Chapter 16
sixteen
Evie
Margaret Winchester's office smells like good coffee and lily of the valley, and the afternoon light through the west-facing windows lights the steam rising from the cup she placed in my hands three minutes after I walked in.
It wasn't offered by an assistant, or waiting on a tray. Margaret made it herself, French press, and asked how I take it while already reaching for the cream because she remembered from the garden party that I don't drink it black.
I sit in the fabric chair across from her with my ankles crossed and my back straight, but not the rigid straight I hold at my father's events.
This is the posture I actually like, the one that feels like competence instead of costume.
My pencil skirt hits just above the knee and the silk of my blouse picks up the light when I shift, and right now the fabric pulls across a mark on my collarbone that Remy left with his teeth sometime around two in the morning.
I don't adjust the blouse. I let the silk drag.
On the shelf behind Margaret's desk, between a stack of Foundation quarterly reports and a framed photo of a group of women standing in front of a building I don't recognize, there's a ceramic bowl glazed in deep blue with a crack running through it that's been repaired with gold.
Kintsugi. The Japanese art of fixing broken things with gold instead of hiding the damage.
I know this because Darcy went through a phase junior year where she wanted to learn the technique and bought fourteen broken mugs from Goodwill.
The bowl is beautiful, clearly old. It sits on Margaret's shelf like it belongs there, not displayed, just present.
Margaret pulls a folder from the neat stack on her work surface and opens it between us, angling it so I can read along.
Her hands move with purpose when she's explaining, completely still when she's listening.
I've been in rooms with powerful women my entire life.
Most of them make sure you know it. Margaret just works.
"We're building the awareness campaign around survivor narratives rather than statistics," she says, tapping a page with a program layout that makes immediate sense to me.
The rollout phases, the media targets, the way each piece feeds the next.
"The data matters, but Congress doesn't fund data.
Congress funds stories that make them uncomfortable at dinner. "
I almost laugh. "You'd be surprised how many dinners I've sat through where the goal was making sure no one got uncomfortable at all."
Margaret's mouth curves, wry and conspiratorial. "Oh, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest. I've been to those dinners. The bread rolls are always excellent and the conversation is always terrible."
The laugh escapes before I can shape it into a polite version, and Margaret doesn't blink, just grins wider and turns the page.
Sitting across from a woman who asked for my opinion at a garden party full of people who only wanted my last name, who remembered my coffee and didn't remember to mention my father for the first eleven minutes of this conversation.
Margaret Winchester asked what I think. Not what my father thinks. Not what the Blanchard office's position is.
I don't go any further with those thoughts.
"The narrative framework is strong," I say instead, pulling the folder closer and scanning the campaign timeline.
"But you're launching in Q3, which means you're competing with midterm noise for media attention.
If you anchor the rollout to the subcommittee hearings, you get built-in press coverage without buying it. "
Margaret leans back in her chair and studies me with those blue-gray eyes. "That's exactly what I told my communications director last week. She disagreed."
"She's wrong."
"She is." Margaret picks up her coffee. "I'm going to enjoy telling her that a twenty-four-year-old said so."
Thirty minutes in, we've mapped the campaign structure end to end, and Margaret asks questions that assume I understand the answers. Coalition strategy, advocacy targets, field offices, case workers who know survivors by name instead of case number.
The work is real. The work might be mine. Or it might be the same skill set I've been using my whole life, just pointed somewhere that might let me sleep at night.
"We're working on the subcommittee angle already," Margaret says, closing the folder and folding her hands over it.
"But coalition building requires bipartisan credibility, and that means allies on the other side of the aisle who'll lend their names before the vote, not after.
Does your father have contacts on the appropriations side who might be open to a conversation? Even informal."
"He does." The answer comes without hesitation because it's true. "Senator Hargrove chairs the subcommittee and my father's co-sponsored two of his bills this session. I can make an introduction."
"That would be extraordinary, Evangeline."
"Evie." I smile. "And I'll have something for you by Friday."
Margaret stands when I do, and the handshake she gives me is firm. "I'm hosting a Foundation benefit next month. Smaller than the garden party, more focused. I'd love for you to be there, not as a guest but as someone working with us."
Warmth spreads through my chest, a different heat than the mark hidden under my blouse. "I'd like that."
"Good." Margaret walks me to the door, and her hand touches my shoulder briefly, a mentor's touch, not a politician's. "Friday, then."
The hallway outside is quiet and well-lit.
I make it to the elevator before I check my phone.
Three emails from the Blanchard office, each one flagged urgent, meaning mildly important but my mother wants it handled now.
And Darcy has texted four times, the last one in all caps with zero punctuation: EVIE WHERE ARE YOU I FOUND A PLACE THAT DOES HIGH TEA WITH CATS and then, twelve seconds later, ACTUAL CATS EVIE NOT A METAPHOR.
I press the lobby button, lean against the elevator wall, and let the real smile come, the one that pulls at both dimples and doesn't perform for anyone.
The kitchen smells like sourdough and ripe peaches when I come through the front door, which means Darcy found the farmers market on Fillmore and lost her mind.
"Evie. Evie, Evie, Evie." Darcy's voice hits me before I round the corner, and when I do, the island looks like a produce stand exploded across the marble.
Brown paper bags spilling peaches and nectarines, a baguette longer than my arm, three different kinds of cheese wrapped in wax paper, a golden jar with a handwritten label, and what appears to be an entire flat of strawberries.
"Okay so you need to sit down because I have to tell you about the honey man. "
"The honey man." I set my bag on the counter and pick up the jar, turning it so the light catches the amber. Wildflower, according to the label. The handwriting is calligraphy-level beautiful.
"The Honey Man, Evie. He has a booth and he has a beard and he has BEES, like actual bees, and he let me taste seven different kinds and I bought four jars because I have no self-control and also because the lavender one?
" Darcy presses both hands to her chest. "I would marry that honey.
I would change my name for that honey. I would become Darcy Lavender Honey LeBlanc. "
"That's a lot of commitment for a condiment."
"It's not a condiment, it's an EXPERIENCE." She pulls a second jar from a bag with the reverence of someone handling a newborn. "Also I found a cheese guy who makes his own burrata and I'm pretty sure I had a spiritual awakening in his tent."
I pick up one of the wax paper packages and unwrap the corner. The cheese inside is soft and white and smells like cream and grass. "Darcy, how much did you spend?"
"That's between me and God and my Venmo history.
" She waves a hand like she's swatting the question out of the air.
"But listen, the POINT is that California produce is unhinged.
Like, back home a peach is a peach, right?
It's fine. It does its job. But these peaches?
" She holds one up, golden, blushed red, obscenely ripe.
"These peaches have health insurance and a retirement plan.
These peaches went to therapy. These peaches are THRIVING. "
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep the laugh from cracking my face open. "You're telling me California peaches are emotionally evolved."
"I'm telling you they have their shit together in ways I aspire to.
Smell this." She shoves the peach under my nose, and it smells like summer and sugar and a thread of flowers underneath, and she's right, it's absurd.
"See? SEE? Back home we have humidity and crawfish and generational trauma.
California has fruit that goes to Pilates. "
The laugh wins. It breaks through and Darcy grins at me with both dimples firing and her blue eyes bright with the particular satisfaction she gets from making me lose composure, and I love her so much in this moment that my ribs ache with it.
My best friend standing in a kitchen that isn't hers, surrounded by farmer's market bags, comparing stone fruit to therapy outcomes while I carry a secret that would crack her open.
Don't.
I pick up a nectarine and turn it in my palm. "The humidity builds character."
"The humidity builds frizz. Character is a very generous interpretation."