We Are the Light(45)
I told myself it was a worthy pursuit as I opened the iron gate in front of the Coyles’ gigantic house, moved through the rose gardens that lined the walkway, and then rang the doorbell.
A young, well-dressed woman with cropped auburn hair and perfect makeup answered and said, “Mr. Goodgame, Sandra is expecting you.”
As I entered the house, I realized that this young woman was most likely the assistant I had once spoken with on the phone when I had called to invite Sandra to the first movie meeting in the library, so I said, “Are you Willow?”
“I am,” she answered almost melodically. Then she pointed into a sitting room of sorts and said, “Sandra will join you in a moment,” just before she took her leave.
I paused there in the hallway and listened for the sounds of Sandra’s children, but the house was all but silent. I wondered whether Sandra had sent her kids away to live with relatives, or maybe to boarding school, the idea of which made me frown. Maybe they had slept over at the houses of local friends, I thought.
When I entered the room, I saw a grand piano, a beautiful stone fireplace, several paintings of otherworldly looking landscapes I couldn’t place on a map, a gold Victorian-era fainting couch, and two bulky leather-and-wood mission-style chairs. But what really caught my eye was the gigantic picture of the deceased Greg Coyle situated on a wooden easel so that he was staring at you—maintaining eye contact—no matter where you moved in the room. A confident and yet somehow humble smile revealed impossibly white teeth. His nose was long and pronounced, but attractive in a regal way. And small salt-and-pepper curls sat on his head almost like a hat, as he had kept the sides clipped close to the skin. Greg was a handsome and rather accomplished golfer who’d had a reputation for being kind. He often donated his time to our student athletes on the high school golf team, among whom he was very popular.
Sandra entered wearing a pin-striped business suit and sipping hot tea from a china cup and saucer. She sat on the gold fainting couch and so I sat on one of the mission thrones.
“Hope you’ve said hello to Greg?” she said.
It was a strange question that I didn’t quite know how to answer, so I kept quiet, which made her smile.
“Listen, Lucas,” she said, placing her teacup and saucer on the coffee table that separated our shinbones. “You’ve impressed me. The speech you made in the library and what you said last night. Never again call me at that hour, by the way.”
I nodded and apologized because I really hadn’t realized it was so late when I called the night before.
“You’re very good at moving people. I’d go so far as to say you have a gift.”
My skin started to tingle in a bad way at this point.
“I want to let you in on a little secret. I’m running for office and I’ve actually managed to secure quite a bit of funding,” Sandra said, before going on to list the specific position and the famous names of her financial backers, all of which impressed me to say the least. Then she said, “How would you like to join my team, Lucas? You could help my speechwriters. Who knows, I might even bring you up onstage with me from time to time. And then, should I win, I’m sure I could find more work for a talented man such as yourself. And I’d compensate you well, of course.” She listed the amount she was willing to pay me to be her consultant for a minimum of one year and it was quite a bit more than I had ever been paid by the town of Majestic to help its troubled high school students in an equivalent amount of time.
“What I’m aiming for,” Sandra said, “is real power. The power to make a significant difference. The power to make sure others never experience what you and I experienced last December. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Protecting others from the heartbreak and horror we’ve been enduring these past several months?”
I found myself nodding, completely forgetting my original goals for this conversation.
“Then join my team, Lucas. Let’s accomplish something real. Push policy in the right direction. Get stricter laws on the books. Save lives!”
When I failed to reply, Sandra said, “You’re not getting this. Okay. Let me put my cards on the table. You’re a bona fide hero, Lucas. There’s political currency in that. But not if you ruin your brand by making monster movies with the brother of a psychopath. A kid who’s—let’s just be honest here—he’s probably a psychopath himself. If you want to be part of a real solution, if you want to really honor Darcy, you’ve got to put childish things aside and be a man. I know you mean well, but you need to trust me when I tell you that Sandra Coyle will be driving the real response to the Majestic Theater tragedy. And I’m offering to let you ride shotgun. What do you say?”
I blinked several times—somewhat stunned by this strange offer—before I said, “Eli’s not a psychopath.”
“It’s kind of you to want to save the boy, but can you really undo whatever it was that his mother did to those kids? Can you change DNA? He’s obviously a lost cause. Everyone knows that. And a distraction, politically speaking. We don’t want him to become sympathetic to the public eye. We need a clean narrative, which is also why I need you on my team.”
I looked over at Greg’s gigantic head for a second before I returned my gaze to Sandra and said, “But I came here to convince you to be in our movie. A lot of people are getting involved. It’s been a positive experience for everybody.”