Page 15 of Yes, Governor

That’s more than good enough.

Heis good enough.

He once asked me, after Petey was born, but before Susa was pregnant with Tommy, if I wanted to look into reversing my vasectomy.

I silenced him with a kiss and gently extracted a promise from him not to ask me about it again.

Besides, if Susa wasn’t with us, these are the children he and I would have had through a surrogate.

I’m not fucking with the perfection we have.

Maybe it’s for the best my genes die with me. I don’t know how much of the bastard extraordinaire is nature and how much is nurture. Not because of my parents, but because of what I went through as an adult, when I put my trust in the wrong person. The things I survived in a German flat, and in a colonel’s office.

The nighttime visits, and Eddie’s sobs in the dark.

But I know that my two pets love me as I am, even if they don’t know the full depths of the darkness that stains my soul.

I think, in the end, we’re all better off that way.

Tonight, as I drift to sleep comfortably sandwiched by their warmth, I know no nightmares will torment my dreams.

Still, even though I’m not a religious man, I send up a silent prayer to the one I left behind, one who’s been in my thoughts ever since my impromptu journey to Germany only weeks before the primary election, so I could tie up a loose end from my own past.

I’m sorry, Eddie. I hope you one day find peace, if not happiness. I’m sorry it’s not me. I’m sorry I didn’t fight harder for you back then. And I’m sorry I had to leave you behind again.

I nuzzle my face against the nape of Susa’s neck and let sleep take me. My life is here, my life is them, my life is the new life growing inside my wife, and the two boys asleep in their bedrooms just down the hall from us.

Theyare my life. All of them.

And I’ll never take a single day of it—or any of them—for granted.

The End