Page 18 of The Hardest Hit
“Yes, but… Evan has never… Going against Grandma… I’m not sure his therapist has got him to that place yet, you know?” Dominique’s phone pinged and she pulled it out of her purse and made a face. “As if neo-Nazis weren’t enough. I cannot convey how much I hate Ralph Taggert.”
“What’s he done now?”
“I do not understand how a senator from Georgia can spend this much time in our state or why he feels the need to horn in on everything Grandma does. He is still shooting his mouth off about the Absolex hearings.”
“He wanted to glory hog that so bad,” agreed Jackson.
“He’s still pissed Grandma shut him out,” said Dominique. “Ever since she got the Sixty-Minutes interview, he’s been gunning for her. He’s just mad because he feels like protecting veterans is some sort of Republican birthright.”
“Maybe they should stop cutting funding to the VA then,” said Jackson, tentatively trying his potatoes. There was a lot of paprika going on.
“Exactly Grandma’s point. Anyway, he honestly seems to feel that he should have been in the lead on the Absolex hearings, never mind that Grandma’s the committee chair, and he’s been whining about it to the press ever since. And now!” She waved her phone angrily. “He’s made some sort of statement about how she’s grandstanding and drawing out the hearings on purpose when she should be letting the authorities handle the investigation. Which is unfair, because the only reason they weren’t closed out two years ago is because shehasbeen letting the authorities investigate and now all the reports are finally in. But he’s acting as if she did it on purpose and that she’s a glory hog who is trying to bring up her greatest hits for the election. Only he used a lot more syllables because he’s Southern.”
Jackson chuckled. “I’d tell you to let it go, but he’s part two of my strategy question.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s got that health bill coming out. Taggert’s been running his mouth more than usual and I think he’s laying the groundwork to attack her and the bill. I want to start digging into him and see what we can find for counter ammunition, but so far Eleanor is taking the high-road. She wants to stick to the merits of the bill.”
“You want me to bring up the low road on Sunday?”
“Just float it out there,” he said. “See if she shoots it down.
“Yeah, no problem,” agreed Dominique. “The potatoes are weird, right?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “They fucking are. I don’t know why you bring me to these places.”
Dominique grinned. “I like to broaden your horizons.”
“You like to torture me.”
“Well, I didn’t grow up with you, so I have to make up for all the torturing I didn’t do when we were kids.”
Jackson laughed. “Love you too, Nika.”
8
Evan – Sunday Dinner
Evan stared at his dinner and ignored his cousins. He still showed up for Sunday dinners. He liked seeing his cousins. They made him laugh. But after what he’d discovered the previous year, he felt like a liar every time he was in the house. So much of his sobriety had been predicated on being honest and open and he felt he could no longer do that. He wasn’t even sure that being honest was the right answer. How was telling his cousins that he thought Eleanor was a murderer going to help at all?
A year ago, he’d been on a tentative path to happiness. He had been sober, he thought his cousins had almost forgiven him. But now that he knew that he wasn’t sure who to tell, or if he should tell them at all. And if he did tell them, what was there to do about it, with no evidence? Sunday dinners had become a torture of nodding and keeping his mouth shut. A torture compounded by Eleanor’s plan to ruin J.P. Granger. Not that he minded exactly. At least it was a concrete way to prove his loyalty. Something he could point to if the autopsy report ever came out.
And today was even worse than usual since he was fighting off a monumental case of wounded pride. He had not called lots of women the next day, and there had been several evenings where the understanding was that no one would be calling anyone, but he couldn’t remember a time when he had wanted someone to call and they hadn’t. But here it was, well past the three-day rule of calling, which meant she wasn’t going to call. He was a goddamn Deveraux. Everyone wanted a Deveraux. Everyone, except, apparently, Olivia. And now he had an additional thing to talk to his therapist about. He was trying to eliminate things off that goddamn list—not add to it.
“Evan?”
He realized that Dominique had been talking to him, but he had no idea about what. Dominique was five years younger than he was, blonde, pretty, and smarter than almost anyone gave her credit for. If she wanted to, he suspected that she could give their grandmother a run for her money. It was his estimation that Dominique specifically did not want to.
“Hm?” he said, he said looking into her cornflower blue eyes that always reminded him of her mother Genevieve.
“I asked if you were getting ready to dump the Absolex stock and then you stared at me like I was an alien,” said Dominique.
“Sorry, I was thinking of something else.”
“Yes, I could tell.”
In the past, their entire exchange would have been larded with sarcasm and disdain. But the previous few years had been different. Evan’s efforts at self-improvement had resulted in an uneasy truce between himself and his cousins. He got the feeling sometimes that they were waiting for him to revert to being an asshole. His therapist said that was normal. He found it exhausting. But at the moment Dominique merely looked amused by his inattention to the conversation over Sunday dinner.
