Chapter 10 #2
Erin nods, because she knows these moments—when her boss needs to be alone, ordering her mind, bracing for what's coming.
Congresswoman Montgomery steps out of her heels and leaves them by the desk.
She crosses barefoot to the small bookshelf in the corner—three shelves, nothing like the library at home, but a space she's built here over the years.
Constitutional law, political history, two volumes of case law she never opens but needs to see there.
And on the middle shelf, wedged between a manual of parliamentary procedure and a compilation of twentieth-century speeches, four volumes of a civil law collection that aren't hers.
Abigail bought them at a sprawling bookstore in Pittsburgh, a couple of years back, when they got together for Thanksgiving—and Eleanor remembers it clearly, because that visit had thrown them both off balance.
Then Abigail left and forgot the volumes behind.
Eleanor packed them in her suitcase and no one asked about them.
Now they sit on that middle shelf as if they've always belonged there.
"You can't fall apart," she tells herself quietly, and as if it were something sacred, she runs her fingers slowly along the spines.
She closes her eyes, and her mind is no longer in that room—it's in the garage in Pittsburgh, in the feel of Abigail's hand laced through hers.
That soft skin she'd know among a thousand people without a second's hesitation.
She holds onto the sensation, onto the confusion at first, then the calm that came after.
Those moments that belong only to the two of them, to no one else, are what keep her sane.
She's spent three months unable to stop thinking about that silence that lasted a single second, and tonight, with reporters parking downstairs, Cooper in the FBI's hands, and fifteen years of a reputation built on work and sacrifice hinging on how she plays the next few hours, the first thing that surfaces when she's finally alone and quiet is Abigail's fingers between hers.
She breathes deep, the way the communications coach who charged too many dollars taught her—the one who made her understand that the body answers to breath before the brain can act.
She opens her eyes, finds her heels, puts them back on.
She picks up her jacket, and the woman who walks toward the door is the seasoned, composed Congresswoman Eleanor Montgomery.
At five o'clock, the press conference begins.
"Good afternoon," she says. "I want to make a statement regarding the facts that came to light today concerning David Cooper, and then I'll take questions."
The press room is packed—cameras, mics, restless reporters chasing the story that'll hand them the best headlines tomorrow morning.
She knows most of them and has learned to tell apart the ones after information from the ones after a mistake, the ones who come with questions from the ones who come with conclusions and just need her to confirm them.
Her voice is perfectly even, her posture exactly as always: back straight, chin up, hands firm on the podium.
"Today I was informed that the FBI is conducting an investigation into David Cooper in connection with alleged irregularities in the awarding of public contracts.
Let me be completely clear: this investigation is news to me.
I had no prior knowledge of any of the activities under investigation.
" She pauses, strategic, letting her gaze move across the familiar faces.
"Our party has zero tolerance for any form of corruption.
What we've learned today about David Cooper, if confirmed, represents a betrayal of the values this party stands for and of the trust the citizens of Illinois have placed in us.
We've launched an internal investigation and will cooperate fully with the FBI in every way necessary.
I won't speculate about facts still under investigation, but I can promise you that when we have the complete picture, we'll share it with full transparency. "
Hands shoot up across the room before she finishes the sentence.
"That went well," Erin says, walking beside her down the long corridor while scanning what reporters have been posting in real time throughout.
Eleanor doesn't answer. She knows they've only dodged the first wave.
"Put together the day's summary and have Fischer coordinate all the media follow-up," she says. "I want full monitoring for the next twenty-four hours. Everything they publish—no matter how small—I want to know."
Erin types fast.
"Anything else?"
"I want at least half an hour alone. No interruptions."
Eleanor goes back into the office and runs through the routine that steadies her.
She steps out of her heels and stops at the window.
She has the phone in her hand and squeezes it until her fingers ache, but there's no one to call who isn't part of the problem or part of the professional solution, and tonight she needs neither.
Tonight she needs something with a name close to sin, something she's kept locked in the drawer of costly things for twenty years.
She presses her fingers to her forehead, right between her eyes, where the ache is already digging in.
Outside, Chicago carries on with its big-city noise.
Inside, Eleanor Montgomery—congresswoman for Illinois, head of the state's Republican Party, Senate candidate, Daniel Carter's wife, Carol Montgomery's daughter—stands staring at the dark lake for a stretch of time she has no intention of measuring.
Tomorrow, it all starts for real.