Chapter 15
Abigail has been awake since four. Not because she's uncomfortable—the bed is good, the mattress firm, the sheets smelling of lavender.
It's the silence. Or, more precisely, it's what she's spent hours listening for inside the silence: the absence of the one sound she's afraid to hear. Footsteps in the hallway. A door opening. The unmistakable sound of someone coming home late and moving through the dark, trying not to wake anyone.
Daniel.
She doesn't know where Daniel Carter is, and that—which in any other context would be irrelevant—is what's kept her eyes open and fixed on the ceiling since four in the morning.
Eleanor didn't mention him yesterday, and Abigail chose not to ask, because the situation between them was already strange enough without adding an uncomfortable question on top of it.
But the idea of hearing him come in and slide into bed with Eleanor unsettled her in a way she can't justify by any means—except that she never heard a sound, and she assumes Daniel didn't come home last night.
At six fifteen she gets up. She takes a long shower and lets the hot water work the tension out of her shoulders, then dries her hair with the towel and dresses in the same suit she wore yesterday, because her suitcase is back at the hotel and she has nothing else here.
She heads downstairs meaning to find the kitchen and make herself coffee, but a smell that wasn't in this house yesterday stops her.
Cigarette smoke—she recognizes it immediately and realizes it's coming from the far end of the kitchen, where the back door sits cracked open.
She walks toward it thinking it'll be Daniel, but when she pushes the door open she finds Eleanor sitting on the step in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, a cigarette between her fingers.
Abigail says nothing. She just steps outside and sits down beside her.
The step is narrow for two people, and their shoulders brush without either of them moving to avoid it.
They glance at each other for a fraction of a second—the kind of look that happens before the brain gets involved, that lasts just long enough for both of their hearts to do something they hadn't planned on doing at seven in the morning.
Then they both face forward. The backyard is small, with a tree in the left corner that must give shade in summer and now stands bare, and a potted plant holding something that survived the fall—something Amelia probably waters with more consistency than it deserves, because if it were up to Eleanor it would already be dead.
"Where's Daniel?" Abigail asks.
Eleanor takes a long drag and exhales slowly, watching the smoke dissolve in the cold air. Then she passes the cigarette over, and Abigail takes it without thinking and pulls on it.
She makes an involuntary face, because the smoke burns her throat in a way she wasn't expecting, reminding her she's not a smoker—that she only was for a couple of years in college, at those parties where everyone smoked and a cigarette was more about having somewhere to stand than about needing nicotine.
"I don't know," Eleanor says when Abigail hands it back. "I asked him to leave. Maybe you can handle my divorce when all this shit is over."
Abigail doesn't answer. She watches Eleanor stub the cigarette out in the small ashtray beside her, pick it up, and stand.
She needs a couple of seconds before doing the same. She uses them to take in the empty backyard and process what Eleanor just said with the calm of someone commenting on the weather—because Eleanor has separated, she's single now, and Abigail is still trying to make sense of that as she gets up.
Eleanor's kitchen is large but not excessive, everything in its place: the coffee maker on the left counter, the mugs in the cabinet above, the sugar in a glass jar by the window. Eleanor moves through it with ease while Abigail leans against the opposite counter, watching.
Eleanor makes the coffee, and when the machine finishes she takes down two mugs, sets them on the counter, and stops. She stares at the mugs for a moment, then turns with an uncertain look.
"I don't know how you take it."
Abigail meets her eyes.
"When we lived together you always had milk with cereal," Eleanor says, and Abigail swallows, surprised she remembers. "I don't have any cereal, but I can pick some up for tomorrow."
Abigail smiles faintly and shakes her head.
"I haven't eaten cereal in years," she says. "Coffee with a little milk, no sugar."
Eleanor nods. She pours both coffees and hands one over without another word.
They drink them standing, each on her own side of the counter, the whole width of the kitchen between them, because they don't know how to act in this context.
They know exactly what to do when they're locked in a bathroom or hiding in a garage, but now that they're under the same roof, alone and in lawyer-client mode, they feel completely lost.
When they finish, Abigail sets her mug in the sink.
"Let's go to the living room," she says, in lawyer mode. "We need to get to work. Then I have to go pick up my things from the hotel."
Eleanor studies her for a moment, notices she's wearing yesterday's suit—and looks perfect anyway, as always.
"What are you doing here, Abigail?" she finally asks.
Abigail turns around.
"I didn't ask for your help," Eleanor says.
"I know," Abigail says, "but you need it. And since you weren't picking up my calls, I had to show up without warning."
Eleanor says nothing.
"By the way—" Abigail lifts her mug from the sink and puts it in the dishwasher, because that's what you do and she is absolutely, ridiculously nervous. "Call your mom. She and my dad are really worried about you."
"I know."
"Then call them. And now let's—"
"What about your work?" Eleanor cuts in. "What about your other cases?"
Abigail takes a slow breath and holds her gaze.
"It's under control. Don't worry about that."
Eleanor has no reason to doubt her, so she follows Abigail to the living room and they both sit at the table, which turns into an improvised workspace once Abigail covers it with her planner, a legal pad, and the laptop she pulls from her bag.
Eleanor watches her, eyebrows raised, something knotted in the middle of her chest that feels like butterflies and anxiety at the same time.
As Abigail settles in, a few memories surface—because she has always been methodical.
Eleanor remembers this, this working version of Abigail that existed before there was anything between them, back when they were sixteen and living under the same roof and Abigail would study at the kitchen table with a focus that made the rest of the world disappear.
Eleanor used to watch her from the doorway and hate that Abigail ignored her, and wish that she wouldn't, and have no name for either of those two things.
Now those things have more names than she can handle.
"The main objective is simple," Abigail says without looking up from the legal pad.
"Separate you completely from Cooper in the public narrative before the investigation moves forward.
Saying you didn't know anything isn't enough.
We need to build a story: you're a victim of Cooper too.
Your party was betrayed by someone you trusted.
That makes you someone who was wronged, not an accomplice. "
"That's the truth," Eleanor says.
"I know, but the truth isn't enough if it isn't told right.
" Abigail looks up. "We're going to need documentation.
Everything you have on Cooper—every piece of communication you've saved, anything that shows your relationship with him was strictly professional and went through official channels.
Emails, meeting minutes, messages, whatever you've got. "
"I think I have everything," Eleanor says, a little thrown by the lawyer's intensity.
"Good. I'll go through it today." Abigail writes something and continues.
"Second: the media. No more off-the-cuff statements.
Nothing we haven't prepared together with at least twenty-four hours' notice.
If someone approaches you on the street, you smile, you say your lawyer is handling communications, and you walk away. No exceptions."
"I'm a politician, Abigail. The media have been my main tool for fifteen years."
"And right now they're a minefield." Abigail keeps her voice level. "Until we have a complete strategy in place, the media are enemy territory. Understood?"
Eleanor exhales and nods.
"Third." Abigail turns a page. "The FBI is going to want another statement. When they request it, I negotiate the terms. I decide the location, the format, and advance questions if possible. You don't walk into a room without me again."
"You made that clear yesterday."
Abigail arches an eyebrow.
"I'm saying it again because I want it to stick.
" She closes the legal pad for a moment and looks Eleanor in the eye, and Eleanor feels a heat ignite through her whole body that she has no business feeling right now.
"Eleanor. This is going to get worse before it gets better.
The media will look for anything they can use—they already did it with the Daniel story.
The investigation is going to take months, and during that time you're going to be living under a level of scrutiny you haven't experienced before.
I need you to trust me on every decision. If you don't, this doesn't work."
Eleanor holds her gaze.
"I trust you," she says, a slight furrow between her brows.
She says it without emphasis, without the theatrics she saves for speeches.
"How are you doing?" Abigail asks.
Eleanor looks at her steadily and frowns, because if she answers that question she'll probably fall apart, and she's not going to do that.
"I'm fine. I told you yesterday."
Abigail lets out an audible breath through her nose.
"I know what you told me, but we both know you were lying then and you're lying now. This stuff gets to people, Eleanor. Holding up under this kind of pressure is really hard, and the thing with Daniel—"
"I said I'm fine," she cuts in sharply.
"All right," Abigail says, not believing her—but she decides not to push, because that kind of question is new territory between them.
The silence that follows is a working silence: two pens moving, a laptop processing documents, and the coffees Amelia brought when she arrived going cold in mugs neither of them remembers to finish.
"You haven't asked me if what they're saying about me is true," Eleanor says suddenly.
Abigail stops writing and looks up. Eleanor is still staring at her own laptop, hunting for the files Abigail asked for, her jaw tight, her breathing controlled—because for her, though she can't explain why, it matters enormously that Abigail believes her.
"I don't need to," Abigail says. "I know you're innocent."
Eleanor swallows and bites her lower lip—slowly, an involuntary gesture she has when something cuts through her and she can't let it pass without her body giving her away.
And Abigail catches it. She reads everything Eleanor isn't saying, everything beneath the tight jaw and the fixed stare and the lip caught between her teeth—all the pressure of the last few days, the last few months, and the years of tension between them that have piled into this one second when Eleanor receives, without words, what Abigail just gave her.
Neither of them quite knows what to do with what's in this room this morning.
It's too much for both of them, for the language they have—which has always been their bodies and silence and encounters in the corners of other people's houses, not this, never this closeness with no exit, this living together with no safety net, where they can't fuck and run when it's over, because now they're both under the same roof for however long it takes.
Abigail drops her eyes back to the legal pad.
"Do you have Cooper's emails from last year?" she asks.
"I'm working on it," Eleanor says.
"Send them when you can."
They go back to work, but the room runs at a different temperature now than it did five minutes ago, and they both know it, and neither of them names it—because if they do, they both feel certain they'll burn.