my elbow until I turn off the blender. Then silence.
    “You two, you and Tracy,” she finally says to my back, “are the best things that ever happened to me. Personally. But there’s more to life than personal things. I don’t want you to be the only things that ever happen to me. I want…” Her voice trails off and I turn around to find her looking away, off somewhere I can’t see. Suddenly, I feel afraid for her. As she stands there, herexpression dreamy, she seems like a woman—not my mother, the vacuum cleaner queen, who rolls her eyes at the Garretts, at any uncertainty at all. I’ve only met Clay twice, really. He has charm, I guess, but apparently my dad did too. Mom’s always said that bitterly—“Your father had charm ”—as though charm were some illicit substance he’d used on her that made her lose her mind.
    I clear my throat. “So,” I say, in what I hope is a casual, making-conversation tone, not a probing-for-info one, “how much do you know about Clay Tucker?”
    Mom’s eyes snap to me. “Why do you ask, Samantha? How is that your business?”
    This is why I don’t say things. I stick my spoon into my smoothie, squishing a slice of strawberry against the side. “I just wondered. He seems…”
    Like a potential disaster? Younger? Probably not a tactful way to put it. Is there a tactful way to put it?
    So I don’t finish my sentence—usually Mom’s technique for getting us to tell all. Incredibly, it works in reverse.
    “Well, one thing I do know is that he’s gone a long way for a relatively young man. He advised the RNC during the last campaign, he’s visited G. W. Bush at his Crawford ranch…”
    Well, ew . Tracy used to tease Mom about the reverent tone she used whenever she spoke the name of our former president: “Mo-om has a cru-ush on the Commander in Chiiee-eef.” I was always too creeped out by it to tease.
    “Clay Tucker is a real mover and shaker,” she says now. “I can’t believe he’s taking time for my little campaign.”
    I return the strawberries to the fridge, then root aroundmy smoothie with my spoon, looking for more pieces of fruit that escaped the blender. “How’d he wind up in Stony Bay?” Did he bring a wife with him? A hometown honey?
    “He bought his parents a summer house on Seashell Island.” Mom opens the refrigerator and moves the strawberries from the