Moving On : Part IV

So it was that in less than a month, a row of five vacant townhouses in the West Village had become a new home for a group of young people, all connected to each other through a mutual love of song. True, one of the houses still had both of its parts sitting empty, and half of another still awaited the person that would occupy it in the long term, but they were all being cared for. Jeff had made an offer to Dani, asking her if she would like to come and live with them all, but she had declined, more than happy in the little place she had in Park Slope. It was a combination of that, and the fact that as much as she loved and cared for all of them, the idea of living so close to the people that she worked with sent a shiver down her spine. Mike did feel guilty about his place standing empty, but then he heard that Trent and Rory were considering coming up for a longer break, if they could find somewhere to stay, and it hit him what his house could be; guest accommodation. He extended an invitation to visit to Matt, and told Puck and Quinn that next time they were in the city, he would give them the keys. It wasn't long before he had a whole list of people that wanted to come and stay.

As for Trent and Rory, they too had found themselves moving home. When Jeff had told them that he had inherited a property in Georgetown, and they could move into it if they wished, they had told him that they would have to see it first before making a decision. They had expected somewhere small, and probably modern. Instead, they had found themselves outside a substantial older property, checking and double checking the address. The fact that the keys fitted in the lock had confirmed that it was indeed the correct place… Less than five minutes later, Trent was on the phone telling Jeff they were taking it; it wasn't as pristine as the West Village homes, but it was fully modernised and ready to move in to. It retained all of its period charm, was close to the shops and bars, and had easy access to both college and Burt's office. The main bonus was the amount of space that it gave them; both Trent and Rory had a large collection of books that kept growing, and here there were enough shelves to keep them happy.

The other advantage to having a much larger place was that they could set a room aside to store all of the papers they had concerning the part of Sue Sylvester's election campaign that they were covertly involved in. it had been impossible to store any of the papers at Burt's office, given the close scrutiny that he as a congressman was under, particularly at the moment as an election drew close. As for Sue's campaign, it was building up very nicely, thanks to the lady herself, and Mrs Duval…

The fact that his ex-wife was co-ordinating the campaign of his main rival was a thorn in the side of Mr Duval. The fact that said rival was representing the same party was even more of a nuisance to him. What was most irksome was the fact that he had discovered that there was actually no law which stated that there could only be one candidate from each party. All he could do was try and persuade the people of Westerville that his Trump influenced rhetoric was the best option for them. Sue was taking a more traditional approach, and they had to be convinced that it was out of date and would not succeed. After all, she had tried to get herself elected to Congress before, and had been soundly defeated by that interfering liberal minded idiot, Burt Hummel. He had not, and indeed would never forgive that man for the intervention that he had made over his son; had it not been for him sticking his nose in, then Nicholas could have been saved from the life of sin that he was now mired in. He was grateful for the fact that here in Westerville, the electorate seemed to have more intelligence than those rednecks in Lima. Sure, it was true that he was not getting the numbers he needed with the female vote, but that didn't worry him too much. As long as he managed to get the men round to his side, he could ask them to persuade their wives to see it his way too, and change their minds. After all, the little woman working away at home, caring for the children and obeying her husband was part of what had made America great in the past; feminism had a lot to answer for.

There was also resistance coming from Dalton Academy, and the schools like it. That pathetic woman in charge of the school now was as weak as Carmichael had been in his opinion, constantly bleating on about the folly of removing anti-bullying policies. Boys needed to learn from day one that the real world was tough and that they had to live with the law of the jungle. If his son had been subject to the righteous censure of his peers for the choices he had made, then Nicholas might have made a better choice. Of course, had his blond friend been taken out of the picture by the same peer group, then none of this stupidity would have happened in the first place.

His campaign manager, Sebastian's father, had begun to worry privately. It was not just down to the fact that he could see just how much support Sue Sylvester was starting to gain, or the fact that her campaign was being run by his candidate's ex-wife, with the backing of his son, daughter and in-laws. No, what worried him was the way that Sue looked at him every time that their paths crossed. It was a look that seemed to say that she knew all of his secrets. He would not put it past either of his sons to have accidentally let slip that his first wife wasn't actually dead, and therefore he was guilty of committing bigamy twice. Then there was the small matter of the few backhanders he had taken for favours in the court. If she knew, and exposed it, it would blow him clean out of the water, and take Duval with him. True, he was not implicated in any of it, but his credibility would be damaged by association.

He had already had one close call. His candidate had decided that they needed to employ the kind of advertising techniques that Sue herself had used in her original campaign in Lima. He had been unsure, but in the end, it had taken place; a TV broadcast in which he declared that the education system, with its pro-gay and anti-bullying policies would raise a generation of young American men to be weak, leaving them without an army to defend the nation from the rampages of commies and immigrants. A day later, Sue had responded in kind on her show; because it was filmed in Lima, outside the district, she could still use it as a platform with no risk of censure. She sat and ranted on about men that took advantage of women; that bullied them and forced them to give up all they held dear. Men that hit out at anyone that was different because of their own insecure masculinity. Men that broke the law, and deceived the public… Yes, the former state attorney was 99% certain that Sue knew all of his sins…

He was of course fully aware that Sue would never divulge his secrets unless it was to her own advantage. No, she would just continue to look at him in that way, and unnerve him. There was of course the small chance that she actually knew nothing at all. She was famed for her belief that everyone had a guilty secret. He could not take the risk though. If the world found out that he had known that his first wife was alive when he had married his second and third 'wives', then the consequences were not pretty. Even if they could not prove that he knew that she was alive, he would still be pilloried in the press, and worse still, he would be sued to destitution by his other two wives, and quite possibly by Julian too.

He was also convinced that Sue knew far more about the breakdown of the Duval family than he had been made party to. In fact, he was certain that she and Sebastian both knew more than he did; in the case of the latter, he and Nick had been good friends at Dalton, so he was informed, and secrets would have been shared. He thought about that for a while, and wished now that he had taken more of an interest in his younger son in that terrible year; that instead of regarding him as nothing more than a nuisance, he had tried to build bridges and form a relationship with his flesh and blood. If they had been closer, then perhaps he could have been persuaded to tell him the truth about the Duvals. Instead, all he had to go on was the version that had been given to him by Mr Duval himself, which was all about how his son had been seduced into a life of sin and debauchery by the devil boys at Dalton Academy. The irony that one of the boys in question, if his version was true, would have been Sebastian was not lost upon him.

He knew that everything that had taken place at Dalton would more than likely be dredged back up as the campaign heated up and became more frayed; he had already been told that Mr Duval intended to take no prisoners, and would not spare a thought for the feelings of anyone, especially not those that he believed had betrayed him. That statement had confirmed to him that his ex-wife, son and daughter were all fair game to the man he was supposed to get to Congress; they would be attacked if he could turn it to his advantage.

Mr Smythe dreaded an attack on Nick the most. That would almost certainly arouse a heated debate across the whole political spectrum. In his opinion, the boy had suffered more than enough in his short life already. He had, as part of his duties as State Attorney for Ohio, read the transcripts of Hunter's trial word for word, and what he had read left him shocked. That such barbarism had taken place in a school; a school where the long standing policies on bullying had been twisted and bent by a corrupt young man and his uncle. Although he would never admit it on the record, he could never agree with his candidates beliefs on anti-bullying policies. He could not support the notion that such events as those that had happened at Dalton in its darkest hour could be seen by anyone as character building, and particularly not when one of the victims of that horror was his own recalcitrant son.

That his boy had been subjected to such things had left him weeping, although he would never admit it. Pride stood in the way of that, and in any case, his own actions had lead to his relationship with Sebastian being shattered beyond repair. However, he could try now and show his two estranged sons that he wasn't as bad as Duval. Up until now he had restrained his candidate as much as he could; maybe he should stop doing so. If he let Duval show his true colours in public, it would shock so many people away from his candidacy and over to that of Sue Sylvester. She was still a Republican after all, and perhaps having a local congressperson that wasn't so caught up in the Trump rhetoric would not be such as a bad thing for Westerville.

Across town, in the comfortable sitting room of her parents home, Mrs Duval had no idea that Mr Smythe was slowly coming round to seeing that his candidate should be kept out of Washington at all costs. She would have laughed in the face of any person that suggested that such as sea change could even happen. Then again, if someone had told her this time last year that her staunchly Democrat voting parents would be actually assisting a Republican candidate to win an election, she would have suggested they seek psychiatric help, or at the very least, stop taking the drugs. Yet there in front of her at that very moment her father was stuffing envelopes, whilst he wore a pin that said 'I'm with Sue - Are you?' In the kitchen, her mother was engaged in a discussion with the lady in question on the issues of woman's rights, immigration and inevitably, 'The Wall'.

"That man is not sane!" she heard her mother exclaim. "He thinks that he can build several hundred miles of wall that can't be easily crossed, no doubt with pipes or tunnels to allow the existing water courses to run through it, and then he is just going to hand Mexico the bill for it! I mean, who does he think is going to build it in any case? The young unemployed layabouts that wouldn't know what hard work was if it came up and kicked them on the backside? He'd probably have to get in immigrants from Mexico to build it! I mean, what then? Get them to build the wall from their side to ensure they do not get into the US? It just makes me so angry - and don't even get me started on that nonsense that he is going to get the big firms to make things here or they'll be penalised. Are people so stupid that they do not realise that such a move would force prices up, and then they'd have high inflation to complain about too…"

"Trump is all about the soundbite. He loves it when the braying rednecks whoop and clap like an audience on Jerry Springer. He loves all the adulation. He is nothing more than a showman that lives for the applause, and of course, like all people of his ilk, he is never wrong about anything," Sue replied, with a sigh. "I hate to say this, but I am afraid that I can actually see him winning this election because there are enough voters out there that are every bit as stupid and bigoted as he is. Fortunately, here in Westerville, people are smart enough to be able to see through all of the lies and half truths. Thanks to that, there will be one less Trump fanatic heading to Washington I hope. Plus, if it does look like Duval is going to win, we have the last resort…"

Mrs Duval heard her mother sigh, then say quietly, "I know we do, but it is the last thing I would ever want to see. However, if Nick has agreed, then we will all be there to support him, and Jeff for that matter. That way, we get an opportunity to show the world what a real, great American family is really like. Loving and supportive, not bitter and divided."

Sue knew that the woman standing at her side meant every word of it. She had learnt a lot about the maternal side of Nick's family since she had enrolled his mother, initially unwillingly, as the manager of her campaign. She knew now that her parents had suspected that Nick was gay from the age of about 12, so many years before the day that the boy himself had suddenly had the revelation about the strength of his feelings for Jeff. They had also known that the blond boy had strong feelings for his best friend from the moment that they saw the way he acted when they were together. That had been when they had gone to support the Warblers in competition; that had been sectionals of Nick's first year. She had met him afterwards, and his grandmother had seen the way that Jeff looked at Nick as she had talked to her grandson; on her way home that night, she had told her husband that they needed to get to know Jeff better, and he had looked at her, then smiled as he realised what she was implying. That was another reason why they had stepped up to support him financially when his father had tried to force him to Harvard, and had stepped up even more when the man in question had disowned Nick, and their daughter, to their shame, had sided with him. Nick had paid his grandparents back every cent the moment that his inheritance from Blaine had cleared, insisting that as he could now support himself, it was only right that he did so. In the end, he would get his college fund after his parents divorced.

It had been the shock of discovering that her son had been left scarred by Hunter and that he had told no-one that had finally seen his mother come to her senses and instigate divorce proceedings, much to the delight of her parents. They had never taken to her husband, and they were glad to see him leaving the lives of their daughter and grandkids. She was rebuilding her life, and though it had been hard at first, the job with Sue had been the making of her. Back in Illinois, before her husband had made the family move to Ohio, Mrs Duval had been a force to be reckoned with, running her own business and making a success of it. She had been forced to give all that up when she returned to Ohio, and she had felt her drive was gone. Exposed to the cut and thrust of the political world, she was glad to discover that it hadn't. This she saw as an extension of something that she had been quietly doing, having been spoken to by the formidable team of Carole Hudson-Hummel and Judy Sterling. The three woman had become quite a force in the campaign for gay rights in Ohio, and as Judy had said to her, it was the least that they could do to be supportive to their sons.

Sue herself had enjoyed every minute of the election so far. She had started off small, very much the underdog, but she had taken advantage of every little chink that she had seen in the armour of her chief rival, Duval. He was so attached to the Donald that every time he fouled something up, which was quite often, she would issue a soundbite and her support had begun to grow as she pointed out how wrong his ideas were. She had now managed to tie with Duval in a couple of polls - the Democrat and the Green candidates were trailing far behind them both. It was good though that they were getting their message out there, and she had thrown a few conciliatory terms about the environment and liberal rights out there in the hope of swaying a few of their supporters to come to her side in beating Duval.

The bad thing was that, as her standings grew, it increased the likelihood of Duval resorting to the use of increasingly dirty tactics to win. She had used them herself after all in her first campaign, and she knew how damaging the consequences could be for those around that were caught in the crossfire. It had taken all of her efforts to get Santana's grandmother to even talk to her again, let alone make the young woman's day perfect by consenting to attend her wedding. She had screwed up badly there, and she did not intend to stoop that low again… Well, except maybe against the candidate himself, because it seemed that he was more of a despicable reptile than the man that wanted to be President, or his sleaze ball of a campaign manager. There was something going on there; she didn't know what, but every time she looked at him, he seemed to squirm under her gaze. He obviously had some dirty secret in his past that he was desperate to keep under wraps. He was quite obviously corrupt, and that was news to nobody in Ohio, but there was something more personal. The fact that he had been married three times, was allegedly on his way to a fourth with an airhead of the worst kind, and that he had two estranged sons was no longer the scandal that it would have been, not in this modern age. No, there had to be something even darker that he was concealing. She didn't know what, but if he thought that she did…. If either he or Duval started to sling the mud, whether it was at her personally, or at the Duval family, then she would ask one of her best to corner the Smythe boy and get the dirt out of him by whatever means she had to. After all, Santana did owe her now…

She returned to the sitting room now, and was shocked at just how high the pile of envelopes was growing. Mrs Duval was on the phone, talking to one of the most senior women in the local branch of the Republican Party; she had heard on the grapevine that their meeting last night had seen a split in opinion the like of which had never been witnessed before. The chairman it seemed had been of the opinion that he would have no opposition to his decision to endorse Duval as their candidate for Congress, or that the branch support Trump as their choice for President. Half an hour into the debate, and there had been chaos; spouses arguing with each other loudly and various committee members at each other's throats. The final clincher had been when an assault charge had been narrowly avoided. At that point the chairman had banged his gavel, and screamed above the hubbub that the meeting was now closed; he had no choice, as before long someone would end up injured, or even worse….

Mrs Duval could only smile as she relayed all of this news to Sue. The fact that there was talk that the split might be irrevocable made her smile, but her biggest source of glee was the fact that her dear ex-husband had ended up caught up in the melee. She did not tell her parents or Sue for that matter that he had had a glass of orange juice thrown in his face, or that he had narrowly missed being punched in the face twice. She did not want anyone to accuse her of gloating after all; she would however tell Grace later, as her daughter would enjoy the laugh. As she finished, an E-mail pinged onto her phone. She smiled as she told them that the latest poll results were out, and finally it had happened; Sue was now 1% point ahead. It was a cause for celebration, but also for concern. There was a long time yet to the election, and things could change quickly for starters. Moreover, they were all fully aware that more results like that could see the campaign get dirty, and that could cause them all heartache in the long run…