Campaigning for Love novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Who My Father Is

On Monday morning I pulled Hallie Latham into the supply room and shut the door.

"If this is about the bus," Hallie said, "I already know. The driver came back from his ribs and said the shocks were still going."

"Oh my God."

"He's a gossip. I told him he saw nothing, and I gave him a twenty."

"Hallie."

"Relax. I like you. I'm not going to turn you in."

I sat down on a case of printer paper and put my head in my hands.

"It's worse than that," I said.

"Worse than sleeping with the candidate?"

"I need you to promise you won't tell Constance, or Nelson, or anyone."

"I promise on my thermos."

I looked at her.

She held up the steel thermos like a Bible.

"My name isn't just Dunn," I said. "It's my mother's name. She died when I was eleven."

"I'm sorry, hon."

"My father's name is Hallam."

Hallie went still with her coffee halfway to her mouth.

"Hallam as in Hallam Freight," she said slowly.

"The four hundred trucks. The orange trailers. The man whose face is on the sponsor wall at every county fair."

"That's my dad."

"Cora. Your father is the donor."

"He's a donor. He's the donor."

"There are two million dollars in a pledge letter with his name on it, and Constance has been counting it since July."

"Holy mother of corn," said Hallie.

She sat down on the paper beside me, and the case sagged under both of us.

"Why would you hide it?" she asked, not unkindly. "Most people would have it on a T-shirt."

"Last summer I interned for a state senator. Everybody called me the trucking heiress."

"They gave me the nice desk, and I never got to answer a phone."

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