Under the Rainbow (The Clay Lion Series Book 4) Read online

  “No,” I ventured. “He won’t. But I can keep working full-time, and he’s agreed to give me a raise.”

  “On weekends?” she asked, puzzled.

  I didn’t know whether she was playing stupid or honestly didn’t understand what I was proposing, but either way she was going to force me to say the words aloud.

  “Of course. Yes, on weekends. But also during the week too.” I hesitated, bracing myself for her reaction, and then pressed myself to continue. “I’m quitting school to keep working, Mom. My mind’s already made up. When you get back on your feet, I’ll go back. But right now, keeping you healthy is the most important thing.”

  She dropped her spoon heavily onto her plate. “No,” she said.

  “Mom,” I pleaded, “We don’t have a choice!”

  For the first time in months, I saw the old spark of my mother’s fierce independence blazing from deep within her soul, and she pulled herself from the slumped recesses of the sofa’s cushions to full height.

  “We do have a choice,” she said slowly, controlling her emotion. “And I will file for bankruptcy before I allow you to drop out of school.”

  I stood up and began pacing the room, unable to maintain such close proximity to her brewing anger. “I’m not dropping out. I’m just taking a leave of absence. Isn’t that what they call it when you plan on going back?”

  “You won’t go back!” she cried. “People never go back!”

  “I’ll go back,” I told her.

  “You’re right you will,” she replied with more flush in her cheeks than I’d seen since the beginning of her treatment. “You’ll go back in two weeks with the rest of your class and you will finish the eleventh grade. And then you’ll finish the twelfth grade. And then you’ll go to college the way I was never able to, because what I want more than food in my stomach or a roof over my head is a future for you. And with God as my witness, you are not going to take that away from me, do you understand?”

  I’d infuriated her and my resolve wavered. I’d fully expected her to balk, but what I hadn’t anticipated was my reaction to her rebuttals. The last thing I wanted was to disappoint her. In light of her condition, I owed her my obedience. It was the least I could do, and if my schooling meant that much to her, then I’d give the moving company my two weeks’ notice and pray they’d take me back the following summer.

  She was waiting for me to fight back – continue lobbying to quit school, but I didn’t. I sat beside her, draping the blanket over her legs.

  “I understand,” I told her.

  She cocked her head. “But?”

  “But nothing. If you don’t want me to work, I won’t work. If you want me to stay in school, I’ll stay in school.”

  She laid her hand on my knee. “Yeah?”

  “I promise,” I said.

  We sat together, watching mindless reality television until her breathing shallowed and her head slumped against my shoulder. In that moment, I was wholly aware of the natural order of life, that children should outlive parents. But I was in no way ready to face that reality.

  I was also ready to admit, at sixteen-years-old, I was in no position to single-handedly dig us out of the financial hole we were in. No teenager should have to.

  The longer I sat listening to my mother’s gentle snoring, the further my thoughts drifted. I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of government would put a family in a situation like ours? What type of country valued currency over human lives? It seemed unthinkable. And that’s when I made up my mind.

  I would finish high school. I would graduate from college.

  I would make it to Washington to change the laws so that cancer patients and their children wouldn’t be forced to choose between bankruptcy or education. Between surviving now or surviving later. Between life or death.

  And I vowed in that moment, I would do whatever it took to get there.

  Chapter Three

  29 Years Old

  I slouched on the edge of the bed, buried inside my own head. The shower cut off in the bathroom down the hall, and I heard Meena fumbling as she stepped out.

  Finally, I thought, checking my watch. There was a chance we were still going to make it.

  She emerged from the bathroom 15 minutes later, daisy fresh - her hair cinched loosely at her nape, wearing just a hint of lipstick, as radiant as the day I’d met her at the Virginia Wine Festival in September of the previous year. She’d been a breath of fresh air in my life, pulling me from the depression of yet another failed election and convincing me to soldier on in my endeavors. I knew a day would come when I would ask her to marry me, but I couldn’t bring myself to purchase the ring until I knew I could provide a future for her, built on the financial security of a thriving political career.

  “I told you I’d be ready in time,” she teased, glancing at the clock on the wall. “Two minutes to spare!”

  I took her by the hand, pulling her close enough to smell the hint of vanilla body wash still lingering on her skin. For a brief moment I considered returning to the bedroom with her, but the guilt associated with my mother’s disappointment forced me instead out the door.

  “What do you think he’ll be like?” Meena asked as we slid into my decade-old Corolla.

  I turned over the engine and maneuvered out of the narrow parking spot. “Dunno,” I said. “But she met him while he was volunteering on her floor at the hospital. Apparently his wife died of ovarian cancer several years ago, and now he spends his Saturdays visiting with other patients.”

  “Sounds like an amazing guy to me,” she said.

  “Or he could be just another douchebag preying on lonely women.”

  Meena punched me in the shoulder. “You watch too many of those awful TV crime dramas,” she said. “Give your mom a little credit for knowing a good guy when she sees one.”

  I grunted. My mother certainly didn’t have a stellar track record when it came to men. After my father, there’d been a series of short-lived relationships with men I never got to meet more than once or twice. After Larry “the Leech,” when I was eight, she seemed to have given up on finding someone, which was why I was so surprised when she’d invited us to dinner to meet Harvey.

  “He sounds like a pretentious do-gooder to me. And what kind of name is Harvey?” I scoffed.

  Meena rolled her eyes. “That’s not his fault. Blame his parents.”

  “All I’m saying is a guy who spends his entire life walking around with the name Harvey is bound to have a screw loose.”

  She sighed. “Give him a chance, Phil. Promise me. Your mom deserves love in her life. She deserves to be happy.”

  Meena was right, of course. After beating cancer, my mother emerged from the experience transformed, like a bear coming out of some extended hibernation, single-minded in her hunger. After declaring bankruptcy, she filed for grant after grant, eventually securing the finances to enroll in night school.

  Five years post-surgery, she celebrated with both a clean mammogram and her nursing degree. She’d been working in the oncology wing of the hospital ever since.

  Hers was a success story, and I could not have been more proud.

  I just hoped Harvey would treat her with the reverence she deserved.

  As we pulled up to the front of the restaurant, I felt the same sense of panic which used to overtake me as a boy on the first day of school each year – knowing I wouldn’t have the right clothes or the right shoes or the right haircut. Now I wondered if there would be anything on the menu I could pronounce. Or afford.

  Meena, for her part, was in her glory. She glided through the marbled entrance, leaving me in her wake as she bypassed the maître d' and rushed over to the table where my mother was already seated with who I assumed was Harvey. He stood to greet Meena, taking her hand in both of his, a gesture which was both formal and affable at the same time. By the time I joined them, the introductions were already being made.

  “And this is my son, Phillip,” my mother was sayi
ng, taking me by the arm and pulling me close enough to place a kiss on my cheek. And then, “Phillip, this is Harvey, the gentleman I’ve been telling you about.”

  He looked… normal. Several years older than mom, to be sure, but there was nothing about his appearance that screamed homicidal maniac. Dressed in a tweed jacket and tan slacks, he smiled at me and shook my hand firmly. “You’re mom’s told me so much about you. It’s so nice to finally meet.”

  “Likewise,” I said, pulling out a chair for Meena and then seating myself between the women, across from him. “I can only imagine what she’s told you.”

  A knowing look passed between them and he brushed me off. “Only the good stuff,” he laughed, opening his menu. “About how you held things together during her treatment and helped her through her schooling.”

  “I did my best,” I said, and Meena gave my arm a gentle nudge.

  I scanned my menu, hoping to find something in my budget and prayed Meena was doing the same. I didn’t know if Harvey was showing off by bringing my mother to the most elegant restaurant in town, but I wasn’t impressed. Toward the bottom of the second page I discovered the least expensive item - spaghetti with marinara. Meatballs, of course, were extra.

  The waitress arrived to take our orders, and as I was mentally calculating what our meals would set me back, Harvey had the sommelier uncork something Italian which happened to have been bottled before I was born.

  He took a sip, letting the wine linger a moment on his palate. “So Phillip, what do you do?” he asked innocently, as if it would give me great pleasure to expound upon the answer.

  It felt instantly as if there was a wad of cotton in my mouth. I sucked at my teeth, trying to produce enough saliva to respond, although I had no idea what to tell him.

  What did I do?

  What I did was work menial jobs between elections, trying to save up enough cash to spearhead a campaign. And when I finally managed that, I lost the election only to start all over again. That is what I did. What I didn’t do was get elected or change the healthcare laws as I’d promised my mother I would so many years ago.

  What did I do? I failed. Repeatedly.

  “Right now I’m in between elections so I do filing down at the commissioner’s office.”

  “You have political aspirations?” he asked.

  “I’d like to hold a seat in the Senate someday,” I told him. “Make some real changes to our country’s healthcare.”

  “He’s still working at getting his feet in the door,” my mother offered, as though she needed to explain why I wasn’t in Washington already.

  The way Carson Rollins was.

  Carson Rollins needed no introductions. No one asked him what he did. The grandson of Xavier Rollins, one of the most influential policy makers during the time travel debates, he was no stranger to politics. And it was just my luck that I had gone up against him in my first election just after graduation.

  An election he, of course, had won.

  If only I’d beaten him in that very first election, I thought to myself. Then maybe I’d be the one with the Senate seat, and Mom could stop making excuses.

  “I’m just waiting to catch a break,” I said casually, fingering my wine glass. “I’m sure the next election will be just what I need to get things jumpstarted.”

  Thankfully, when I ran out of explanations for my shortcomings, the conversation turned to Meena, who happily began chatting about her HR position with the bank, and my thoughts instantly drifted back to Rollins.

  In the months before that first election, I’d be confident about the possibility of beating him. Although he was the reigning incumbent, seeking re-election for his second term, he was arrogant and his approval ratings were low. People didn’t like him, and I thought that would be enough to secure my win, but I was wrong.

  Three weeks before the polls opened, the illustrious telecommunications powerhouse Kenneth Piltzer of Piltzer Enterprises recorded a ten second blurb backing Rollins. The soundbite ran endlessly on the local media and all but obliterated what little attention I had garnered during the campaign. It didn’t matter that Piltzer barely knew Rollins or that worse yet, he lived in California, which was clearly outside our voting district. The public was smitten, suddenly forgetting how he’d ignored their opinions during his first term in office.

  And the rest, as they say, was history.

  “Things in life always happen for a reason,” Harvey was saying, gazing warmly at my mother. “I loved my wife Cora with all my heart, and I never imagined after losing her that I would find someone who would make me want to risk falling in love again.” He paused dramatically, drinking her in. “But here we are. You’re mother’s an amazing woman, and I can’t believe I’ve been blessed twice in one lifetime.”

  We all turned to her, blushing in the candlelight. There was a serenity in her face I’d never seen before which could only be attributed to Harvey’s presence in her life. This gave me joy, but also in some twisted way, pissed me off. Unassuming Harvey had swooped in, and in a matter of months, done more for my mother in that short time than I’d been able to do in lifetime.

  “Sometimes life gives you a second chance,” she said, reaching for his hand across the linen tablecloth.

  I would have given anything for a second chance. A second chance to start again, to make my mother proud. How I would have loved for her to have been able to brag about me to Harvey, swelling with pride as she shared how I was reforming healthcare and achieving bipartisan support no one had ever dreamed of before, instead of making excuses for my failures.

  If only I had beaten Rollins in that very first election, perhaps everything might have been different. Perhaps it would be the way I’d always imagined it should be.

  In that moment I had never been so desperate for my mother’s approval. If I was going to keep the promises I made to her regarding healthcare reform and patient rights, it wasn’t going to happen by following my current path. It was a dead end street. Instead I would have to travel a new road and the only way to detour was by using my trip.

  My one government sanctioned trip back in time.

  Once the decision was made, I put everything in my life on hold and focused solely the research necessary to ensure my one trip back in time would be a success. The most important piece was the endorsement.

  I spent weeks searching for just the right person. It had to be someone well-liked, admired even. Someone whose opinion would mean more to the people of Richmond than Kenneth Piltzer, regardless of his celebrity status.

  I needed someone local.

  Several months after our dinner with my mom and Harvey, Meena sat across from me at the café table in our favorite coffee shop, her nose buried in a thick novel she’d picked up at the library where I’d spent the morning researching. She’d asked to go into the mountains on a hike together, but I’d given her a handful of half-baked excuses why I need to spend the weekend “working.” I was being a horrible partner and knew it, but I didn’t care. Once I’d made up my mind, I knew everything going forward wouldn’t matter because my entire adult life was about to be reset.

  My future was in the past – I just had to figure out how to ensure it would be the future I actually wanted this time around.

  I tapped my heel nervously against the floor while my fingers flew across my tablet, scrolling through an endless sea of names. I was nine weeks into my three months of perfunctory time travel classes, and I still hadn’t chosen who to target for the endorsement. The worst part of the whole undertaking was not having anyone to talk to about it. Meena didn’t know. My mom didn’t know. My friends didn’t know. The way I saw it, there was absolutely no reason to tell them since I was committed to altering my past with or without their permission. Knowing that, however, didn’t make the process any less isolating.

  I was finishing my second double espresso latte when I found him - the one man who had the power to rewrite my future. A congressman from the US House of Representatives
who had local ties and deep pockets. With an approval rating well into the 70th percentile, I knew he would be someone voters would look to for guidance, especially when deciding who to vote for in the city council election.

  The only question was how to get his endorsement.

  I spent the rest of the week unintentionally distancing myself further and further from Meena as my single-mindedness compelled me forward. When I wasn’t sleeping or attending my mandatory time travel classes, I was researching the congressman. His platform. His constituents. His family.

  And that’s when I saw her. Graduate of the prestigious Hotchkiss Boarding School in Lakeville, Connecticut and teacher of the year for the state of Virginia - she was clearly as smart as she was beautiful. She was the congressman’s daughter.

  And she was my golden ticket into the world of Washington politics, where dreams were made and promises were kept.

  Chapter Four

  29 Years Old

  I kissed Meena goodbye. Her hair fell into soft waves around her head on the pillow as she stirred.

  “What are you doing up so early?” She murmured, reaching out to me across the empty space on my side of the bed.

  “I’ve got a couple things to get done this morning. Work stuff.” I whispered. “I’ll be back in a couple hours, and then maybe we can head up to the mountains for a hike if it’s not too cold.”

  “M’kay,” she breathed, already drifting back to sleep. “I’ll be here. Waiting.”

  I gave her one final peck on the cheek, which was soft and warm and familiar, and said a silent prayer that she would in fact be waiting at our apartment when I returned.

  There were no guarantees of course. The government made no promises when it came to time travel, which is why they forced me to sign eleven release waivers to that effect. Even if I chose to follow each of their meticulously spelled out rules, which of course I wasn’t planning to do, they made it blatantly clear there was always a chance things might not be the same at the end of my trip.