Chapter 17
The next three days are a spiral with no end in sight for Eleanor.
They go out twice. The first time for a meeting with the party's lawyers, the second because Eleanor has to renew her driver's license—a bureaucratic errand that in any other week would've taken twenty minutes and that day turns into an extraction operation.
It's on the way out of the DMV that Abigail takes her hand without meaning to.
The reporters are there, more of them than expected, microphones raised and questions already flying before Eleanor sets foot on the sidewalk, and the lawyer reacts before she can think, stepping in front of her and closing her fingers around Eleanor's hand to pull her toward the car.
Just a few seconds, enough for Eleanor to feel the warmth of that hand in hers in the middle of the chaos of reporters and cameras, and for something in her chest to do what it always does when Abigail touches her—but different, because this isn't the garage or the guest room or any corner of the Pittsburgh house.
It's the sidewalk outside a DMV with half a dozen cameras rolling.
Abigail lets go the second they're inside the car, and neither of them says a word, mostly because the touch of their skin has short-circuited both their brains.
The kitchen smells like garlic and the onion Abigail is sautéing in the pan while Eleanor smokes by the window, phone in hand, her gaze fixed somewhere on the wall of her patio.
It's Saturday afternoon, and they've been like this since five.
Amelia left at three and the house is quiet except for the sound of the pan.
That quiet should give Eleanor's mind a chance to rest, to disconnect a little from her situation, but she can't manage it, because her phone has spent three days being a battlefield.
Someone got hold of her personal number.
They don't know who or how, but since Thursday it's been ringing with a persistence that's gone from irritating to something closer to harassment—unknown numbers Eleanor stares at and doesn't answer, reporters leaving messages Abigail listens to first before deciding if they deserve a response.
Then, again, an unknown number.
Eleanor's face changes in a way Abigail has come to recognize over these days, that small tightening around the eyes that isn't exactly fear but comes close, and the hand holding the phone trembles a little before she brings it back under control.
Abigail turns off the burner and walks over.
"Turn it off, Eleanor."
Eleanor looks at the phone, then at the lawyer, dazed.
"It's Saturday," Abigail says, keeping her voice low so she doesn't rattle Eleanor any more than she already is. "If it's anything about the case, the FBI and the party have my number. If it's Richard or your mom, they've got it too. Turn it off."
In any other context, Eleanor would feel a different kind of trembling at Abigail's firm tone, but right now she trembles only because she has nothing left.
She looks at the screen one more time and obeys, shutting the phone off at the same moment she crushes the cigarette against the window ledge—a sharp gesture that says more than any word, because these days Eleanor doesn't even step out to the patio to smoke.
She does it by the kitchen window, as if she's afraid to walk into her own backyard.
Abigail watches her. She sees that unfocused gaze, the phone dark in her hand, the cigarette crushed on the sill, and she feels a rage with no clear target, because she can't aim it at anything specific—only at everything that's been breaking this woman for two weeks, everything Eleanor endures with a composure that splits something open inside the lawyer, because she knows exactly what it costs to hold it together.
Eleanor turns and heads for the kitchen door.
"Where are you going?" Abigail asks.
"To shower," she answers without turning around. "To clear my head."
Abigail lets her go and turns the burner back on.
Ten minutes pass. Fifteen.
The water stops running somewhere between twelve and thirteen minutes, and when Abigail has gone five minutes without hearing any other sound from upstairs, she turns off the burner again, dries her hands on the dish towel, and climbs the stairs to make sure Eleanor is okay.
The bedroom door is ajar and Abigail eases it open, holding her breath when she sees Eleanor on the floor.
She's sitting with her back against the side of the bed, wearing her robe, wet hair falling over her shoulders and her eyes fixed on the window with that empty expression Abigail has been watching all day—the look of someone who has poured out everything she had and is left with nothing but a shell.
The lawyer doesn't say anything. She just crosses the room slowly and lowers herself down beside her on the floor, pressing her body against Eleanor's, because she wants her to feel her there.
Eleanor doesn't move when Abigail sits beside her.
She keeps looking at the window—not because she hasn't noticed the lawyer next to her, but because she has nothing left, too far gone to make a single movement, and Abigail, who can read her even when she doesn't speak or move, gets a clear sense of what her stepsister is feeling right now.
The lawyer does the only thing she believes she can: she slides her hand slowly, searching for Eleanor's until she finds it and laces their fingers together the same way they did so many years ago, and not so long ago in the garage.
The same hands, the same silence—but this time there's something different in the touch, something that wasn't there the other times, or that was there and neither of them could see it yet.
Eleanor drops her gaze to their joined hands and something inside her gives.
Abigail feels it before she sees it—that moment when Eleanor's body, which has spent days being a perfect containment structure, begins to come apart from the inside.
Eleanor brings her free hand to her face, presses her fingers hard against her eyes until her knuckles go white, and her breathing changes, uneven and broken.
Abigail moves a little closer.
"I'm here," she whispers in her ear. "Lean on me. Please."
Those words are exactly what she needs to fall apart completely.
Eleanor's body shudders. A sob comes from somewhere very deep, from the place where she keeps everything she can't be anywhere else or with anyone else, everything she's spent too many days storing up without being able to let out, because there's always someone watching, always a camera, a reporter, an agent, or someone Eleanor Montgomery cannot let see her breaking.
Abigail draws her close and Eleanor gives in. She folds toward her and ends up with her head in her lap, crying in a way the lawyer has never seen from her—no restraint, no trace of the control that defines her, her whole body shaking in waves that won't stop.
Abigail runs her fingers through her wet hair.
Slowly. Over and over. The damp strands slipping through her fingers, Eleanor's forehead against her thighs, the crying filling the quiet bedroom—because even shattered, even like this, Eleanor cries in silence, without sound, as if her body knows sound would be too much.
Abigail cries too. She doesn't decide to—it just happens, tears falling without her doing anything to stop them, because she can't bear this.
She can't bear watching Eleanor this broken and knowing that part of what's breaking her isn't only the scandal or the reporters or Daniel or the resignation.
It's all of that on top of what they've both been carrying for twenty years without naming it—the piled-up weight of two decades of finding each other in corners, running away and coming back, running away again; the garage, their fingers laced together, the hand held on the DMV sidewalk, and these days under the same roof with nowhere to put everything that exists between them.
Abigail keeps running her fingers through Eleanor's hair, and Eleanor's crying fades slowly, in small shudders that spread further and further apart until only the leftover trembling of a body that's cried too much and needs to recover is left.
She lies still on Abigail's lap, eyes closed, breathing still uneven but calmer—like someone who has crossed a dangerous stretch and is waiting to see what's on the other side.
The room is quiet because neither of them needs to break the silence, until, after a few minutes, Abigail stirs.
"We should get up or you'll get cold," she whispers, smoothing her hair one last time.
Eleanor obeys without a word. She sits up with the slowness of someone who has cried herself empty, and lets Abigail guide her to the bed and help her sit.
"Lie down for a while," Abigail says. "You need to rest. I'll finish dinner and let you know when it's ready."
Eleanor nods and lies back, and Abigail takes the blanket from the foot of the bed and pulls it up to her shoulders. Then she leaves the room and eases the door closed with the care of someone who doesn't want to make a sound, even though Eleanor is still awake.
An hour later, the room lit by the hallway light, Eleanor begins to open her eyes.
She's lying on her side, facing the center of the bed, and the first thing she sees when she manages to focus is Abigail lying beside her, watching her.
The lawyer hasn't left. She didn't go downstairs to eat or wait in the living room.
She simply walked out of the room, stood in the hallway for ten minutes, and came back in to make sure Eleanor was resting—and once she saw that she was, she couldn't leave.
She's here with her, shoes on the floor, her dark green eyes fixed on Eleanor with an expression Eleanor finds hard to name, because it isn't only desire.
It's something bigger and deeper that's been there far longer than either of them has wanted to admit.
Eleanor clears her throat, a faint trembling running through her whole body even though she isn't cold.
"How are you doing?" Abigail whispers.
"Better," Eleanor answers.
They look at each other. The space between their bodies on the bed is small, less than a hand's width, and in that distance there are twenty years of history, a rule they've never broken, and the awareness that if either of them moves now there will be no undoing what comes next.
Abigail lifts a hand very slowly and lays her palm against Eleanor's cheek.
Warm skin against skin, her fingers grazing the edge of that still-damp hair, and Eleanor doesn't pull away or close her eyes—she stays still, watching Abigail while her heart slams against her ribs with an unstoppable pull of want.
The lawyer moves closer, slowly. Her gaze drops to Eleanor's mouth and Eleanor draws a sharp, broken breath, but she doesn't pull away, even knowing what's coming.
Their lips meet—Abigail's mouth against Eleanor's, barely a touch, no pressure, as if Abigail is giving her time to decide, to pull back, to say no with her body the way they've both always said it when their faces got too close—but Eleanor doesn't pull away, and Abigail presses a little more.
And then Eleanor closes her eyes and kisses her back.
Something happens in both their bodies at once, a tension that's been building for too many years, and now, with this slow, unhurried kiss in the dim light of the room, it starts to come loose in a way neither of them knows how to stop—and neither of them has any intention of stopping it.
Abigail's lips move slowly over Eleanor's, exploring, learning something that should be familiar by heart and yet is completely new, because this isn't like any of the other things they've done in twenty years.
This has a name they've both avoided saying out loud, and now it exists in the space between their mouths without either of them speaking it.
Eleanor slides her fingers into Abigail's hair and the lawyer lets out a breath against her lips—small, involuntary, the sound of someone who's been holding something back for too long and has just let part of it go.
Their bodies drift toward each other on the bed, that hand's width of distance shrinking until it's gone, and when their chests touch, they both feel the warmth of the other differently than every time before—without the urgency of the garage, the anger of the guest room, or the desperation of the birthday night.
Only this. This slow heat in their mouths spreading through their whole bodies, their fingertips against each other's cheeks, touching in a way that is unlike every other time.
Eleanor's mouth opens and Abigail brushes her lower lip with her tongue, and Eleanor lets out a sharp moan, because she needs everything burning through her to find some way out, and when Abigail's tongue meets hers, both of them start to tremble—and they regret every year they spent not daring to do this, because now that they've had a taste, they know there's no going back.