historic night. Sam was fifteen when Obama was elected. She remembered hearing horns honking, voices cheering, on their quiet suburban street. Shannon said it was the first time she ever saw her father cry. To have a president who looked like him, he said, was one of the great surprises of his life. He hadn’t thought it possible until it happened.
In 2012, they went to vote as a group. They took pictures in front of the school gymnasium where they cast their first ballots, lined up shoulder to shoulder like high school seniors before the prom. It was somewhat exciting, but it lacked the drama of the previous election. They had paid vague attention to the polls. They knew already who the winner would be.
Sam thought of texting Isabella now to come outside and talk. Isabella always had good things to say about Clive, which Sam knew was entirely for her benefit. When Sam asked if she thought she was rushing into things by agreeing to marry him, Isabella said, “On the one hand, definitely. On the other hand, six months together when you’ve lived together for part of the time is different than just six months. Cohabitation is like dog years.”
Sam didn’t text her. She was almost positive that, soon enough, she would feel normal again. She didn’t want Isabella to have a bad story about Clive to file away and offer up as proof of something later on. Besides, Isabella would try to drag her into the party, and that felt like a betrayal of Clive somehow.
After ten minutes or so, she felt a familiar desire to be with him. It was a feeling she was used to having to endure. But this time, for once, Clive was right upstairs.
When she got to her room, he was awake. Lying in bed with his arm flexed, his head resting on his fist, waiting for her. He gave her a familiar grin.
A pulse of desire went through her.
“Where’d you go off to?” he said.
“Just needed a little air. I thought you’d be passed out till morning.”
“Nope. I’ve got my second wind. Let’s take that walk you promised me.”
Sam smiled. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They walked downtown, holding hands, laughing. Every business was shut besides the fancy Italian restaurant and Lanchard’s, a dive bar where local guys hung around shooting pool, watching ESPN, eating bowls of cold popcorn, and smoking in the bathroom. Sam and her friends went there often, but only because some of them weren’t twenty-one yet, and the doorman accepted even the worst fake IDs.
She and Clive sat on a bench outside the post office, talking, huddled together, his arm around her shoulder. It was just like it had always been when they were alone. Sam felt drunk with love.
When they got home, they brushed their teeth together, each with an arm wrapped around the other’s waist, as ridiculous as that was. They had sex in her bed, then watched an old episode of Frasier and ate the package of chocolate digestives he’d brought.
When the credits ran at the end of the show, Clive said, “Oh! I have something for you.”
He got out of bed, still naked, reached into his suitcase, and pulled out a little hardcover book with a print of roses across the front.
“Not what I was looking for, but this is also for you,” he said. “Spotted it at my mum’s house, and I figured you’d probably never read it, but that you’d love it. It’s a nearly perfect novel.”
He handed the book to her.
Sam read the title. Angel by Elizabeth Taylor.
Just as she was opening her mouth to ask the question, Clive said, with a hint of condescension, “No, not that Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Obviously,” she said.
“That name was a curse for the poor woman,” he went on. “Had she married someone else and had some other name, she might not have ended up one of the most underrated writers of all time.”
Sam considered this strange form of bad luck as Clive continued to rummage around in the suitcase.
Finally, he found a cardboard tube, and took from it two pieces of rolled-up construction paper.
“From Freddy and Sophie,” he said.
She had drawn a rainbow and he had drawn a bird, and they had both written the words I LOVE YOU, AUNTIE SAM.
“I miss them,” Sam said.
Twice over the summer, Clive’s brother and sister-in-law had come to visit them in London with the kids for a weekend. Nicola and Miles went off on their own for one night each time,