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“Olivia is going shopping for the day, Prudence. I’m sure she would love to have you around to help her burn up her credit cards.” He deftly changed the subject, about sharing the ticket with Alex.
    “Oh, no, I have a full day of snooping around to do. You should go golfing though, Alex.” I insisted. He looked at me.
    “I will. I haven’t golfed in a long time. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
    “Not at all. You need this. I need time to go rummaging around the old house.”
    Alex grabbed my hand and kissed my fingers.
    “Great. Meet me on the course around noon. You had better not run too much, Conrad. I’m doing eighteen today.” Esposito laughed.
    “Speak for yourself, Esposito. I’m a lot younger than you. Do you want me to run and get Olivia and have her bring the golf cart down here?” Alex teased.
    Senator Esposito ran off laughing with his dog in tow, and Alex and I finished our run.
    “Are you serious about him as VP, Alex?” I asked as we ran in the other direction.
    “I’m dead serious. I don’t forget when someone is good to me and to you. He’s stood behind me on tough issues, and didn’t make comments about you and me behind our backs. I don’t forget those things. He would be excellent. We share the same views and have worked together on numerous Bills.”
    After Alex left, I used my time alone to explore the house. The attic had been enticing me since I’d discovered it a while back. Every time I walked past the door, I wanted to go up there and see what I could find. There could be something of my mother’s stored from the summers she’d spent in the house before she ran away from home. I remember my mom telling me how much she’d hated it here. She always said it was a nightmare, something from a horror story. She’d seemed to hate everything about her life. One particular conversation we had when I was about ten stuck out in my memory. We had been sitting outside the trailer waiting for one of her boyfriends to bring us money for food and she told me how much she despised her parents.
    “Mom, where are your mom and dad?” I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have grandparents when everyone else did
    “I’m not letting you near those assholes. They fucked-up my life and they will fuck yours up, too.”
    I still could remember sitting there while she blew cigarette smoke in my face, after I’d brought the subject up.
    “I want to meet my grandma and grandpa.” I kept on. I knew she was getting aggravated because she lit up another cigarette before the last one was out. When her boyfriend drove up, she told me to stay where I was.
    “You’ve pissed me off. I can’t look at you right now.” Her boyfriend, an older balding guy, sat silently in his expensive-looking car.
    “This will teach you to never bring those assholes up again. You can sit here and think about what you’ve done,” she yelled at me as the man smiled a creepy smile.
    “But Mom, I’m starving. I’m sorry. Please let me go with you.” She sped off with her boyfriend and left me in the trailer by myself with no food till the next day. She told me it was my fault she had to go and party so she could forget her life. That was the last time I ever brought them up until the night she threw me out and I was forced to call my grandmother. I didn’t understand, because I would have loved to come here during the summers as I was growing up. How could she have hated someone who gave her everything? My childhood summers were filled with poverty, chaos and fear. They included drunken parties in the trailer park, bonfires in the yard, and my mother’s occasional arrest. How could her life have been any worse?
    I brewed a cup of coffee to take with me up the creaking stairs to the attic even though it was hot as an oven. I found a light switch covered in cobwebs and flipped it on, and a mouse scurried across the floor. I screamed as he ran off into the darkness. Rows and rows of dressers and chairs covered