take her the rest of the day, and she just wanted to be home with her father.
It was uncharitable so soon after Corbin's death, but as she drove and the air outside her car cooled, she breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn't be joining the Tildon family.
By Saturday Dorene's father had lost consciousness. The doctor said all they could do at that point was keep him comfortable. She suspected the doctor was giving more than the legal dose of morphine, but she'd read enough about kidney failure to know it was usually painful, so that was okay with her. It wasn't like he wasn't dying anyway—a few hours less pain would be a blessing and she and her father had already said their good-byes.
She was glad it wasn't long after that. It was hard to see her father as an empty shell. He died on Tuesday.
In the wake of his passing, she held the obligatory service, not smaller than Corbin's, because her father was a beloved public figure, but it was much more understated. He wouldn't have wanted resources diverted from the crisis. She asked the preacher to explain that and in the newspaper announcement, which ran only online, she suggested food donations to local charities be given in lieu of flowers.
Dorene was given dozens of business cards and offers to help, a few even from people she trusted and hadn't thought to contact before, but when the service was over, she still felt like she needed to be the person to go through her father's things. She was an only child and at this point, the end of the line in her family history. It was her legacy.
At both his home and capital offices, she'd rather go through things sooner than later.
She gave herself another day after the funeral to sort her emotions, then asked Tommy, who had taken over as her father's driver from his grandfather a few years earlier, to take her. The news made it sound like Atlanta was getting more dangerous, and she felt she was safer to not be alone. She would always be the daughter of a beloved senator, and therefore a target for the nuts.
She and Tommy used her father's electronic access to park in the structure across the street and then went down to the tunnels that ran underneath to cross to the capital. They found themselves at a private set of elevators and used his access card again to go up and let themselves into his suite of offices.
People knew who she was. Dorene had been in and out the previous week. But she formally got Tommy a guest pass so he could freely make copies for her and use the staff cafeteria without being quizzed around every turn. People were distinctly paranoid, it seemed, but at the very least, it would be nice if Tommy could help her carry boxes.
She decided to sort her father's things into three piles as she went through them: personal, maintenance, and policy. She would take the former home, give the maintenance to her father's page, and pass the policy issues on to Branson Coleridge, the man her father had appointed as acting senator until the next election, or the governor made a different appointment. They were all the same party, so the governor had to have better things to do than undermine his former colleague and friend, but there was no certainty in politics.
There were many drawers of files, but she concentrated first on his in-box—the things that had arrived since she had sorted things for him two weeks earlier to help him set his affairs in order. The other things could be sorted later.
She picked up the stack from his in-box and set it on the desk in front of her. It was four inches thick. “Tommy? Can you get me a coffee? Two sugars? And help yourself if you'd like some. This might take a while.”
“Yes, ma'am.” He gave a tilt that fell short of a bow, but felt the same. The kid was only twenty or so, but his grandfather had worked for her father for more than four decades and made the recommendation when his eyesight began failing. Nothing like a family recommendation. Especially after that many
It was uncharitable so soon after Corbin's death, but as she drove and the air outside her car cooled, she breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn't be joining the Tildon family.
By Saturday Dorene's father had lost consciousness. The doctor said all they could do at that point was keep him comfortable. She suspected the doctor was giving more than the legal dose of morphine, but she'd read enough about kidney failure to know it was usually painful, so that was okay with her. It wasn't like he wasn't dying anyway—a few hours less pain would be a blessing and she and her father had already said their good-byes.
She was glad it wasn't long after that. It was hard to see her father as an empty shell. He died on Tuesday.
In the wake of his passing, she held the obligatory service, not smaller than Corbin's, because her father was a beloved public figure, but it was much more understated. He wouldn't have wanted resources diverted from the crisis. She asked the preacher to explain that and in the newspaper announcement, which ran only online, she suggested food donations to local charities be given in lieu of flowers.
Dorene was given dozens of business cards and offers to help, a few even from people she trusted and hadn't thought to contact before, but when the service was over, she still felt like she needed to be the person to go through her father's things. She was an only child and at this point, the end of the line in her family history. It was her legacy.
At both his home and capital offices, she'd rather go through things sooner than later.
She gave herself another day after the funeral to sort her emotions, then asked Tommy, who had taken over as her father's driver from his grandfather a few years earlier, to take her. The news made it sound like Atlanta was getting more dangerous, and she felt she was safer to not be alone. She would always be the daughter of a beloved senator, and therefore a target for the nuts.
She and Tommy used her father's electronic access to park in the structure across the street and then went down to the tunnels that ran underneath to cross to the capital. They found themselves at a private set of elevators and used his access card again to go up and let themselves into his suite of offices.
People knew who she was. Dorene had been in and out the previous week. But she formally got Tommy a guest pass so he could freely make copies for her and use the staff cafeteria without being quizzed around every turn. People were distinctly paranoid, it seemed, but at the very least, it would be nice if Tommy could help her carry boxes.
She decided to sort her father's things into three piles as she went through them: personal, maintenance, and policy. She would take the former home, give the maintenance to her father's page, and pass the policy issues on to Branson Coleridge, the man her father had appointed as acting senator until the next election, or the governor made a different appointment. They were all the same party, so the governor had to have better things to do than undermine his former colleague and friend, but there was no certainty in politics.
There were many drawers of files, but she concentrated first on his in-box—the things that had arrived since she had sorted things for him two weeks earlier to help him set his affairs in order. The other things could be sorted later.
She picked up the stack from his in-box and set it on the desk in front of her. It was four inches thick. “Tommy? Can you get me a coffee? Two sugars? And help yourself if you'd like some. This might take a while.”
“Yes, ma'am.” He gave a tilt that fell short of a bow, but felt the same. The kid was only twenty or so, but his grandfather had worked for her father for more than four decades and made the recommendation when his eyesight began failing. Nothing like a family recommendation. Especially after that many
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