Chapter 12
The cigarette has been lit for two minutes and Eleanor hasn't taken a single drag.
She's standing by the bedroom window with her phone in one hand and the cigarette in the other, staring at the screen where three missed calls from Abigail sit lined up in her call history like an accusatory finger pointed straight at her.
Three calls in one day, she thinks, wondering why Abigail Lawson — who hasn't called her in years and only does when the world is falling apart — has called three times, but then, Eleanor's world is falling apart.
She takes the first drag and the smoke drifts down slowly, filling part of the room and tainting everything with its smell, just like her days have been lately.
The smell anchors her to the present moment in a way nothing she's tried over the past three days has managed to.
She quit smoking eight years ago; she remembers it wasn't as hard as people said it would be — she simply dropped the pack that still held seven cigarettes into the trash and went on with her life like it was nothing.
Now she's been smoking again for three days, only at night, only when she's alone and when the weight of what's coming gets too dense to bear with just breathing.
Daniel has been sleeping in the guest room for two nights, as if Eleanor were some kind of plague and the safest thing was to stay as far from her as possible.
She doesn't care — in fact, she's grateful to be alone while her mind spends the small hours churning — but it stings, she won't deny that, because her husband is supposed to be there for her in moments like these.
Otherwise, what's the point of being married to him for half her life?
"Talk to me," Eleanor answers when her phone suddenly rings and she sees her chief of staff's name on the screen.
Erin tells her she needs her at the office in the morning, but earlier than usual. There are changes, things that can't wait, and Eleanor just looks out at the street, brings the cigarette to her lips, and closes her eyes.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she says, and ends the call immediately.
The three days before — from the moment the news about the investigation into David Cooper leaked — have been like an avalanche that won't stop no matter how hard she pushes back.
There's no pause between one thing and the next, no moment when the phone stops ringing or Erin stops walking in with something new to handle, or the headlines stop refreshing at a pace that makes every statement Eleanor gives obsolete before the ink is dry.
The first day was Cooper. The scandal, the press conference, the call from Washington, and the reporters crowding the building's entrance.
The second day brought the party's lawyers. A four-hour meeting in which Eleanor answered every question calmly and with enough transparency to make it clear she had nothing to hide.
The third is the worst, and Eleanor, with that superstition she doesn't even believe in, sensed it when her chief of staff called the night before — and because the air feels more suffocating than it has all week.
"Good morning, Eleanor." Erin walks into the office at eight a.m. with an expression that sometimes makes Eleanor's skin crawl.
She knows her well enough by now; she no longer needs Erin to speak to know what she's bringing is bad.
She only needs to see that expression, which over three days has developed variations Eleanor has learned to tell apart.
This one is new, because it carries something the others didn't — as if Erin is uncomfortable and what she's about to say is not just professionally difficult but personally awkward.
"Close the door," Eleanor says, and pops a mint into her mouth because this morning she couldn't stop herself from smoking.
"Something just went up," Erin tells her. "I tried to hold it off as long as I could, but the press doesn't wait. Two networks and an online paper have run it. It's about Daniel."
Eleanor sets the coffee she was about to drink back down on the desk.
"What about Daniel?"
"There are photos." Erin holds her gaze. "With a woman, on several occasions. The most recent is from two weeks ago."
Eleanor doesn't say anything. Her mind grinds like a machine with unoiled gears, catching on itself.
The silence stretches because she needs it to process the information.
It isn't pain she feels, or anything close to it — it's something more complicated, a kind of anger that belongs to someone who has held up their end of an unspoken agreement and discovers the other party hasn't.
"Who else knows?"
"At this point, given that it's already been published..." Erin doesn't finish the sentence because she doesn't need to.
"Everyone," Eleanor finishes for her.
"Yes."
Congresswoman Montgomery rises slowly and walks to the window. The lake — always the lake — gray, like every day this week.
"How long have they been following Daniel?"
"We don't know yet." Erin frowns. "The oldest photos are from six months ago, but they may have more they haven't published."
Eleanor does the math without meaning to, and immediately the image materializes in her mind — the guest bathroom in her parents' house, Abigail's hand wrapped around her throat.
Six months ago, Daniel already had a lover, and Eleanor was in Pittsburgh fucking her stepsister in the house where she grew up, while their respective spouses drank wine in the backyard.
The hypocrisy of the situation is so perfect that Eleanor almost laughs.
Almost.
"Draft a statement about Daniel," she says. "Short, not too much detail. Privacy of the marriage, a personal issue to be handled separately from the professional. The usual."
"Eleanor." Erin pauses. "Washington called."
Eleanor turns, because when she hears those words, the lake is no longer gray — it's black.
"When?"
"Twenty minutes ago." Erin checks her watch. "I told them you were in a meeting. They want to speak with you today."
Eleanor has known since almost the first day — when the third headline put her name and the word "corruption" in the same sentence — that the call from Washington wasn't going to bring support.
It was going to bring instructions. In politics, when the people at the top call in the middle of a crisis to talk, they're not calling to ask how you're doing.
"Put the call through at ten," Eleanor says. "And I want Fischer here at nine-thirty."
Erin leaves the office, and Eleanor feels a near-desperate urge to put a cigarette between her lips.
She slips off her heels — she needs it, at least for a few minutes, because that simple act of feeling the floor directly under her feet steadies her.
She takes a few steps toward the small bookshelf and runs her fingers along the spines of Abigail's four books, and Eleanor Montgomery's soul anchors itself back to her body, making her feel that even if she's in deep trouble, she can handle whatever comes next.
The call lasts forty-two minutes and Eleanor takes it standing, by the window, back straight, voice even — because if there's one thing she cannot do on this call, it's let anyone hear how much it costs her to keep that composure.
The person on the other end is the national director, a man Eleanor respects professionally and knows well enough to understand that what he's about to say isn't something he enjoys, but he doesn't regret it too deeply either.
"Eleanor, the situation is untenable."
"I understand."
"With the Cooper investigation and now the Daniel situation, this is spiraling out of control. The media is building a narrative about the party and about you specifically that..."
"I understand," Eleanor repeats. "Tell me what you need."
There's a short pause that Eleanor feels lasts an eternity before she hears his voice again through the phone.
"We need you to step back," he says. "You need to resign as congresswoman to show the party is taking this seriously and that there's nothing to hide. Transparency has to be total, and that means..."
"It means I can't be there," Eleanor finishes, her voice ice-cold.
"It means you facilitate the investigation from outside the office," he replies, sounding politically careful.
Eleanor looks at the lake.
"And the party leadership?"
"There are names, people we trust. It would be temporary, Eleanor." The director's voice takes on a different firmness now. "Once this is over, I'll personally do everything in my power to give back what you're setting aside today."
"Of course," she says, and her voice doesn't shift, doesn't waver, doesn't do anything other than exactly what it needs to do. "I'll cooperate. I'll work out the details with Erin this afternoon."
When she hangs up, she stares at the phone in her hand for a moment.
Then she sets it on the desk, sits down, and for the first time in three days, does nothing for several minutes.
She doesn't read, doesn't call anyone, doesn't write.
She sits in silence in her office with the lake behind her and Erin waiting on the other side of the door.
She lets the conversation settle somewhere in her body where she can carry it without it showing.
Politics is her life. Not the way people say that as a cliché — not because she loves her job or happens to be very good at it.
It's that Eleanor Montgomery, without the title, without the structure, without the sixteen minutes timed to the second in front of three hundred people at the Ritz-Carlton, without Room B and her name on the ballot, doesn't really know what's left of her.
She cuts off every thought, stands up, and opens the door.
"Fischer," she calls. "I need the best resignation speech you've ever written in your life. You have two hours."
Fischer's eyes nearly bug out of his head, but he doesn't even have time to nod because Eleanor has already closed the door.