Page 60 of The Shield
“Just one question?—”
The cameras chased us like gulls after shrimp boats. I ignored their questions, let them call my name, let the noise crest and break, then walked to the waiting SUV. My knees wanted to tremble, but the bear claw at my sternum saidno.
The ride to the Board of Elections took ten minutes and a lifetime. Granddaddy watched the city through the window with a soldier’s frown—drains still clogged along one curb, sand-tired men moving like their bodies had forgotten normal speed. I cataloged mistakes the way some people recite prayers. Left turn where we should have re-striped. A pocket park where a backup pump could’ve lived. A roof gutter spilling because someone liked pretty more than pitch.Boring heroics, I whispered.
My phone pinged.
Kimmy:Waiting by the front steps. Public Information Officer on message. Producer from national morning show wants live hit.
Owen:Huger siphon finally behaving. You filing?
Me:Yes.
City Hall had tried to keep it discreet, but discretion doesn’t exist in Charleston when history and scandal decide to tango. By the time we reached the Board, the rotunda was thick with press, their lights hot and their eyes hungrier than floodwater. Security threaded a narrow path for us, elbows and radios and the kind of practiced kindness that holds back a tide without making a scene.
Kimmy materialized like a general’s aide. She handed me a folder, smoothed my sleeve, and whispered, “You look like the solution, not the story. Remember that.”
“I’m both,” I said, because I’d decided I was allowed to be.
At the counter, a clerk with the shutdown face of someone who had already dealt with three crises before noon slid the forms across to me. The paper felt heavier than it should have. I filled in lines I’d practiced writing in my head since the square:Kennedy, Natalie. Address. Occupation. Candidate. Interim Mayor Election. The clerk watched my pen the way you watch a surgeon’s hand.
“Filing fee?” she asked.
I pulled out a check. The amount felt obscene and necessary. Money, moved from pretty to necessary, I reminded myself. We would move it harder later.
She stamped the papers with a sound like a gavel. The ink glistened. The room inhaled.
A man cleared his throat behind the rope line. Council President Fitch had assembled himself into a suit that didn’t fight the rain. He wore disapproval like a boutonnière. “Ms. Kennedy,” he called over the murmur. “Some of us earned this through decades of public service.”
I considered letting it slide—to be magnanimous on my first official act—but the rotunda had turned its face toward me. I turned my head enough to meet his eye.
“And some of us earned it by telling the truth when it was inconvenient,” I said. “There’s room in this city for both kinds of work.”
He opened his mouth. Kimmy stepped artfully into a camera’s line and cut him from the shot. I loved her with a small, bright flame.
The microphones surged. “Ms. Kennedy, why now?”
“Are you running on the back of a love story?”
“Do you think this is opportunism?”
“What would you say to critics who say you’re inexperienced?”
“Is it true the Danes are funding this?”
“Will you resign from—what exactly do you do?”
I could feel Granddaddy at my shoulder, taut as a bowstring. The cameras wanted him to flinch, wanted me to stumble. I leaned into the portable podium the Public Information Officer had conjured, let the questions clatter around me until they dulled. Then I gave them what they didn’t know they wanted.
“I nearly died,” I said.
The rotunda hushed.
“I was pulled under by water we’ve been warned about for years, water we’ve called unprecedented when it isn’t, water that eats away at our city’s foundations. I thought I’d lost my future. I thought I’d lost the man I love. And when I came back up, I knew two things: first, that I won’t apologize for loving him. And second, that I won’t apologize for loving this city enough to fight for it with every breath I have left.”
Cameras popped like fireworks. I let the words breathe, then continued, steady.
“This election is not about hashtags or horse rides or whether you think I look better in the rain. It’s about drains that clear. Buses that run. Basements that don’t flood because we stop approving houses where water wants to live. And it’s about the rest of our everyday work, too—homes people can afford without leaving the city they serve, streets you can cross without holding your breath, small businesses that don’t drown in permits, fair wages for the folks who keep this place humming, schools and parks that feel like a promise kept, public safety that is smart and humane. It’s about telling the truth on television and meaning it in committee. It’s about boring heroics, and I’m running to make Charleston excellent at them.”
