Chapter 4
Two years ago. Pittsburgh.
Eleanor is still sitting in the passenger seat of the rental car her husband is driving. They've been parked outside her parents' house for ten minutes, and Eleanor is fiddling with her phone like it's some kind of emergency.
Daniel looks at her.
"Two minutes," Eleanor says, her voice rough from disuse — she hasn't said a word in hours.
There's nothing important in her inbox, but she needs a little more time.
It's not that she doesn't want to go in; it's that the transition gets harder every time — going from being Congresswoman Montgomery to being Carol's daughter, Abigail's stepsister, and the woman who's about to spend the next several hours in the same space as her, pretending she doesn't track her with her eyes every time she moves from one spot to another.
Daniel loses patience and gets out of the car; they've been stuck in airports and on the road for hours and he wants to get inside and relax.
Eleanor watches him through the window and thinks about how ironic it is that her husband enjoys these visits so much — standing in the backyard with a drink in his hand, completely oblivious to what his wife is doing inside the house.
She looks at herself in the visor mirror.
Her back is so straight it aches, her jaw is set, and her gray eyes give nothing away.
She gets out of the car.
She glances back at Daniel, and in moments like this she can barely stand him.
She hates seeing him just standing there, doing nothing, scrolling through his phone with that same posture he always has, head tilted slightly down.
Sometimes she feels terrible for thinking this way about her husband — Daniel hasn't actually done anything specific to deserve it — but his indifference, his complete lack of interest in anything that isn't himself, has worn her down to nothing.
"Let's go," Eleanor says without slowing her stride toward the front door.
The garden is already full of people when they arrive.
Carol has set up two long tables under the trees with string lights glowing in them, even though it's still light out, because Carol loves them at any celebration and by now no one in the family argues about it.
There are cousins, neighbors who've been around forever, Richard's sister with her husband, and the usual crowd of old friends.
And Abigail.
As always, Eleanor finds her before Abigail finds her.
She always gets there first — she's always the one who locates the other in any room they're both in — and she's spent twenty years telling herself it's pure survival instinct, that she needs to know where Abigail is in order to avoid her.
She's spent twenty years not quite believing it.
Abigail is standing next to her father, glass in hand, listening to something Richard is telling her with that expressive way he has of gesturing when he talks.
Her hair is up — the chestnut bob pinned back at the nape, leaving her neck bare — and she's wearing a deep burgundy dress that Eleanor registers, files away, and immediately shuts down.
Marcus Coleman is beside her. Tall, pleasant, with that open smile of his that Eleanor has learned to look at without feeling anything in particular.
"Sweetheart, you're here." Carol appears out of nowhere and pulls her into a hug, and Eleanor hugs her back with genuine warmth — her mother is the one person she loves without ambiguity, without layers. "I'm so happy. I thought you'd be later. How are you?"
"Good, Mom. Happy birthday." She kisses her on the cheek. "You look beautiful."
"Liar," Carol says, laughing, "but thank you. Go say hi to Richard — he's been asking about you since four o'clock."
Daniel has already made his way into the garden with that easy sociability of his, and Eleanor watches him shake Richard's hand and laugh at something the older man says.
Her husband is good at this. It's probably his best quality, and the main reason he's still useful in her life.
She doesn't dwell on it. She decides it's better to rip off the bandage and walks over to the group.
"Finally!" Richard opens his arms to greet her, but just two seconds before he reaches her — inevitable, as always — Abigail turns around.
Their eyes meet for exactly as long as these things last between them: one measured, controlled second, long enough for each of them to know the other has arrived and the clock has started.
"Eleanor," Abigail says, with that same neutral tone she always uses.
"Abigail," Eleanor replies, and her voice is a cold hiss that would make anyone's skin crawl.
Richard looks at them both with that expression of fond resignation he's developed over all these years of watching them fail to get along.
Dinner is long and loud — one of those celebrations where everyone talks at once, laughs too much, and keeps topping off their glasses.
Eleanor is sitting two seats down from Abigail.
Close enough to be a problem, far enough to maintain composure — which she doesn't have, because for the past hour her body has been trembling with need.
Daniel is on her left, talking to Richard's sister.
Marcus is on the other side of the table, two seats over, holding up his end of a conversation Eleanor isn't following.
The bowl of potatoes travels down the table, passing from hand to hand.
When it reaches Abigail, she takes it, serves herself, and passes it to Eleanor without looking at her.
Their fingers brush at the edge of the bowl — half a second, nothing more — and Congresswoman Eleanor Montgomery feels the air leave her lungs.
She sets the bowl down on the table harder than necessary.
"Be careful," Eleanor says under her breath, in that low reproachful tone she uses when she's speaking directly to Abigail and doesn't want anyone else to hear — though the table is loud enough that no one is paying attention.
Abigail turns her head very slowly and looks at her.
"Excuse me?"
"I said be careful," Eleanor repeats. "You almost knocked over the water."
"I didn't knock over anything," Abigail says, spitting the words out and turning her angry eyes away.
"Eleanor." Richard's voice cuts across the table from the other end — calm, but carrying the weight of a man who has mediated between them for two decades. "It's your mother's birthday. Just this once, please, behave yourselves."
Eleanor nods, picks up her glass, and seals her lips with a long swallow of red wine.
Abigail's neck has gone red with irritation, but she decides to turn back to the conversation she was having before, as if nothing happened.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart," Richard says, raising his glass to his wife.
Carol smiles — that expression that comes over her face when her family is all together, especially Eleanor, who always somehow manages to pause her chaotic world to come see her, and Abigail, who, though she didn't carry her, she loves with her whole heart.
Conversation flows freely, especially now that the empty wine bottles have started piling up in the corner. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. Everyone except the two of them. Abigail has been twisting her hands in her lap for a while now, and Eleanor's legs won't stop moving.
When dessert arrives and everyone is sufficiently distracted, Abigail stands up like she has a spring loaded inside her, saying she needs to wrap Carol's gift, and Eleanor waits exactly four minutes before standing up herself.
It's the excuse they choose today without having to plan it — a cover story so worn-in by now that it shouldn't work anymore, and yet it does, because their parents are trusting people who don't suspect anything, who see two adult women who don't get along but are somehow capable of coordinating on a gift, and that seems like enough proof that there's something good between them.
Two weeks ago Eleanor bought a bracelet her mother had been wanting for a long time, and it's been wrapped ever since.
Right now it's sitting inside the small bag she brought for a single night in Pittsburgh.
The hallway of her parents' house looks exactly the same as always.
Family photos in frames along the walls, the little wooden table where Carol keeps her vanilla-scented candles, the old stairs that always gave her away when she came home late.
Eleanor climbs to the upper floor, trying to keep her heels from echoing as loudly as they always do, and when she reaches the corner, the door to her old bedroom is ajar.
She pushes it open.
Abigail is standing by the window when Eleanor comes in, and Eleanor immediately closes the door behind her.
The lawyer doesn't turn around — she keeps her gaze fixed on the street, the room nearly dark around her, her face hidden.
Only the light from the garden below filters in, and the voices from dinner reach them muffled from outside, as if they belong to another world. Which is exactly what they are.
There's no preamble. There never has been in this room, or in any other place they've ended up, because a preamble implies a decision and neither of them wants to decide. They just want it to happen, want the body to take over and the mind to finally shut up.
Eleanor crosses the room, and when she finally touches Abigail's body, she has to bite down hard on her own lip to hold back everything she feels from just the contact of her skin.
She shoves the dress up to Abigail's waist and presses her forward so Abigail's hands land on the nightstand beside her.
Eleanor Montgomery forgets everything — the congresswoman, Daniel Carter's wife, the respectable woman she pretends to be — when she drops to her knees, pulls aside the black lace thong, and buries her tongue in the hot, forbidden sweetness that's been calling to her.
"Mmmh…" The low, rough sound that escapes Abigail's lips makes Eleanor press her tongue deeper.