Billie Starr's Book of Sorries: a Novel by Deborah E. Kennedy

Author:Deborah E. Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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Billie Starr made it clear from moment one that she could not care less about the campaign office and everybody in it. It might have helped if George were there to greet her, but he’d slipped out an hour before. No one, not even Max, seemed to know where he’d gone.

“Ducking the detail already,” Max mumbled angrily. “Why do I even bother?”

Jenny tried to get her daughter interested by showing Billie Starr her computer—“Look, email!” and giving her a swag bag of button, bumper sticker, and pen—but Billie Starr didn’t cheer up and come out of her shell until Brenda appeared with the dogs in tow. The team barely concealed their despair at seeing Roger and Wilfred bound around the office, snapping at chair legs, barking at nothing. Billie Starr, on the other hand, whom Hideo had put to work licking stamps, jumped up when she saw the dogs and rushed at them, as eager as they were to get acquainted.

“Corgis!” She grabbed her book from her backpack and showed it to Brenda, who patiently and kindly read the page Billie Starr was pointing to. Then she volunteered to help Billie Starr with the stamps.

Jenny watched them work together for a while. They seemed to take to each other instantly, laughing over the antics of Roger and Wilfred, showing each other their gluey tongues. Jenny had been third-wheeled over again. She wished her daughter would smile at her like that, but there was too much to do before tomorrow, too many boxes to check, to indulge in any self-pity for long. Or even to worry about the Black Suits, although they were always at the back of her mind. Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy. You’re a lightweight in a heavyweight’s game.

She was typing up Max’s reply to an email from a state Democratic party operative all but demanding George drop out of the race when the phone rang. The operative’s language was cloyingly polite, lots of “in the spirit of solidarity” and “for the good of the common cause” and “we’re stronger together” kind of messaging. Bullshit plain and simple, according to Max, who’d composed a screed making it clear that George would absolutely not be standing down. Quite the opposite. He would not be bowing to the pressure of the mediocre and the meek. In fact, he had every intention of going public with the party’s insulting letter, which was guaranteed to energize voters eager for real change—young people, women, minorities fed up with decades’ worth of liberal lip service—and give them a very solid reason to switch allegiances. The cursor flashed in the middle of a sentence about George’s desire to shake up the race, blow the cobwebs from what had become a stagnant, stodgy party. Jenny had one more paragraph to go. She’d hoped Ted or Hideo might answer the phone, but they were obviously busy, Ted conferring with Max about something and Hideo on a call of his own. She picked up the receiver on the third ring.

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