Look to the Rainbow (16 page)

     The last thing she wanted was to add more stress to his life than he was already under. Especially given that he’d just come out of the hospital. She had prayed more in the three days he was there than she ever had in her life.

     “I know you’re busy.”

     “I’m not busy, sweetheart. I’m over extended. I’m pushing myself almost beyond my limits right now. If I make it through this campaign without another stay in the hospital it will be a miracle.”

     “It’s okay, Kel I can handle it.”

     “I hope so.” He leaned toward her and kissed her, a long slow kiss, the kind that left her breathless and wishing they could just abandon the campaign and everyone else and just run away somewhere.

     John came in and cleared his throat and Kel released her.

     “Sorry to break this up, but it’s time to go.”

      He kept her hand in his as they walked to the car. “I’ll see you in few days.”

     “Be careful, take care of yourself.” One more kiss, and he was gone again.

     Debby O’Brien knocked on the open door to her office.

    “Come on in Debby,” Tara said. She had just finished revising an interview with Janet and Jim about what kind of father Kel was. Mary Katherine had sent some photos never before published from her private albums of them with Kel as they grew up and they were scattered across the desk.

     “I’m just waiting on Bobby to go to lunch and thought I’d say hello.” She looked at the photos. “I’ve never seen any of these.”

     “They’re from Mary Katherine.”

      “Oh, well that would explain why there aren’t any of Alise.”

      Tara braced herself in case a confrontation came. “The story this week is about Kel as a father from Jim and Janet’s point of view. It’s not really about Alise.”

     “But you are writing about Alise, right? I mean somehow we have to get it out of everybody’s head that you and Kel are a couple.”

      “Debby, we
are
seeing each other, you do know that, right?”

      “Of course you are, for now. But darling, this is going nowhere. Just accept that it’s fun and a nice little distraction for him while he campaigns, but he’s never going to get remarried.”

     Tara tried to dismiss that with a laugh, “We haven’t talked about marriage.”

      “And he won’t. As I told you, Alise was the one and only for him. Molly and Kim like to think they know everything about Kel and Alise and you won’t hear very much that’s good about her from them. But she was my sister. I could see how things were because I wasn’t jealous of her.”

      “Molly and Kimberly were jealous of Alise?” Tara found that hard to believe, but just had to hear what the answer to her question would be.

      “Well, yes, she was so much more beautiful and they just couldn’t stand the attention Kel gave her instead of them. Especially Kimberly.”

     “There you are,” Bobby said, coming in and interrupting their conversation. He picked up a couple of the photos. “Where did these come from?”

     “Mary Katherine’s private stash.”

     “So they’re ours exclusively. Love that.”  He turned to Debby. “Ready?”

      “Ready. Let me know if you want to talk more, Tara.”

      Tara watched as they left and picked up one of the photos. It was of a very young Jim and Kel sitting at the grand piano. Jim was playing and Janet was leaning against Kel. It was the kind of intimate photograph that could only be shot by someone who knew them well. It so obviously wasn’t posed and none of the subjects seemed even aware that Mary Katherine had been taking the picture.

     She
did
want to talk some more, but not to Debby. Molly and Kimberly, even Lily, hesitated to say too much about Alise. She thought that had he not been otherwise occupied John might have been able to give her some honest insight into Kel’s and Alise’s marriage. What she wanted was to talk with someone unbiased. Someone who would be open and honest with her.

     She hesitated and debated the thought that was forming in her mind. Then she picked up the phone and called to see if she could meet with Evan and Mary Katherine.

     “Janet, even if I was in Newport right now, I wouldn’t be helping you make this decision,” Kel said, trying to be patient and understanding.

     “You don’t
care
what my invitations look like?” Truthfully, he really didn’t but he would never tell his only daughter that.

     “I care that you are happy with them.”

     “What about the flowers?” He knew that part of this was just Janet trying to include him and it gave her a tangible excuse for calling him while he was on the road.

     “I think you need to know what colors you are planning on using first.”

     “But I can’t decide.”

     “Baby, you are going to have to get Lily or Molly to help you. Or Sara. Sara will give you an honest opinion. At least she’ll be up front about what she won’t wear.”

     That made Janet laugh. “I’m sorry I sound like I’m whining.”

     “You don’t.”

      “Are you sure?”

     It was his turn to laugh. “Well, maybe you are, just a little. I really always thought you would do all this with Lily. I never thought my opinion would matter so much.”

    “There’s a lot of pressure to make the right choice when you are having a Lily Lansing wedding,” Janet said.

     “I’m sure there is, but I don’t need that extra stress right now. Whatever you and Lily decide on will be right. I have to go shake some hands. I love you.”

      He would never have said it, but it would have been so much easier if Janet had waited to get married sometime after the election. She had chosen a date early in October and they had made it work, but so far the only detail she had nailed down was that Mary Katherine was doing the photographs and she seemed to want his input on everything that wasn’t done. He appreciated the fact that she wanted him involved but it was just one more thing piling up on his already too full plate.

     They were having dinner before a debate in Philadelphia when a woman approached their table.

     “Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but aren’t you Skip O’Brien?”

      “Yes, I am,” Skip replied.

     “My name is Maggie Lucas. Leah was my sister.”

     “It’s nice to meet you.”

      “No, it’s nice to meet
you.
We didn’t know she was dating anyone seriously but Mom found her journal, and while most of what she wrote tells us she was deeply depressed, everything she wrote about you was positive and good. You were clearly the only light at the end of her life. She obviously loved you very much.” She smiled at him. “Well, that’s all. I just wanted to say thank you.” She leaned over and gave Skip a kiss on the cheek and left.

     Before she had taken more than a few steps away from the table Skip had left. John and Kel waited for a few minutes and then went to find him. There was a park across the street and he was sitting on a set of steps that led up to a fountain. Kel sat on one side of him and John on the other.

     “I hadn’t thought about her all day,” Skip said. And then he   bent his head and started to cry.

     John put an arm around his nephew. “It’s okay to think about her Skip.”

     “I’d rather not, John, it hurts too bad.”

     Kel said, “You may not believe it now, but one day you’ll be able to think about her without falling apart.”

    “I hope so.” He wiped his eyes. “Don’t we have somewhere to be right now?”

     “Yep,” Kel said, standing. “I get to go discuss my lack of a wife and my health one more time. Then you get to turn whatever the rebuttal is into something positive and inspiring.”

     “At least I have something to live for,” Skip said.

     Tara complimented Mary Katherine on the dinner and Evan replied, “She can order in with the best of them.”

     “Evan, you know good and well I cooked this dinner,” Mary Katherine said.  “He’s just jealous. He can’t even make coffee.”

    “True,” Evan said. “ I practically starve when she goes out of town.”

     “Not true,” Mary Katherine said. “He eats Chinese and pizza every night.”

     Tara laughed at them as they bickered back and forth light heartedly.

     Evan cleared the table and they settled in the living room to talk before watching the debates.

    “You said very politely that you wanted an unbiased opinion on the subject of Kel and Alise.  I take it you’ve been talking to Debby.”

     She realized that Evan was even more in tune with the entire O’Brien clan than she had thought. “Bobby seems intent on a story about their relationship and I keep getting mixed signals.”

     “I didn’t ever really know Alise, so I’ll have to let Evan handle this one,” Mary Katherine said. She was on the sofa beside him and leaned against him. Tara knew she had only been done with her first chemo treatment for a week and was scheduled for another in two days. Evan put his arms around her and his feet on the coffee table.            “The first time I ever saw Alise was the day before Kel woke up from his coma,” Evan said.   “He had had pneumonia for seven days at that point and been in a coma for four and she was just bothering to get there. She’d been in Florida with the man she was having an affair with. When she got there, she didn’t cry, she didn’t ask questions, she didn’t sit by his bed and hold his hand. She just didn’t seem to care or feel anything.  And when he woke up, there  was almost no interaction at all between them. She would come to watch us play polo and never say a word and she never seemed very interested in the children at all. I’ve heard Debby ramble on and on over the years about what a perfect couple they were, but I never saw any evidence of it.”

     “Why won’t Kel talk about her? We’ve talked about so many subjects but he never wants to talk about Alise.”

     Evan said, “ My impression is that Kel was very much in love with her when he asked her to marry him. In fact he was until the day he met a client for lunch and looked across the room and saw her kissing another man. He was just about to run for office then and the children were little, so even though she wanted a divorce they stayed married.  I think after she died he didn’t ever think he could trust anyone again in that kind of relationship. From what John says, he was devastated by her infidelity.”

     “I can’t write this story.  I can’t hurt him and I absolutely won’t write something that isn’t true.”