1. Chapter 1
Chapter 1
September 2023
“O h, for Christ’s sake,” Jules said under her breath, looking up at the departure screen near her gate. Her flight from Washington, D.C. to Chicago was delayed. Again. She’d already been at the airport for two hours.
Slinging her large brown leather tote over her shoulder, Jules scanned the area for the closest bar. If she was going to be stuck here, a glass of wine would help while she used the time to catch up on emails.
The airport was packed, especially for a Friday evening. Most of the restaurants were fast-food places with lines so long they’d curled into the walkway. Her eyes trailed down to the end of the terminal, past the hordes of serious-looking business fliers and stressed families, spotting a sports-themed restaurant with a decent-sized bar. She beelined it before other delayed fliers snatched the empty stools.
As she wove through the crowded bar toward the last open seat, her phone chimed. Jules recognized the ringtone. Her boss. She dug through her bag, frantic to find it. Just as her fingers closed around the phone, a burly man barreled past, shoving her aside and dropping heavily onto the barstool she’d been aiming for.
Biting her tongue, she pressed the phone to her ear. “Hi, Becca. Everything ok?” she asked, forcing her voice to sound pleasant.
Her eyes scanned the room again until she spotted an empty table in the corner, dropping her large bag on top of the crumb-sprinkled surface.
“Jules, thank God you picked up. I thought maybe you’d be on the plane already,” she said, almost out of breath. “The secretary is having a meltdown. He just read the draft of the speech for the luncheon tomorrow. Says the tone is too playful to match his authentic self. His words, not mine.”
Becca was good at multitasking, so Jules knew she was likely also replying to a barrage of emails from Steve Monahan, U.S. Treasury Secretary, while she gave Jules this all too familiar feedback. Becca was his chief of staff and Jules had worked with her as a senior speechwriter for the past three years.
“Did you remind him that the lunch is for the Children’s National Hospital and will be attended by sick children and their families?” Jules asked.
“Yes, but he says that he needs to be perceived as a serious leader if he’s going to get another cabinet appointment.” Jules could almost hear Becca’s eyes roll as she said it. They both knew his reputation of being a chilly, calculated politician throughout the beltway.
“A little levity and warmth can’t hurt,” she said. “It’s a room full of sick children. I’m still not sure why he was even asked to speak, honestly. Doesn’t seem like an obvious fit.”
Becca sighed, agreeing with Jules but also reminding her he’s the boss and it’s his speech.
“Alright, I’ll make some tweaks before my flight,” Jules responded, resigned.
This was just about how every speech she’d written lately had gone. The secretary waited until the night before every speaking event to review the draft remarks and then demand changes that made little sense. He was a total control freak who expected perfection, like most of the politicians she’d written for. But it was getting harder and harder to take the feedback. Jules craved more creative control over her words, and working for Secretary Monahan felt like running on a hamster wheel. Speech after speech, it never changed.
Jules had been speechwriting since she moved to D.C. the week after graduation for a communications role with a senator she’d interned with. She fell into the profession while on the campaign trail; their only speechwriter had come down with the swine flu, and the team needed someone to write a speech for the very next morning. Ever since, she’d been writing for politicians throughout Washington, and she mostly liked it. Parts of the job fit her well: the solitude of writing and creating, the rush she felt when watching someone deliver the words she wrote. Mostly, though, Jules enjoyed the way it made her feel useful and kept her busy. Not to mention, it was a respectable and sometimes lucrative job.
“Thanks, you’re an angel. I hope you get to Chicago soon. And don’t worry about a thing while you’re gone. Just focus on getting your grandma better. I’ve got you,” Becca said before ending the call.
Jules looked around to flag down the nearest server; she needed that wine.
Ten long minutes later, she sipped stale chardonnay at the dim, sticky table. Begrudgingly, she opened her laptop to start revisions but couldn’t keep her mind focused as she worried about her grandma and what it would be like to stay at her house without her grandpa Lou. Grief reared its ugly head once again as she remembered the last time she flew home to attend his funeral with her then-fiancé. It had been a hard trip, one that she had tried desperately to forget.
This time would be different, she consoled herself. For one, she wasn’t with Luke anymore, and two, her grandma, who refused to go to an inpatient rehab center after her recent hip replacement, needed her. Spending a month in Riverbend wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do, but she owed it to Grandma Rosa. She was the closest family Jules had.
“Right. The speech,” Jules said aloud to no one. She needed to focus.
Rereading the draft on her laptop, Jules decided the lines she thought were her best work in the whole thing, the parts that felt most authentic and less political, had to go. They were not what the secretary had in mind, clearly. He wanted something more cookie cutter. More campaign speech, less inspirational words for sick kids.
After slicing and dicing the piece enough to satisfy her boss, she emailed it to Becca, signing off with a heartfelt thank you for taking care of things while she was away.
In a way, Jules admired Becca. She was one of those type-A people who flocked to Washington after graduating from a top-tier school, political science degree in tow. Everything about her said “Professional-Woman-With-Goals-To-Achieve,” even her choice of wardrobe, which was always a simple black shift dress. But lately, Jules had wondered if that kind of life, one totally consumed by work and professional success, was what she wanted. Was Becca happy or did she just put on a good front? The questions were never too far from Jules’ mind these days.
Two disappointing glasses of wine later, she boarded the plane. Sitting in the aisle seat of her row, a teenage boy wearing a grey hoodie pulled over his headphones looked up at her as she caught the vague smell of weed.
“Excuse me,” Jules muttered, hoping he’d get up and let her slide into her window seat. No such luck. He grunted and motioned for her to climb over.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she mumbled as she stepped over his legs, making sure to “accidentally” bump him in the head with her large tote bag.
After pushing her bag under the seat in front of her, she sat back, buckled the seatbelt, and rolled the tension out of her tight shoulders. She could finally relax for a few hours.
The flight to O’Hare was just under two hours, where her mom would pick her up. Jules had made the trip a dozen times, often working straight through, but not today. Her mind was stuck in a loop thinking about her career and how this month-long trip might derail her plans, which only made her feel guilty because Grandma Rosa deserved her full attention. There was a lot to process.
Secretary Monahan didn’t know yet, but Becca planned to leave at the end of the year to start her own public relations and political advisory firm. She wanted Jules to come with her as the firm’s Chief Communications Officer. Logically, it made sense and part of her couldn’t help but be excited to step into a leadership role, but every time she thought long enough about it, her belly flipped and turned sour as a fresh pang of anxiety pulsed in her throat. Jules tried to convince herself imposter syndrome was to blame, but it felt much deeper.
Determined to quiet her thoughts, Jules popped in her earbuds to zone out to the newest true crime murder podcast she’d downloaded that morning. Oddly, it always helped her to relax.
A few episodes later, they landed, and she exited the plane as quickly as possible before heading straight to baggage claim to find her ginormous suitcase that weighed about as much as her. Heaving it out to the arrivals curb, she spotted her mom’s old Honda Civic, shocked to see it still running. Barb had acquired it as a parting gift years ago during a nasty break up.
“Hey, you,” said Barb as she met Jules on the curb. “Look at your dark hair! Last time I saw you, it was blonde!” She turned Jules around by the shoulders to get a better look.
“Hi, Mom. Nice to see you, too,” Jules responded, taking a slow and intentional step back. She’d never been crazy about people touching her hair, let alone crowding her personal space. “I dyed it dark a while ago—it’s easier to manage this way. I don’t have to go to the salon as much.”
In truth, Jules dyed her hair the day she got back from her last trip to Riverbend, after she broke things off with her fiancé, Luke. She wanted to physically match the change she felt inside. It turned out to be a blessing; she spent less money on it now and she liked to think it complemented her sharp features.
After hulling her luggage into the trunk, they pulled away from the airport, taking two wrong turns before finally entering the on-ramp for I-90, going in the right direction. Finally releasing a tense grip on the GPS, they settled into an uncomfortable yet familiar silence.
She didn’t know how to talk to her mom and never had. They could talk about Rosa, but then that would lead to a conversation about why Barb couldn’t take care of her and Jules already knew this story. It was always the same. Some version of a new guy in her life taking priority over anything else.
Barb was a “go-with-the-flow” kind of person who centered her life around the attention of men. It had been this way for as long as she could remember. Now that Jules was an adult, she’d begun to realize what little self-esteem her mother must have had.
After a few minutes, Barb spoke, “I know what you’re thinking. And I’m sorry I can’t be there to help. This time is different, though. I promise.”
Jules angled her head toward her window to watch the green cornfields zip by without responding. There was nothing to say. All it did was stir up old feelings of being forced to grow up young so she could fill in the gaps her mother left empty. Even at the age of ten, she had woken her mother up every morning to make sure she wasn’t late for her shift at the Piggly Wiggly. Jules didn’t expect her to change now.
As they drove up to her grandparents’ house, she spotted the bright red Volkswagen Beetle in the driveway. Her best friend Winnie was already inside, chatting away with Grandma Rosa. She wondered how long she’d been there, silently cringing. Her grandma thought of Winnie as a “small doses” friend, preferring to spend as little time alone with her as possible. Grandma preferred quiet, and Winnie was anything but. She was boisterous and outgoing, with a heart of gold that Jules treasured.
They’d met in sixth grade during cheerleading try-outs. Jules, the shy gangly girl who towered over everyone else; Winnie, the bouncing redhead who couldn’t stand still. They were assigned to the same try-out group, which meant they would go in together to show the judges their memorized routine. Jules had been nervously practicing by the trophy case, stealing glances at her reflection in the glass, when Winnie appeared, breathless and eager.
“Hey, we’re in the same group! Let’s practice. I want to look in sync. I’m Winnie, by the way. You’re Jules, right?” she blurted, hand outstretched.
They both made the squad, and that was that: Jules and Winnie became inseparable all through high school. You didn’t get one without the other, up until Jules moved away for college and eventually D.C., while Winnie stayed in their hometown, earning her teaching degree online. Now, she taught English at the same high school. Jules thought this was a little ironic because Winnie skipped more school than she attended. Even so, she was incredibly smart, and Jules knew her students loved her. How could they not?
Before grabbing her bags, Jules took a deep breath, feeling a sense of relief to be here. Seeing the only house she ever called home felt like a big hug she didn’t realize she needed. It was classical-looking, with four large white pillars flanking the front door that held up a decorative balcony on the second floor.
Now, all the front windows were open and the red brick almost glowed in the late summer sunset. It had been in Grandpa Lou’s family since the mid-nineteenth century. His great aunt and uncle built it when Riverbend was nothing but farmland. Not much had changed since then, except an addition of a downtown area that now serviced its fifteen thousand residents and the highway connecting it to Chicago.
Barb helped Jules wrangle her luggage up the front steps, stopping abruptly at the front door.
“This is as far as I go, Hun,” she said.
Jules set her bag down, turning to face her. “I thought you guys would have made up by now. It’s been a year since you moved out.”
“Afraid not, my dear. She still won’t take my calls. Occasionally, I get a thumbs-up emoji text just so I know she’s still alive.”
A year ago, Barb moved out again to be closer to her boyfriend, causing a huge rift between her and Grandma Rosa. Jules understood her grandma’s frustration. This wasn’t Barb’s first time pulling a stunt like that and leaving for a whirlwind romance. She knew it was only time before she’d come back after the inevitable breakup. By now, Grandma Rosa couldn’t understand why Barb didn’t just swear off men and embrace a “Grey Gardens” life with her instead. Jules suspected her grandma’s loneliness might be at play. Barb had never stayed away this long before.
Jules thanked Barb for the ride, giving her a tight smile and a hug before stepping inside the small foyer lined with oil paintings of Italian countryside landscapes. Bending over to slip her shoes off, a whiff of something baking in the oven danced in the air, beckoning her inside. The smell hit her like a memory: warm, sweet, and familiar. She smiled to herself. Molasses cookies. Her favorite.
She rounded the corner through the formal dining room that boasted an original buffet built for the house and a large table that was always set with her finest chinaware. Jules ran her hand along the green silk tablecloth as she turned the corner into a small but efficient kitchen.
It hadn’t changed much. Still painted yellow, with a compact white farm-style kitchen sink as the focal point. The refrigerator was the same, a time capsule from the sixties, but still humming along. Just seeing the kitchen made her shoulders relax a little, and she felt exhaustion creep up her spine, like it had been waiting for permission.
“Jules!” Winnie squealed, louder than necessary as she dropped the cookies she’d just pulled from the oven on the counter, rushing to wrap her in a dramatic hug. Winnie never abided Jules’ preference for personal space, but Jules didn’t mind.
Jules spotted her petite, yet always flawlessly dressed grandma sipping her coffee, perched on a chair at the square table pushed against the far wall. Her chestnut brown and grey hair was up in the tight French twist she always wore, but exhaustion etched across her face, even though she tried to hide it behind makeup. Jules could see Rosa’s expression over Winnie’s shoulder, eyes wide, pleading for a rescue. Jules gave her grandma a timid hug, careful not to bump her bad hip.
“You don’t have to handle me like a precious teacup, you know,” her grandma teased after they settled around the table. “If you do, it’ll be a long month for the both of us.”
“I know. I’m just being cautious. Everyone knows you can take care of yourself. I’m just here for the company,” Jules explained.
The conversation quickly turned to Jules and her trip, which she recounted, leaving out the work details. Her grandma didn’t understand what Jules did for a living. She couldn’t believe that famous people, especially politicians, didn’t write their own speeches. Jules had given up long ago trying to explain it to her.
“Well, I, for one, am so glad you’re home,” chimed Winnie. “Speaking of, I could use some help tomorrow if you have the time.”
Preparing herself for any number of wild things Winnie might try to rope Jules into, she asked for more details, knowing full well that she’d do it, regardless.
When they were teenagers, Winnie convinced her they should get jobs at the local roller rink even though neither of them could skate. Jules ended up with two broken fingers after a few kids at a birthday party ran her over on the rink, but she got free pizza and soda out of the deal, so she still counted it as a win.
“I’m acting as the director for the next school play. We’re doing Our Town and need help setting up the stage design. I asked for volunteers, but didn’t get many takers. Only three scrawny, typical theater kids. So, I need all the hands I can get,” she explained.