Chapter 19
The bed is cold on Eleanor's side when Abigail opens her eyes.
She lies still for a moment, staring at the ceiling, working out where she is and what happened last night with the slowness of someone who hasn't slept enough and whose brain needs a couple of seconds before everything falls into place.
Abigail closes her eyes for one more second, then gets up.
The smell of cigarette smoke draws her to the kitchen. She pours herself a coffee and opens the back door. Eleanor is on the same step as always, dressed in comfortable clothes, cigarette between her fingers, her eyes fixed somewhere on the ground.
Abigail steps outside and sits beside her like the other day, though this time she doesn't mind how close their bodies are when their shoulders brush, because they've already crossed the line that scared them most and now they can only keep moving down the path waiting for them on the other side.
Eleanor turns to her and they hold each other's eyes for a few seconds, neither knowing how to act.
They're completely thrown, and neither knows what face to make or what to say when the person you've been sleeping with in stolen moments for twenty years kissed you last night like it was the first time anyone had ever really kissed you.
Abigail takes a sip of her coffee and Eleanor passes her the cigarette like that's a perfectly reasonable way to start. Abigail takes it and draws on it, and this time she doesn't cough, though she clears her throat before handing it back.
"This is surreal," Eleanor murmurs, watching the ground.
"It really is," Abigail breathes.
They sit in the quiet for a few more seconds before either speaks again.
"We've been sleeping together for twenty years," Eleanor says. "Last night shouldn't feel different..." She lets the sentence hang.
"But it does," Abigail finishes.
"Yeah."
The pause stretches between them. Abigail runs a hand through her hair.
"So what do we do?" Eleanor asks.
Abigail rubs her hands together, picks up her mug, and takes a sip that burns her tongue.
"I don't know. What do you want to do?"
Eleanor lets out a short laugh through her nose and stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray. Then she turns and looks at Abigail head-on, with that direct stare of hers that intimidates everyone when she chooses to use it — but it's never once worked on Abigail.
"I've been in love with you my entire adult life," Eleanor admits, "but when I think about our parents..."
"They're not our parents," Abigail cuts in. "They're your mother and my father. That's not the same thing."
Eleanor holds her eyes, and Abigail pushes a hand through her hair again even though her bob looks perfect despite her not brushing it this morning.
"I'm so tired of this, Ellie." She says it low, almost a whisper, and it's the first time she's ever used that name with her, as if until now neither of them had the right to that kind of closeness. "It's not our fault they got married and we got stuck with that damn stepsister label."
"I know," Eleanor says. Then, softer, as if the weight of everything needs somewhere lighter to land: "Should we ask them to get divorced?"
Abigail stares at her for a beat as her brain registers that Eleanor Montgomery just made a joke, and when it lands, they both crack up at the same time. The kind of laughter you can't stop, the kind that just comes, even though the joke isn't that funny — but to them it is.
When they settle, the quiet that follows isn't as heavy as it was a few minutes ago.
"I don't think that's the solution," Abigail says.
"So what is?" Eleanor counters. "You're the lawyer. You should have an answer for this mess."
"The answer is that we're two grown women dancing around something we can't control." Abigail looks out at the yard. "I'm in love with you too. So much it scares me sometimes." She stops, like she needs a moment to sit with that. "So now that we're both getting divorced, I want to stop hiding."
Eleanor watches her and says nothing for a few seconds. Then she nods.
"Okay," she says, and holds her eyes as she reaches her hand toward Abigail, who laces their fingers together.
Then she lowers her head and kisses her knuckles — a gesture Eleanor wasn't expecting, one that steals her breath in a way it probably shouldn't, but that she's no longer afraid of.
"This is going to hit your political career when I get you out of this," Abigail says without letting go of her hand. "A lot of people will be against us. They'll call it wrong, even if we don't share blood."
"I know."
"And you don't care?"
Eleanor meets her eyes and smiles, squinting a little — something she almost never does.
"You're assuming you'll fix this," she says, fighting the smile.
Abigail raises an eyebrow.
"I'm very good at what I do." She's smiling too now, and there's something in the exchange — so unlike anything they've ever had before — that makes them both pause, just to taste it.
"But you didn't answer me," Abigail says. "Your shot at moving up in politics could be over if this goes public. Doesn't that worry you?"
"Other things worry me more," Eleanor confesses. "Fix this and then we'll see what happens."
"All right." Abigail squeezes her hand. "And we'll have to tell your mother and my father."
Eleanor nods. Not with any enthusiasm — because as absurd as it is, what their parents think scares her more than anything that could happen to her career.
"Are you okay?" Abigail asks.
"Yeah."
Abigail takes her by the chin and kisses her, and Eleanor, who wasn't expecting it, feels her lungs empty out, and where there was air a moment ago there's a tingling now that makes her shiver.
"Kiss me like that again later," Abigail murmurs against her mouth, and then, pulling back just enough, "Let's have breakfast. We need to keep working."
Eleanor picks up the ashtray and stands.
"And you're going to have to give that up at some point," Abigail says, following her toward the kitchen.
"When all this is over," Eleanor promises. "Right now I need something in my hands so I don't tear my hair out."
Abigail steps in after her and closes the back door. Eleanor is already at the counter, reaching into the cabinet above it, when Abigail comes up behind her and pins her against the edge with both hands braced on either side of her, lips close to her ear.
"You have me," she whispers. "You can do whatever you want with those hands and that mouth" — she pauses, because Eleanor has just exhaled against her neck and the warmth of it rolls through her whole body, warm breath against her skin — "but later. Right now we need to get you out of this mess."
She kisses her neck — a quick brush — then turns and opens the refrigerator like nothing happened. Eleanor stays leaning against the counter for a second, watching the back of Abigail's head with an expression no one in the world has ever seen on her face.
Then she picks up her mug and goes to sit at the table.
The morning passes with Abigail pacing. That's what she does when she's really working, when she's in the guts of a problem that doesn't have a solution yet: she paces.
Through the living room, down the hallway, out to the yard when she needs more room, back inside with her phone in her hand or pressed to her ear, her voice low and direct the way it gets when she's negotiating.
Eleanor works at the table on her laptop and watches her out of the corner of her eye between documents. There's something about seeing Abigail like this — in her element — that makes Eleanor wonder why they wasted so much time.
By mid-afternoon, Abigail comes back in from the yard with her phone in one hand and one of the cookies Amelia baked that morning in the other.
"I'm going to call Cooper's lawyer," she says as she sits down.
Eleanor stops typing.
"What for?"
"To ask him to have his client hold a press conference confirming you had no knowledge of what he was doing.
" Abigail picks up a pen and jots something in her planner.
"It won't make the FBI drop you from the investigation, but it'll plant doubt in everyone who's already assumed you were involved.
The story shifts. You stop being a possible accomplice and start being another one of Cooper's victims."
Eleanor looks up, eyebrows raised.
"He won't do it," she says, certain. "He has no reason to, and if he does, he'll want something in return. He's an excellent negotiator — which means he does it with everything, including things that shouldn't be on the table, as we've already seen."
"It won't be in his interest to ask for anything," Abigail says. "Just leave it to me."
Eleanor studies her and nods, because even though they've supposedly hated each other for years, they've always trusted each other blindly.
Abigail dials the number. The call runs several minutes. Eleanor follows the thread from her side of the table through Abigail's answers, and when the lawyer says his client will need an incentive to do something like this, Abigail's expression doesn't move.
Then something shifts in her face — the lawyer taking over from the lover.
"Your client will do it," she says, her tone clipped. "And he'll do it for nothing. Because if he doesn't, I'll make sure every media outlet in Illinois knows exactly what his younger sister was up to throughout her entire college career while her parents were paying her rent."
Silence on the other end of the line. Abigail uses the moment to wink at Eleanor, who goes rigid from the current that just shot straight through her.
"I'll speak with David and call you back," the lawyer says. And hangs up.
Abigail sets her phone on the table. She opens her laptop and starts typing like she's just confirmed a dinner reservation.
Eleanor watches her, thrown.
"What was his sister doing?" she asks, curious.
Abigail doesn't look up.
"Dealing weed and running poker games in the apartment her parents were paying for while she was in school."
Eleanor opens her mouth, then closes it, eyebrows climbing.
"And how do you know that?"
Abigail meets her eyes and shrugs.
"My job as your lawyer is to know everything about you," she says calmly. "But mostly to know everything about him — because he's the one who got you into this mess."
Eleanor considers her for a moment.
"You're a little terrifying," she says.
"Thank you," Abigail says, and goes back to her laptop.