Chapter 2
"Chicago has always been a city of hard work, character, and opportunity, and that's what I've fought to defend every single day in Congress.
" Eleanor Montgomery pauses for two seconds and sweeps her gaze across the audience before continuing.
"Our community deserves leaders who listen, who make responsible decisions, and who think not just about the next headline, but about the future of our state.
Illinois has extraordinary potential if we're willing to invest in the safety and economic growth of this country. "
The speech runs sixteen minutes; Eleanor knows because she always times them, not with a watch, but with that part of her brain that has spent twenty years measuring every word, every pause, every beat of silence before an important line.
Sixteen minutes in front of three hundred people in the grand ballroom of The Ritz-Carlton Chicago, and when she finishes and the applause fills the room, Eleanor smiles.
It's a perfect smile; she's practiced it so long that sometimes she can't tell it apart from a real one, though anyone who knows her understands she never truly smiles — she gives the world exactly what she wants it to see.
She steps down from the podium as if the room belongs to her.
Back straight, chin high, Congresswoman Montgomery crosses the ballroom in her tailored suit and heels, drawing eyes even from her opponents.
The press has called her plenty of things, but the phrase that keeps coming back is that her beauty is painful and her coldness devastating.
"The Ice Barbie" was what one journalist called her in his Sunday column the day after Eleanor showed up at a fundraiser in a stunning dress.
Her chief of staff, Erin Gallagher, appears at her side as always, phone in one hand, iPad in the other. She falls into step beside her, and when the noise starts to fade, she starts talking.
"Great job — the speech was perfect," Erin says, scrolling through her phone with the fluency of someone who lives on it. "Senator Holloway wants five minutes before you leave."
Eleanor gives a slight nod to another congressman who broadens his smile when he sees her.
"Tell him to call me tomorrow," Eleanor answers, barely moving her lips.
"He's already tried twice this week." Erin tries not to sigh, but the senator can be relentless.
Eleanor keeps walking, her heels striking the floor with purpose.
"Then he can try a third time," the congresswoman says without breaking stride, shaking hands with someone who steps into her path — a smile that lights up and cuts out in under two seconds.
That's how Eleanor works. That's how she's always worked.
When she leaves the office and the car picks her up, it's quarter to ten at night.
Her usual hour — she can't remember the last time she got home before eight.
Eleanor settles into the backseat, slips off her heels, and lets them drop to the floor.
She exhales a breath only she can hear and works her thumb into the arch of her right foot while she watches the downtown buildings scroll past the window in the thin rain.
Erin has sent her tomorrow's briefing — twelve items, none of them easy — and Eleanor reads it with the same attention she'd give it at nine in the morning, because her brain doesn't have an off switch, or if it does, she lost it years ago.
"Home, Congresswoman Montgomery?"
Home. Four letters that should be a simple definition for anyone. For Eleanor, they're not, because her body recognizes only one home — one that, on top of being very far away, she can only step inside for a few minutes at a time.
"Yes, Tom," the congresswoman answers, and her driver of eight years is used to her one-word replies.
The drive is just twenty minutes, and Eleanor watches through the glass as the car begins to slow.
She remembers buying that house — she imagined everything that could happen inside it, but it was that damned library that convinced her; the moment she saw it, she had no doubts.
The elegant townhouse is pale stone, with tall windows and a dark wood door that looks like it keeps the secrets Eleanor buries in her soul.
When she steps inside and hangs up her coat, she feels that same bitter aftertaste that has followed her for years, though lately it's turned sharper, more acidic.
She moves through the entryway; at this hour Amelia, her housekeeper, has already gone, and from there she can smell the roast duck she's left in the oven.
Her stomach tightens. Even though she's barely eaten all day, she's not hungry.
The living room is lit. Daniel never goes to bed before midnight — he's one of those men who need someone to see them awake to feel like they're accomplishing something. He has his laptop open on his lap and a bourbon on the side table when Eleanor walks in. He looks up.
"How did the speech go?" Daniel asks, bringing the glass to his lips with practiced ease.
"Fine."
"Fine for real or fine halfway?" Her husband says it in that tone Eleanor can never quite decide is mocking, but despises either way.
"Fine, Daniel." She nearly spits the answer.
He nods and goes back to his laptop. Eleanor sets her bag on the chair to the left and loosens the first button of her white shirt as she heads to the kitchen for water. This is their marriage — a hollow exchange of three and a half sentences is, on many nights, the longest conversation they have.
It wasn't always like this. Or maybe it was, and Eleanor chose to believe otherwise — chose to think her soul could belong to someone else.
What a fool she was.
There was a time, in the beginning, when Daniel Carter seemed like exactly what she needed: presentable, intelligent, politically useful, and confident enough not to need more from her than she could give.
A tacit arrangement dressed up as a marriage.
Eleanor chose him with the same logic she applies to every other decision, and for years it worked.
Now they simply coexist. No drama, no resentment, no love.
Two people who share a hyphenated last name and a calendar of public events.
Eleanor sometimes wonders if Daniel knows. If he knows she's never truly loved him.
"I'm going to bed," Eleanor says when she's already halfway up the stairs, and not out of courtesy. Daniel knows that line means she doesn't want to be bothered.
She looks at herself in the mirror, and as she begins removing her makeup, she's struck by a sudden feeling: she misses the woman she becomes on certain occasions, for just a few minutes of her life.
She drags the cotton ball across her face with something close to anger.
She can't want something that comes from the dark, something that's the result of a thing she can't — won't — name.
After she showers, she puts on her pajamas, picks up her phone, and sits on the edge of the bed with her legs crossed. Three unread messages — two from Erin and one from her mother.
She doesn't open Carol's yet.
Erin's first. Always Erin's first, because work is what keeps Eleanor Montgomery sane.
Erin: Your speech is leading tomorrow's local papers. They'll be on your desk first thing.
Erin: Senator Holloway is pushing to speak with you.
Eleanor doesn't reply — she doesn't need to. Erin doesn't expect a text back; tomorrow she'll dig through Eleanor's packed schedule and propose two tentative windows for the five minutes Holloway wants.
Mom: You were wonderful in the speech. Don't forget — next month is Richard's birthday. We love you.
Eleanor stretches her lips into something that passes for a smile.
Her mother, like Richard, has always supported her career — they watch every television appearance, listen to every speech, read every article Eleanor is featured in.
Carol keeps a scrapbook with so many clippings that Eleanor has no idea how the woman fits them all.
Eleanor: I'll be there.
The congresswoman opens her calendar — not because she needs to confirm Richard's birthday, which she knows by heart, along with every family celebration — but to make sure Erin has already shifted what needs to be shifted so Eleanor has at least that day free to travel to Pittsburgh.
Twenty-eight days.
Eleanor turns off the light and lies staring at the ceiling in the dark while Daniel makes noise in the living room with his laptop, his bourbon, and his quiet, comfortable mediocrity.
She doesn't hate him, and that's also part of the problem — she feels absolutely nothing for him, and that's worse than hatred.
The following week she has two press conferences, a committee vote she's been preparing for three months, and a donor dinner where she'll need to be on for four straight hours.
She will be. She always is. Eleanor Montgomery doesn't fail in public; it may be the one thing she's completely certain of — that on any stage, under any pressure, she doesn't break.
But right now she has to get through twenty-eight days in the dark, inside a body that sometimes doesn't even feel like her own, composing smiles as false as her own life.
Twenty-seven days, Eleanor thinks when the clock on the nightstand turns and midnight passes.
She closes her eyes.
Twenty-seven days until she can inject her favorite drug, recharge her soul, and last another stretch without the unbearable closeness of Abigail Lawson.