+1+
September 2021
She digs her nails into the damp manicured grass and pulls herself across the lawn. Pain ricochets from her pulsing shoulder wound with each movement. The thought of him back there… alone… motivates her. She has to make it. She has to. The grass soon gives way to an unforgiving driveway, her bare legs dragging uselessly across the hard asphalt. Her vision begins to blur. It’s too dark. It’s too far. She is starting to feel the pain from the gaping bullet wounds on her neck and back. Her body is reaching its limits but her grit won’t let her stop.
Seraphina Grigori drags herself onto her neighbor’s front steps. The porch lights are like beacons. These neighbors…they were a smiling orderly couples whose name she could never remember. If only she could rest. If only she could just give into the low throbbing hum of her pulse and drift away.
She can’t.
Not yet.
With her teeth bared she reaches for the gold plated door bell. Her fingers slip. For the first time she notices the blood covering her arms and hands. She reaches for the doorbell again, the tips of her fingers barley pressing against it. With each attempt her vison and body begin to weaken. She stares at her bloody hand prints covering the door. She reaches one last time and finally gives into the darkness.
6 years later
Ithaca, New York
November
Election Day
+2+
Paris Prince
The screaming jolts me awake
I open my eyes and jump out of the comfortable leather club chair. By the time I have my bearings I realize the screaming is, of course, coming from me.
“Shit.”
I take a sip of water from the escritoire I’d fallen asleep on and settle back into the club chair. The chair spins lazily and I take in a 360-degree view of the Ithaca Historical Society’s Library. It’s an impressive space with two stories of academic tomes and 18th century artifacts in glass cases. It’s a little regal for my taste, but I’d chosen this as my green room because of its spotty cell service. I need to be disconnected until the election is called.
I sit up straight when the double doors swing open. I hear a whisper of the enormous crowd on the other side of those doors. Camilla Mitchum slips in and closes the door shut behind her. She has her phone clasped tight in her left hand and a paper coffee cup in the other.
“Hey, Paris”, she says pushing back her blonde waves. Her “kid glove” tone alone tells me exactly what I’m in for.
“Could you hear me?” I ask.
“No. What’s wrong?” Cami asks.
“I was screaming… the usual nightmare.”
Her face falls. I shouldn’t have said anything. Camilla hated a problem she couldn’t fix and I didn’t need her worrying about my sleep terrors on top of everything else tonight. She hands me the tea she must have swiped from the caterers. It’s peppermint with just the right amount of honey.
“So”, I say setting the tea aside, “How are we looking out there.”
Camilla takes the club chair across from mine and sinks into it. Her voluminous golden blonde hair is losing the beachy waves she’d started the night with. Her now rumpled dark blue skirt and emerald green blouse is classy and professional—it makes her look much older than her twenty-one years.
“The local news hasn’t called it”, She says not meeting my eyes, “But…Mark is saying the race has pretty much been called for Cartwell. I’m so sorry Paris.”
I reign in my disappointment and the urge to curse. Defeat was never going to get easier. I’d let down my supporters and volunteers---hundreds of whom were just beyond those double doors. I’d have to give a rallying speech, concede and find some way to send my supporters home on a high note. I close my eyes and prepare myself for the long night ahead. It was all so fucking familiar.
“Tonight doesn’t have to be a total bust”, Cami says leaning forward.
“It doesn’t?” I open my eyes slowly. She isn’t using her junior campaign manager voice anymore.
“Paris, being on the campaign trail with you this year has been amazing. You didn’t have to hire me after I broke up with you...”
I sit up and lean toward her.
“You were the best one for the job, Cami. You know me, the city and my platforms. I think we kept it professional.”
“Umm…what about the Buffalo fundraiser.”
“We mostly kept it professional.”
She sits up. I can tell she’s about to go into her speech mode. Cami is a thinker. She is careful with her words. She isn’t quiet…far from it. But every word she says means something. Usually when it comes to the important stuff she won’t stop talking until it is all out.
“Paris, now that the campaign is over I realize I made a mistake breaking up with you. I want to give us a second chance. You proposing to me last spring scared me. I’m not scared anymore. This campaign changed everything for me. This is where I want to be. I want to keep going down this road with you…for whatever is next. I want be your partner-in-crime. I want to support and celebrate with you. I love how you always trust and encourage me to take risks and chances. I love how you champion me. I even loved fighting with you over which stupid polls we should look at.”
She laughs at the memory and it actually makes me a smile. I really fucking needed this.
“I thought you wanted to finish school.” I say remembering point-by-point why she dumped me 8 months ago after I asked her to marry me.
Cami thinks on it.
“If we’re engaged for a six months I’ll be done at Cornell in time for a wedding. I can start applying for law school wherever we land next. I’m ready for it all Paris. Road to the White House. You and me.”
“You and me”, I repeat to myself because it had been just ‘me’ for far far too long.
Cami kisses me and I can tell she’d had a sip of my tea. Hiring my ex-girlfriend as my junior campaign manager should have been more of a hazard. But we’d done well. Even if I wasn’t going to be the mayor of Ithaca
“Maybe”, Cami whispers, “You could take me to some of those clubs you mentioned?”
I kiss her again and take my time. Enjoy the familiar touch and savoring it, “Your dad would kill me.”
“Ew stop”, she said brining her hands to her ears, “My Dad doesn’t need to be all in our personal lives.”
“Sorry”, I say once again surprised I’m actually laughing on a night like this.
This is why I know she is who I want to be my partner. Cami has this way of surprising me. Of making situations that usually had me calling my therapist bearable. Enjoyable even. That was how it had been when we first met at a small Democratic Congressional Election Committee fundraiser 18 months ago. I was dealing with a depressive episode after my failed New York State Rep campaign and hiding by the dessert table. She was there looking for cheesecake squares.
What started as a casual conversation turned into a bold and riveting debate on the 2010’s recession. She talked policy in a way that made it hard to believe she was barley 20 years old. She reminded me of me at that age. We traded numbers and never stopped talking.
Cami came from a family of avid political news junkies who saw our similar passions and hadn’t (entirely) minded I was 18 years her senior. I’d asked her Dad and Grandfather for their blessing before proposing 8 months ago. They were more disappointed than me when Cami turned me down.
Here I was being presented with a second chance.
“Tonight doesn’t have to be negative”, Camilla says in her junior campaign manager voice, “After your concession speech…let’s announce our engagement. End on a high note.”
“I …” I wanted this. I wanted her. But I had unfinished business, “I want us to start over with a totally clean slate. I’m going to start by getting my divorce finalized. “
Cami nods.
“Wait. You talked to your ex?” she says more shocked than anything.
“No. The private investigator I hired was useless. “
“My dad knows some detectives. Maybe they can help.”
“Since I won’t be mayor I’ve got time on my hands to do some investigating”, I say now ready to make jokes about my continued underemployment, “If I wait any longer it will never get done.”
“Okay. When you do get this finalized. Let’s do it, Paris. Let’s give us another chance.”
“Sounds like plan.”
Camilla spins lazily in her chair and I wish it could just be the two of us for the rest of the night. A loud synchronized sound of disappointment comes from beyond the double doors. I had officially lost my mayoral run for the city of Ithaca.
“Guess they just called it.”, Camilla says slipping her shoes back on.
“Let’s get out there.”
+3+
I think I gave a good concession speech that night. I can’t actually remember it. I was so fucking disappointed. I truly thought I had this one. I was polling well across the board. I had bi-partisan support. People connected with me and several knew about the violent home invasion that had upended my entire life a little over six years ago.
The crowd seemed to leave in good spirits and my campaign manager, Mark, spent the night dragging me to donors who wanted personal thank yous. I kept looking for Cami in the crowd. She was of course going above and beyond thanking volunteers and encouraging them to stay involved.
I eventually slip away from Mark and give Cami the signal that I’m sneaking out to go home. I call a car to take me home and have the driver stop at the gates of my overpriced subdivision. The driver clearly recognizes me and says :
“Maybe next time”, as he pulls away.
Glenn is working the front gate and offers me a ride to my street, but I feel safe enough to walk. I take my time walking past the towering single family homes with their slopping lawns to the newer development in the back. My development is a small block of slim brick revival style townhouses. My end unit is one of the slimmer models but it has the same identical tired roof, tiny lawn and enclosed porch as every single one on the block.
I push my thumbprint against the lock to open it and quickly punch in the security code. When I enter the hall lights automatically fade on. The small camera by the door whirrs following my movements. I leave my shoes neatly by the front door and jog up the mahogany wood steps to shower. I’m down to the last bit of the small batch soap I now bought in bulk after Cami said she loved the woodsy lemon bergamot scent. I’ll have to order more if we got back together.
Once I feel clean, I turn the shower to the rainfall setting. I sit on the gold black marble shower ledge and let the water mix with my warm tears until I feel absolutely nothing.
After slipping on my pajamas I make a stop in my home office and grab the red file folder from the bottom of my desk drawer. I just pick the red folder up like it’s nothing. Like it hasn’t been toying and teasing me for nearly 6 years.
I set the red folder on the gray granite kitchen counter while I fix myself a glass of almond milk with turmeric and honey. The dark gray walls and intricately decorated space had been the brainchild of a local interior designer. The dark contemporary space they put together always made me feel like I was in a lush Gothic Restoration Hardware showroom--even though I’d lived here for three years.
I involuntarily rub the thick scars on my chest and shoulder
before opening the red folder. Inside is all the information I’d gathered about
my estranged wife’s whereabouts. It had been more than six years since I’d last
seen or spoken to her.
I pull out the bank statement and highlight where she’d
withdrawn $15,000 dollars from her savings a month after she left. I set out the letters
I received from her lawyer a year after she left. The letters were from Grant
Henderson, PLC. The letters informed me that she’d transferred ownership of all
her New Aeterna business assets and her SoHo condo to me. The letter authorized
the waiver of our post-nup. I kept expecting the divorce papers to come. I kept
meaning to pick up the slack and file them myself but time got away from me. I couldn’t put it off
anymore.
And since I was not the mayor of Ithaca and my appointed positon as Ithaca’s Treasury Director had been dissolved thanks to cutbacks…I had all the time in the world to find her.
“Where are you, Seraphina?”
+++
According to the letterhead Grant Henderson, PLC is headquartered in Manhattan. I decide If I am going to track down my estranged wife, her lawyer is probably the best place to start.
The next day I get up at six in the morning and catch a train to the city. Mark has been calling and texting me non-stop. I know if I pick up I’ll talk myself out of going to Manhattan. Instead I wait until the train has left the station to pick up.
“Good Morning, Mark”, I say glancing at my phone as a ‘good morning’ text comes in from Cami.
“We need to talk next steps, Paris. “ Mark says as hello.
“It has barely been 24 hours since we lost”, I remind him, “Get some rest. We’ll strategize in a week.”
“Yeah but with the city laying you off you’re a free agent. We have flexibility. I’ve got a lead on a New York state senator seat opening up in Rochester. If you can get down there I can probably swing you a job leading the defense attorney’s office until election time.”
Mark’s vast network made him well worth the hefty salary the DCEC paid him after I hired him as my campaign manager/political consultant. He also kept things surface level which I appreciated. He wasn’t looking to connect or dig deep with people and I liked that. We could spend hours drinking together and still not know a damn thing about each other despite our years working together. Mark was sadly the closest thing I had to a best friend.
He was also one of the few people that didn’t ask about that night.
“Let me think on it, Mark.”
“This won’t be like the Suffolk campagin. Rochester has a strong progressive middle class. Or we could take the jump to the Middle America. I think now is a good time. There is a big progressive subset in Minnesota.”
“I’ll do some
research. See what will be a good fit."
“Hey, keep your head up.”
“Will do. Please take a vacation Mark.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I find a quiet car in the back so I can read through the social media posts about my colossal loss. There had been a bit of a buzz about Ithaca’s mayoral race since Blair Carter and I were both in the LGBTQ+ community. After reading the articles (and not the comments) I spend the rest of the ride scrolling though Cami’s Instagram feed.
Cami hadn’t posted a lot during the campaign but when I scrolled back a year there were hundreds of post from when we started dating; restaurants we’d discovered and our weekly picnics in the park for her to escape her roommates and me to escape my townhouse. We’d taken up swimming, art classes and she’d insisted on teaching me how to cook. No luck with that. She always found creative ways to take pictures while respecting me not wanting my face on social media too much.
Cami has one post from last night. One of the rare ones on her feed with my face in it. It was of us hugging after my concession speech. Mark is patting me on the back looking proud. The three of us had been quite a team. The caption read
It’s commonly accepted
for the conceding candidate to pull back and revaluate after an election. Not
Paris Prince. Even though things didn’t turnout the way we wanted Paris Prince
will not stop fighting for fair policy, progressive values and equity. This is
just the beginning! For every single person who worked on this campaign. Thank
you. Thank you. Thank you
I take a screenshot and put it in my Happiness File. It’s a secret album on my phone filled with things I looked at when I felt down. My therapist had suggested it when I’d been at my lowest moment. I didn’t need it as much anymore--but I liked curating things for my personal use only. Mostly it was quotes and sayings. A few funny memes and cartoons. I also included social media post I liked plus a few photos I had taken at my brother’s vow renewal.
The hustle and bustle of midtown Manhattan makes me feel like a normal person again. It feels good to blend into the crowd and not be herded around with an entourage. I follow my phone’s instructions to the address on Grant Henderson’s letterhead. Grant Henderson, PLC is not what I expected. He's located in a squat office building sandwiched between two modern skyscrapers. The door is propped open with a loose brick and the digital directory is cracked. I take the steps to the second floor and find Henderson PLC proudly advertised on a small corner office. When I opened the door it hits right up against a file cabinet. Luckily I’m slim enough to effortlessly slide through. A woman with strawberry blonde hair and a stack of paperwork barley looks up to greet me.
“Fill this out. Are you Mr. Lor—“
“I…no. I don’t have an appointment.”
The woman looks at me over her glasses.
“We don’t take walk-ins.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just want some information on one of Henderson’s clients. Seraphina Grigori? Or she might be going by another name I—“
“Mr. Prince!”
A man I assume is Grant Henderson bursts through the door that connects his office to the tiny reception area. He’s older maybe in his late 70s but he seems spry.
“Come in. Come in, sir”, he gives his secretary a look before letting me into his cramped office. He has a big smile and feels approachable. I’m pretty sure Seraphina picked him because (based on his décor) he still proudly advertised in newspapers.
“It’s nice to meet you in person”, I say. So far I’d only communicated with him via tax memos.
“Of course Mr. Prince. How could I forget? Your wife is a good client of mine.”
As a working lawyer myself I knew that meant “paid well”. I’d briefly e-mailed Grant Henderson when I decided to sell New Aeterna so I could focus on my campaigns. Sera and I had been planning to sell just before our lives went to shit and she disappeared. There were younger people in the community who could give it more attention.
I’d sold the property, name and pending trademarks to a group of kink influencers for 500,000 dollars. The money all went into my her account but she never touched it. I retained all the copyrights and negotiated as 10% profit share and was kept on as a founding owner, silent partner and low salaried board member Mr. Grant Henderson had been my ex’s proxy during the sale—but apparently he’d been instructed to not get involved and trust me to handle it fairly.
“Mr. Henderson I need to.” I pull out the divorce papers I’d drawn up last night.
“I see”, he says, “I can make sure she gets these. I will reach out to you once she has signed and returned them.”
“No”, I say, “I want more …I want closure. I want to do it in person. I need you to tell me where she is.”
He sits down uncomfortably.
“That’s not an option. First attorney-client privilege and second…she calls me once a year during tax season. I don’t know where she is. I just know her checks always clear…which is rare for my clients.”
“You must know something?”
“Look Mr. Prince my job is to represent my client. I will ensure she gets the papers and if there needs to be negations you will speak directly to me.”
He reaches for the divorce papers but I put them back in my bag.
“I’m not dangerous”, I explain, “I don’t know if you know our story from the news...the home invasion? She just couldn’t… she left and never came back. It’s been six years. I just want some closure.”
“I’m sorry Mr. Prince. I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I can’t give you her contact information.” I get up feeling defeated. “Mr. Prince. Don’t drag this out for another year.”
“I can’t. Not like this.”
Defeated, I make my way out of the office.
“Mr. Prince”, the woman at the front desk calls.
“Yes?”
The woman looks back and forth between me and her boss’ office. Then her voice gets low.
“I have family in Ithaca. My mother campaigned for you. ”
“Oh…I appreciate her work and dedication.”
“She told me your story. What happened to you and your wife was horrible. You’re a survivor.”
I nod. It had been almost seven years since the home invasion and just when I thought the fear from that night had faded-- it comes back to me.
“I hear that a lot”, I give her a warm smile and head for the door.
“It’s funny you’re here today…your wife’s retainer check just came in today. Not many of our clients send in checks anymore.”
She holds out a check and I look at the light gray checks with red kiss lips on them. I feel a pang of nostalgia just seeing her elegant script in dark blue ink. She’d signed her checks with a pretty flourish on the ‘’e”.
Seraphina Prince.
She went by her married name. Yet, no matter how many times I Googled--her name never came up. Not even the stories from the home invasion.
“Um, she’s an old soul”
“Her envelopes always have the cutest stamps on them. See.”
She holds out an envelope with a stamp featuring a succulent. I let my eyes travel to the return address and commit it to memory.
S.P
P.O Box 1345
SEVERANCE, WA
---
No, I am not pulling a prank like SHV did with So We Meet Again (still not over that one 😒). This story picks up 10 years after the ending of AYC (Which took place in 2017). In 2020 a commenter asked about Sera at 40-years old and I had this vision. I've been juggling these two timelines in secret.
It just happened to work out that Paris/Sera split up in the Fall of 2021 so the pandemic is referenced but not directly in the serial. We'll learn more about the violent home invasion that eventually led to the end of their marriage.
Trust the process.
Yes, Blair Cartwell is the prosecutor from Goodwill. She moved to New York and became a politician!
This serial is looking to be 14-18 chapters long. I’m in the final stages. I have like 30% left to jot down.