He got the call at 7:13 that morning, as he was getting ready for breakfast. Frank marched on numb legs to the administrative office, icy dread weighing down his steps. Hearing his mother's voice on the other end shook him half way out of it; she was all right. But her tone sounded oddly flat as she recited that his father had died of a heart attack in the middle of the night, like she'd said it a hundred times already, or heard it. No tears, no panic. Just a hint of relief she couldn't yet express, but that resonated down through his bones.
"Your father's dead, Frank. And I can't say I'm sorry."
Relief inundated his mind, washing away every other thought. They had survived. They were finally free.
When he walked through the door of his childhood home late that afternoon, he found his mother packing boxes.
"Frank!" She launched herself at him and wrapped him in a bear hug that almost crushed him.
"You look like you've been busy." She gestures towards the boxes lining the walls of the living room.
"I didn't want to touch his stuff, but I decided about six this morning that I didn't want to look at all his shit anymore."
"You gettin' rid of everything, or…"
"Every last fucking thing. That man's been in my life way too long, and he ain't staying any longer." He chuckled and set to work beside her, fierce pride welling in his chest at the woman who'd raised him.
"Is there going to be a funeral?"
"Pastor Garett said he'd burry him tomorrow." Frank considered for a moment.
"Mamma-"
"I'm not going. Nothing in the world could make me pretend to cry for that man. I have half a mind to bring a lighter and set his corpse on fire, but I don't think Garett would appreciate that."
It was hard to absorb the silence. It was peaceful, and that was the problem. Silence only came in between the drunken explosions and fits rage. But now he was gone, and neither of them could quiet believe it. Their voices were oddly steady, and their heads clear of grief, only a half-giddy, incredulous euphoria. They talked late into the night and fell asleep on the couch, coffee dregs gone cold.
When he came out the next morning in a black suit, his mom smiled proudly and reached up to adjust his tie. He was clad head toe in black, even though they both knew the show of mourning was hollow.
"Are you gonna be ok?" She chuckled.
"I have enough to keep me busy, tryin' to figure out what I'm gonna do now without that bastard breathin' down my neck twenty-four seven. I ain't gonna get in no trouble." Grinning, he turned to go. "And Frank? Do me a favor and piss on his grave when you get the chance."
Frank laughed all the way to the cemetery, so hard he almost forgot to school his features into a vague impression of sadness or the paster would think he'd gone mad.
It had rained the last few days and the ground was muddy. Pastor Garret droned on in the funeral script he'd recited for countless poor souls before Calvin Underwood. That same voice that had bored him to death under good intentions every Sunday of his childhood brought some sort of comfort in the familiarity. His mom had a solid ally until Frank could get back to her. They stood alone in the cemetery, birds occasionally breaking into the background. His father couldn't even manage one friend who cared if he was dead. The whole town knew, yet it was empty, fitting for an empty man.
The men headed towards the parking lot in silence. Frank stared straight ahead, not quite able to wrap his head around the reality that he and his mom never had to endure his father again. It would take him quite a while adjust to that idea. At Frank's truck, they shook hands. Garret opened his mouth, but the words seemed to stick. Not even a man of God could find a redeeming quality about Calvin Underwood.
"Frank, your daddy-…"
"It's ok. He wasn't much, but he was what I had."
"And how's your mamma doin'?" Neutrally, he shrugged, his eyes on the bright grass.
"She's doin'. She'll be fine. Check on her every once in while, will you? Make sure she stays that way?" The man nodded curtly.
"Will do, son."
On their battered, ancient couch, she tucked his head against her shoulder as she laid protective arms around him. As much as he'd deny it, she could sense her son was relieved to have her to make big decisions for a while. He'd grown into a fine young man, but the last few days had been harrowing for both of them. She'd had to remind herself that, as mature as he looked with his proud baring and serious eyes, Frank wasn't quite all grown-up yet.
"He can never hurt you again, Momma. He'll never beat me again." The words came out thick like his tongue had trouble forming them.
"I know. I'm sorry I couldn't stop him, Frank. There was no reasoning with that man when he got in one of his moods."
He didn't say anything to that; there was nothing he could say. Neither of them could have stopped him, so they'd had to settle for protecting each other as best they could manage. She had resolutely avoided speaking her late husband's name since she'd heard of his untimely demise; she didn't want to invoke the memories swimming around in her head. The faster this twenty-year-long nightmare faded into hazy half-recollections, the happier she'd be. They sat in silence for a long while, absorbing the serene quiet and their new reality. When he finally straightened to roll out the kink in his neck, she turned to kiss his cheek, and took his hands. Her hazel eyes met his dark brown ones, her expression intense.
"You listen here, Frank. You go back to school and graduate and make something of yourself. I'm not gonna have my son breaking his back on a farm and drowning himself in liquor every night. Lucky for me, you were smart enough to get out of here on your own, but I'll disown you if you come back here with shit to show for it. You hear me?"
He nodded, thought of all the times she had held him when he was little, and how much he had missed the way she smelled, vague scents that meant home and comfort. The last of his childhood was over.
"If you're ok with it, Frank, I'm going to sell this place. It doesn't make any money and the crops keep getting worse by the year. I don't have the time or energy to deal with it, and I can make more money working than we ever could here. There's a developer who said he'd be interested, gas or coal or oil or something. He's willing to pay me a lot of money too."
"I'd be happy to see this place gone. I kind of hated thinking about you living here. It… reminds me too much of him."
She had been the one really running the farm for the last twenty years, though his imbecile father had chosen the land. Rocks, all of it, concealed under a thin layer of top soil, and she'd never been so furious in her life. That was the day all her hope had withered and died, when she realized she'd been shackled to a feckless moron. But now she was finally free. Over the last few days, she'd held her head higher, and smiled more than Frank had seen her in his entire life.
At thirty-eight, his mom could finally, really live.
"You let me know if you need anything, ok? Do you have enough food for a while?" Her hazel eyes lit up and she smirked. She arched a brow.
"If I can fit all of this food in the freezer, I won't have to cook for at least a couple weeks, and the neighbors'll keep bringing stuff all month. You might even have to eat some when you come home this summer; Gina Fitzpatrick always cooks like she's feeding an army. This is the most useful your father's been in his entire miserable life."
They sat in silence for a long while, and Frank got up to get fresh cups of coffee.
"Why'd you marry him?" he finally asked idly.
"Because he knocked me up," she responded dryly. "We didn't have a choice back then. My choice was marry him or starve. Course I didn't know I'd be starving half the time with a husband anyway."
Over the years, he'd kept his promise. After law school, when Frank came back to Gaffney with Claire, his mother had been thrilled. She adored her daughter-in-law, and Claire loved her back. When he got elected to the state senate, his mom was fairly bursting with pride. When he got elected to Congress, she cried out of happy shock. Her son would have a far better life than she had, with a partner who loved him fiercely, and she couldn't have asked for more. A Congressman. Her boy was a Congressman.
Claire coaxed him to the townhouse on their second day in DC, insisting a Congressman couldn't live out of a hotel room. He'd get sworn in in three days, and she wasn't inclined to live out of suitcase longer than absolutely necessary. When he asked skeptically if they could afford a place like this, she just nodded, and he swallowed hard. He needed to have a stake in this, to help provide for them, not live off his wife's money. Taking his hand, Claire chuckled when she noticed the apprehensive look on his face.
"Do you have any idea how much this place costs, Claire?"
"We can afford it, Francis. I promise."
"I'm not taking your money-"
"It's our money," she interrupted smoothly. "We're a team. We're in this together."
"You know I hate how your father gave us the house in Gaffney as a damn wedding present-"
"This is different," Claire smiled.
"How?"
"Because it would be ours. Not our families', not a gift. It can be something we bought for ourselves." She smiled that soft grin that made her gray eyes shine. "Our palace. I know you love it."
He looked around the room again, cataloguing everything they'd seen, taking in the details, the space, the incredible craftsmanship. Here, there would be no slipshod handiwork, not a single overlooked detail. She watched his eyes light at the idea, watched his jaw clench as he calculated what his share of the price would be. Not nearly enough.
"I already spoke with our agent. We can move in in a week if you say yes."
Then he noticed the men in finely tailored suits talking in the kitchen. So that's where Claire had been yesterday… Hugging her tightly, Frank grinned and kissed his wife.
"Yes."
Muffled footsteps on the carpet drew him from his mountain of work, but he didn't look up until her fingers slid through his hair. Claire smiled down at him perched on the edge of his desk, and his eyes lit as she leaned down to kiss him.
"I came to see if you had time for dinner, or if I was going to be sleeping alone tonight." Frank looked at the stack of files and paperwork, then at his wife.
"You know what, dinner would be good. I'm not going to finish all of this tonight anyway."
"I like this office," she mused proudly. "I need to find you some better artwork, but I think it suits you. Do you have the Hill shaking with terror yet?"
"Only the Republicans."
"Good."
Taking his hand, Claire led him out of the office, and she chuckled when she caught him staring at her. They'd just gotten back from their first trip to Gaffney together since he got elected to Congress in the fall. Spring was unfurling over the city, breathing color into it again.
"Being back there doesn't hurt so much when I know I can get away," he mused. "It used to feel like it was crushing my chest, like it was trying to bury me alive."
"You were afraid you'd be trapped there till the day you died."
Just like she'd been terrified that she would spend her life imprisoned in another Highland Park mansion. They were building a life, the foundations of an empire, and she thought he held his head a little higher after November. This was a platform they could really do something with, significant things.
When she unlocked the door to their townhouse after dinner, it still took him a minute to remind himself they lived in a place like this. That they'd made it so far. He still couldn't quite figure out what to do with a 4,000-square-foot home in the middle of Georgetown, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. Every once in a while, even months later, it hit him that Claire had grown up in places like this, sprawling symbols of luxury and status. He might still be finding his bearings, but his wife was perfectly at home. After he'd dragged her to a hellhole like Gaffney for years, she was finally back where she belonged. Part of him would always be the dirt-poor farm boy, no matter how high he reached.
He'd die before he moved back, because that place had nearly killed him.
Although he knew what Congressmen made, he'd nearly chocked when he opened his first few paychecks: Four times what he'd made in South Carolina. Now he felt like less of an imposter in designer suits and shoes, slowly shaking off the dread that he'd find himself banished to the hinterlands and imprisoned there forever. On Claire's brilliant suggestion, he was even crafting a thicker, more indistinctly 'Southern' accent, playing up a persona of a poor South Carolinian farm boy who'd clawed his way into the halls of power wit grit and determination. Her logic had been brutally simple: assumptions kill, so let people make them.
"Do you want some wine?" Claire ran a hand down his back, and he nodded distractedly.
"How's your office?"
"The staff is settling in and I found some terrific candidates that I think will really help expand CWI's footprint."
"Where'd you go this morning?" Frank smiled broadly.
"That barbecue place I found, Freddy's. I said I wished I could eat his ribs for breakfast, and he told me to call if I wanted to come by in the mornings, since he's there anyway."
"And he actually made you ribs at seven in the morning?" she laughed.
"He did. And they were delicious." Gently, she ran a fingertip down his palm, took a sip of her wine.
"I'm proud of you, Francis."
"I'm proud of us. I couldn't have done this without you."
"This is only the first step."
"Yes it is."
They shared a knowing smile, already planning their next triumph.
He was carving a place for himself in this new world with Claire, and this townhouse had been their first real step out of the backwaters. Never could he have dared to dream to have so much during his childhood years in Gaffney. He and Claire were partners in life, and they'd done this together, first South Carolina, and now Congress. The two of them were strong apart, but invincible together. They could forge any life they wanted, as great and as high as they wanted, and he had no doubt they would.
