“Your father…” she starts, but she doesn’t finish.
“He checked out after he stole all that money from Uncle Rick,” I say. “He never checked back in.
Mel loves him, still. So where did he go?”
“And why can’t I bring him back? I don’t know. I wish I did. He was there tonight.”
“He was about forty per cent there tonight, and the sad thing is, we all thought that was a victory.”
She doesn’t say anything to this, just stares ahead into the darkened road. I feel bad now for wrecking the mood on her big announcement night, though I’m still wondering what she saw as a teenager. Was that the time of the undead? No, that was a bit later. But was there something, in her teenage years? Why have I never thought that she might have seen all this stuff, too?
“You didn’t say what was happening with you,” she says. “I need to know. I want to know. Not for the campaign. Because I’m your mother.”
I don’t answer her. I don’t want to.
But then I do.
“I think I need to see a psychiatrist again,” I say. “I think I need to go back on medication.”
There’s the smallest of pauses, like she’s slotting the information into some grid in her head. “The compulsive stuff?” she asks.
“Yep.”
“It’s gotten that bad?”
“It’s gotten really, really bad.”
I watch her absorb this. I watch her nod. “Okay.”
“‘Okay’?” I say, surprised.
“Of course,” she says, also surprised. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Well … the campaign, for one–”
“Didn’t you hear me? Weren’t you listening to that ferocious mama bear crap?”
“I assumed that was something the party wrote for you in case you got asked about Mel.”
“Well. Okay. That’s true. But–”
“Lieutenant Governor would have been the big time, too. And that’s when everything went to hell.
You can’t blame us for being a little weirded out by it.”
“No,” she says, after a second. “No, I can’t. Is it because of the campaign? Your … trouble?”
“I don’t think so. It started before Mankiewicz died. This isn’t me trying to tell you not to run. I think it’s just … life and graduation and everything changing.”
And zombie deer, I don’t say. And kids at my school dying. And Henna and her spirit of exploration.
“We’ll work it out,” she says. “I promise. I’ll talk to my team and work something out.”
“Why does your team need to know?”
“They need to know everything a journalist might find out. That way they can protect us.”
We’re nearly home, and I don’t say anything more. I certainly don’t ask what it might be like for families that don’t need protection from their parent’s jobs. Strange. It feels like we’d almost got somewhere, but then missed it. I’m surprised at how disappointed I feel.
When I go to bed, there’s a text from Jared. Not bad in a suit there, Mikey.
I text back. You saw it? Was it gruesome?
Jared: All politics is/are gruesome.
Me: Will you have to be at your dad’s?
Jared: He doesn’t get a press conference. He’s announcing on Twitter.
Me: Oh. Sorry.
Jared: Don’t be. Makes him seem like the undergod.
Me: Did you just type undergod?
Jared: Underdog.
Me: Does anyone use Twitter any more?
Jared: UNDERDOG.
Before I put my phone away, I text Mel. You all right?
Counting the days, she texts back from her bedroom.