Mirror Image

he had been sleeping in before her nightmare woke him up. Only a narrow space separated the beds, but it might just as well have been the Gulf of Mexico. It had taken an emergency to get him to cross it.
    “To your victory, Tate.” She clinked her glass with his. The liquor slid easily down her throat and spread warmly through her belly. “Hmm. This was a good idea. Thanks.”
    She welcomed this quiet interlude. They shared all the problems inherent to any married couple, but none of the intimacy. Because of the campaign, they were always in the public eye and under constant scrutiny. That put an additional strain on an already difficult relationship. They shared no counterbalancing pleasure in each other.
    They were married, yet they weren’t. They occupied the same space, but existed in separate spheres. Until tonight, Mandy had served as a buffer between them in the confines of the hotel room. She’d slept with Avery.
    But tonight Mandy wasn’t here. They were alone. It was the middle of the night. They were sipping Irish cream together and discussing their personal problems. For any other couple, the scene would result in lovemaking.
    “I miss Mandy already,” she remarked as she traced the rim of her glass with her fingertip. “I’m not sure we did the right thing by letting her go home with Zee and Nelson.”
    “That’s what we had planned all along—that they’d take her home after her appointment with Webster.”
    “After talking to him, I feel like I should be with her constantly.”
    “He said a few days of separation wouldn’t hurt, and Mom knows what to do.”
    “How did it happen?” Avery mused aloud. “How did she become so introverted, so emotionally bruised?” She asked the questions rhetorically, without expecting a response. Tate, however, took them literally and provided her with answers.
    “You heard what he said. He told you how it happened. You didn’t spend enough time with her. What time you did spend with her was more destructive than not.”
    Her temper surged to the surface. In this instance, Carole was getting a bum deal, and Avery felt compelled to take up for her. “And where were you all that time? If I was doing such a rotten job of mothering, why didn’t you step in? Mandy has two parents, you know.”
    “I realize that. I admitted it today. But every time I made the slightest suggestion, you got defensive. Seeing us fight sure as hell wasn’t doing Mandy any good. So I couldn’t step in, as you put it, without making a bad situation even worse.”
    “Maybe your approach was wrong.” Giving Carole the benefit of the doubt, she played devil’s advocate.
    “Maybe. But I’ve never known you to take criticism well.”
    “And you do?”
    He set his glass on the nightstand and reached for the lamp switch. Avery’s hand shot out and grabbed his. “I’m sorry. Don’t… don’t go back to bed yet. It’s been a long, tiring day for many reasons. We’re both feeling the pressure. I didn’t mean to lash out at you.”
    “You probably should have gone home with Mom and Dad, too.”
    “No,” she said quickly, “my place is with you.”
    “Today was just a sample of what it’s going to be like between now and November, Carole. It’s only going to get tougher.”
    “I can handle it.” Smiling, she impulsively reached up and ran her finger across the cleft in his chin. “I wish I had a nickel for every time today you said, ‘Hi, I’m Tate Rutledge, running for U.S. senator.’ Wonder how many hands you shook?”
    “This many.” He held up his right hand. It was bent into a cramped claw.
    She laughed softly. “I believe we bore up very well during that visit to the Galleria, considering we’d just ended our visit with Dr. Webster and told Mandy good-bye.”
    As soon as they had returned to the hotel from the psychologist’s office, they had given Mandy over to her grandparents. Zee went beyond being a white-knuckle flier. She refused to fly altogether, so they had come to Houston by car. They had wanted to start the drive home so they would arrive before dark.
    No sooner had she and Tate waved them off than Eddy hustled them into a car and sped toward the sprawling, multilayered shopping mall.
    Volunteers, under Eddy’s supervision, had heralded their arrival. Tate made a short speech from a raised platform, introduced his wife to the crowd that had gathered, then moved among them, shaking hands and soliciting votes.
    It had gone so well that