Jury of One

26

“Shhh. She’ll hear you.”

“Well, I don’t really give a damn, Abby. I really don’t.”

She is in many ways an adult now, but she feels like a child again, sneaking down the stairs and listening. It is close to midnight now, and she went to bed over an hour ago. They have been talking since that time. They talked all day yesterday-Saturday, when she told them-and they have talked all day today. Their big discussion this morning, after a tense breakfast, a talk that didn’t go so well.

“It’s over. That’s it, Abby. It’s over.”

“It’s not-”

“It’s down to me and Justin, Ab. They can go either way. Why on earth would they go with me now? They just need a reason. We just gave them one.”

“That’s shortsighted.”

Shelly hugs her knees but doesn’t move for fear of a squeaking stair. Her heart pounds, echoes so furiously that she wonders if they will hear it. The staircase is cold, drafty, owing to the air escaping from under the door to the garage. She is staring at the door and the floor mat at its base, which she cannot see in the dark but which reads HOME. She smells the change of seasons creeping through the door, the smell of freshly cut grass still clinging to the lawnmower in the garage, which Daddy used today for the first time this year. She closes her eyes now in the belief that she will hear them better.

“Listen. I’m a downstate prosecutor. Anyone south of the interstate has to overcome the impression that he doesn’t have a piece of hay in his mouth and a first cousin for a wife. My sixteen-year-old daughter is sleeping around and got knocked up? Come on, Abigail.”

“That’s just a stupid stereotypic-”

“It’s an impression. Maybe the voters wouldn’t care, but we’re not talking about voters right now. We’re talking about the slatemakers. They want to get behind one candidate this fall and run with him. Whoever that is has the nomination. And it won’t be me. Not now.”

Glass tapping glass, liquid gurgling. Daddy is pouring himself a drink. Shelly feels a tear squirt out of her shut eye unexpectedly. They are coming so easily. Emotions so raw and at the surface. For her parents, too, she realizes, not just her.

“Then we wait four years,” Mom says. “You’re still young in ’92.”

“Oh, don’t talk to me about ’92. What if Justin wins? Then he’s the incumbent in ’92. I run against him then, I’m a pariah. I lose and never get another chance.” Footsteps. Daddy is pacing.

“Lang, honey-”

“This was it. You see that, don’t you, Abby? I was their first choice. This was our chance. We might not get another one now.”

She stands up slowly. She is practiced by now, moving gingerly to avoid a crack of the knee or ankle. She takes two stairs at a time, placing the foot down first, then applying the weight. She returns to bed and prays that sleep will come quickly.