Danielle Steel - Malice

They believed it too, and two weeks later he announced that in November he would be running for the Senate.

It was a tight race, and he would be fighting a tough incumbent. But the man had been in the Senate for a long time, and people thought it was time for a change. And Charles Mackenzie was very appealing. He had a great track record, a clean reputation, and a lot of friends. He was also very good-looking, and had a family people liked, which never hurt in an election.

The campaign began with a press conference, and right from the beginning, Grace saw the difference. They asked him questions about his history, his law firm, his personal worth, his income, his taxes, his employees, his children. And then they asked about Grace, and her involvement in “Help Kids!” and St. Andrew's before that. Mysteriously, they knew about the donations she'd made. But in spite of their probing, they seemed inclined to like her. Magazines called her up to do interviews, and photograph her, and at first she refused them. She didn't want to be in the forefront of the campaign. She wanted to do what she had done for him before, work hard, and stand just behind him. But that wasn't what they wanted. They had a fifty-eight-year-old candidate for senator with movie star good looks, and a pretty wife who was twenty years younger. And by spring they wanted to know everything about her, and the children.

“But I don't want to do interviews,” she complained to him one morning over breakfast. “You're the candidate, I'm not. What do they want with me for heaven's sake?” she said, pouring him a second cup of coffee. They had a housekeeper who came in halfway through the day, but Grace still liked being alone with Charles and the children and cooking breakfast for them herself every morning.

“I told you it would be this way,” Charles said calmly about the press. Nothing seemed to ruffle him, even when the stories about him were unflattering, which they often were now. It was the nature of the political beast, and he knew that. Once you entered the ring, you belonged to them, and they could do anything they wanted. Gone the peaceful congressional days when he only had to worry about the constituents he represented, and the local press. Now he was dealing with the national press, and all their demands and quirks, love affairs and hatreds. “Besides,” he smiled at her and finished his coffee, “if you were ugly, they wouldn't want you. Maybe you should stop looking like that,” he said as he leaned over and kissed her.

He took the kids to school as he always did. Matthew, their baby, was in second grade now. And Andrew had just started high school. They still all went to the same school, and they had gotten to the point where most of their friends were in Washington and not Connecticut, but they were at home in both places.

Things rolled along smoothly until June, the campaign was going well, and Charles was pleased with it. And they were just about to go back to Greenwich for the summer, when Charles appeared at the house unexpectedly in the afternoon, looking pale. For a sick moment Grace thought something had happened to one of the children. She heard him come in, and hurried down the stairs to the front hall just as he put down his briefcase.

“What's wrong?” she asked without pausing for breath. Maybe they had called him first … which one was it … Andy, Abigail, or Matt?

“I've got bad news,” he said, looking at her unhappily and then taking two quick steps toward her.

“Oh God, what is it?” She squeezed his hand without thinking, and when she took it away again she'd left a mark from the pressure of her fingers.

“I just got a call from a source we have at Associated Press …” then it wasn't the children, “Grace … they know about your father and your time at Dwight.” He looked devastated to have to tell her, but he wanted to prepare her. He was only desperately sorry to have put her in a position where she could have gotten so badly hurt. And he realized now that he never should have done it. He had been foolish and selfish and naive to think they could survive the campaign unscathed. And now the press were going to devour her.

“Oh,” was all she said, staring at him. “I … okay.” And then she looked at him worriedly, “How badly is this going to hurt you?”

“I don't know. That's not the point. I didn't want you to have to go through this.” He led her slowly into their living room with an arm around her shoulder. “They're going to break the story at six o'clock, on the news, and they want a press conference before, if we'll do it.”

“Do I have to?” she looked gray.

“No, you don't, Why don't we wait and see how bad it is, and then deal with it afterwards?”

“What about the kids? What should I say to them?” Grace looked calm, but very pale, and her hands were shaking badly.

“We'd better tell them.”

They picked them up from school together that afternoon, and took them home, and sat them down in the dining room around the table.

“Your mom and I have something to say,” he said quietly.

“You're getting divorced?” Matt looked terrified, all of his friends’ parents had been getting divorced lately.

“No, of course not,” his father said with a smile in his direction. “But this isn't good either. This is something very hard for your mom. But we thought that we should tell you.” Charles looked very serious, as he held Grace's hand firmly.

“Are you sick?” Andrew asked nervously, his best friend's mom had just died of cancer.

“No, I'm fine.” Grace took a breath and felt the first tightening of her chest she'd felt in a long time. She didn't even know when she'd last seen her inhaler. “This is about something that happened a long time ago, and it's very hard to explain, and understand. It's very hard unless you've been there, or seen it happen.” She was fighting back tears, and Charles squeezed her hand.

“When I was a little girl, like Matty's age, my dad used to be very mean to my mom, he used to beat her,” she said calmly but sadly.

“You mean like hit her?” Matthew said in astonishment with wide eyes, and Grace nodded solemnly.

“Yes. He hit her a lot, and he really hurt her. He beat her for a long time, and then she got very, very sick.”

“Because he beat her up?” Matthew asked again.

“Probably not. She just did. She got cancer, like Zack's mom.” They all knew Andrew's friend. “She was very sick for a long time, four years. And while she was sick, sometimes he'd beat me … he did a lot of terrible things … and sometimes he still beat my mom. But I thought that if I let him hurt me …” Her eyes filled with tears and she choked as Charles squeezed her hand still harder to give her courage. “I thought that if I let him hurt me, then he wouldn't hurt her as much … so I let him do anything he wanted … it was pretty terrible … and then she died. I was seventeen, and the night of her funeral,” she closed her eyes and then opened them again, determined to finish the story that she had never wanted her children to know. But now she knew she had to tell them, before someone else did. “The night of the funeral, he beat me again … a lot … very badly … he hurt me terribly, and I was very scared … and I remembered a gun my mom had next to her bed, and I grabbed it … I think I just wanted to scare him,” she was sobbing now and her children stared at her in stupefied silence, “I don't know what I thought … I was just so scared and I didn't want him to hurt me anymore … we fought over the gun … it went off accidentally, and I shot him. He died that night.” She took a big gulp of air, and Andrew stared at her, stunned.

“You shot your dad? You killed him?” Andrew asked, and she nodded. They had a right to know. She just didn't want to tell them about the rapes, if she didn't have to.