Chapter 22
"You're going to be the death of me," Eleanor says, her face buried in the sofa cushion.
"I didn't hear you complaining."
Eleanor lifts her head just enough to look at Abigail, who's stretched out across her back with the calm of someone who's arrived somewhere and has no intention of moving anytime soon.
"You snatched the cigarette before I could even light it properly, and then this," she says. "It's a conspiracy."
"You said you were going to quit. Besides, the cigarette was already out," Abigail replies. "And this was your idea."
Eleanor drops her face back into the cushion.
They both laugh. It's a short, effortless laugh, the kind that just comes.
Abigail rolls slowly onto her side, Eleanor sits up, and they both straighten the clothes they never quite took off — that process of putting themselves back together they've been doing for twenty years, which this afternoon, on the living room sofa with the light coming through the window, has a completely different flavor from every time before. No rush, above all.
Abigail sits cross-legged and looks at her.
"What are you going to do?" she asks, running her fingers through Eleanor's hair, trying to tame it.
Eleanor looks up and focuses.
"About what?"
"About everything." Abigail grabs one of the cushions and settles it in her lap. "The politics, Illinois, the party. Now that Cooper's going to prison and your reputation is starting to clear, you'll have to make a decision, even if it's for down the road."
Eleanor leans back against the sofa and stares at the ceiling for a moment before answering.
"I don't know," she says. "The only thing I know how to be is a politician. It's what I've done my entire adult life, what I studied, what I built — but everything that happened with Cooper made me see something I already knew but didn't want to look at head-on."
Abigail tilts her head, not quite following.
"That in this world, even when the mistake is someone else's, everyone can point at you and push you out," Eleanor explains, letting out a slow breath.
"Fifteen years of work nearly disappear because someone I chose to stand beside decided to do whatever the hell they wanted. That's not easy to forget."
Abigail watches her without speaking yet, letting her finish making her point.
"Webb is doing everything she can to bring me back into the party," Eleanor continues. "There's a path there if I want it, but honestly I don't know if I do."
"What would you want to do if it wasn't that?" Abigail isn't surprised by the answer — she wouldn't want to be somewhere that had practically written her off without giving her the benefit of the doubt, either.
Eleanor lets out a slow breath.
"I don't know. I haven't let myself think about it. It's always been politics, since I was eighteen and volunteered on my first campaign. I don't know who I am without it."
Abigail shifts on the sofa, moving closer.
"You're an extraordinary communicator," the lawyer says.
"Probably the best I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot.
" Eleanor opens her mouth, but Abigail raises an eyebrow.
"Let me finish, Ellie. That's not tied to a title.
You could give lectures, become a political communications strategist, teach at a university.
There are people who'd pay anything to have Eleanor Montgomery in a classroom or a crisis room. "
Eleanor tries to hide what she's feeling. She's spent years listening to every kind of praise, most of it hollow, some of it outright false — but hearing Abigail Lawson say those words fills her in a way she didn't expect.
"You're assuming I want to stay in this world," she says, clearing her throat and glancing away.
"I'm not assuming anything," Abigail answers. "I'm telling you that you have options beyond going back to exactly where you were."
Eleanor nods slowly.
"And you?" she asks.
Abigail bites her lip.
"Me what?" she says, buying herself a moment.
"Same question. What are you going to do?"
Abigail goes still for a second. There's something in her expression that Eleanor recognizes — the look of someone who's about to say something they've been holding onto for a while.
"The firm called," she says finally, and lets her head fall back against the sofa.
"Mercer?"
"Not directly. One of the partners." Abigail makes a face. "Turns out, now that I've proven you're innocent and my name has been all over the news as your defense attorney, suddenly they have the door wide open for me."
Her tone is perfectly neutral, but Eleanor knows her well enough to hear the disappointment underneath it — and the anger.
"They want a piece of it," Eleanor murmurs.
"Exactly." Abigail sets the cushion aside. "When they thought you might be guilty, it cost them nothing to show me the door. Now that everyone knows you're not, and that I helped prove it — suddenly I'm welcome back."
"And have you decided what you're going to do?"
"I'm not going back." She says it without emphasis, with the same calm she had the day she made that decision in the hallway at Mercer & Cole. "That door is closed."
Eleanor envies the strength Abigail has to turn her back on what had been her life for so many years.
"Do you have something in mind? A plan B?"
Abigail takes a moment.
"I'd been thinking for a while about opening my own practice," the lawyer explains. "Something where I make the calls. Where I choose which cases I take and which I don't, and who I work with — without anyone telling me there are cases we don't handle because they're not worth the trouble."
Eleanor looks at her.
"Sounds like a solid plan. Will you do it?"
"I think so," Abigail says, with a steadiness and a smile that reminds Eleanor of when they were barely teenagers. "I don't know exactly how or when yet, but yes."
Eleanor nods.
"I'm proud of you," she says, and leans in to kiss that smile.
The silence that follows is the good kind, and they both sit in it for a moment, looking around the living room — which has spent weeks as the case's command center and which this afternoon, with the tablet dark and the documents put away, is starting to feel like a completely different place.
"I've also started drafting the divorce petition," Abigail adds, remembering she has an email to send.
Eleanor's heart picks up. It's silly, really — they're already together — but knowing Abigail is on her way to being free, without a husband to carry, brings her more happiness than the day she was sworn in as congresswoman.
"Does Marcus know?"
"I gave him a heads-up when I started. He's decided to hand it off, and his lawyer has already reached out to me." Abigail lifts a shoulder. "We don't have kids. The assets are fairly straightforward. It shouldn't get too complicated."
Eleanor nods calmly.
"What are you going to do with the house?"
"Sell it — no question about that. I don't want to keep it. It's twelve years of a life that isn't mine anymore, and I don't need all of that sitting around in square footage."
Eleanor looks at her and thinks back to the moment — after the awful wedding she'd been forced to attend — when Abigail and Marcus bought that house. Too impersonal for her taste, even then.
"Where will you live?" she ventures.
Abigail looks back at her.
"I've been thinking Chicago," she says with a teasing smile, and Eleanor bites her lip. "Pittsburgh is an option too — I've always missed it, and I'd be close to our parents. They're not getting any younger, and I'd like to spend more time with them."
Eleanor hadn't thought about that last part, and for a moment she feels awful. She'd been so focused on her career that she'd told herself the visits she managed were enough — though she also remembers that, in those moments, her mind had only ever been on seeing Abigail.
"You should start thinking about yours too," Abigail says, pulling her out of her thoughts. "The divorce, I mean."
"I know."
"Have you talked to Daniel about it?"
"Just enough." Eleanor shifts on the sofa. "He knows how this ends. He's just waiting to see if he can get something out of the process."
"He shouldn't be demanding anything," Abigail tells her. "He's not in a position to."
Eleanor knows Daniel has no real claim, but even if he did, she was always the one who kept everything running — even when he worked hard to make sure no one saw it — so the money and nearly everything they have is hers.
"I just want to get that whole thing done as fast as possible," Eleanor says, and her voice sounds tired.
"Do you still want me to handle it?" Abigail asks. "Or have you changed your mind now that we're together?"
Eleanor raises an eyebrow.
"Now that we're together, I want you handling it even more," she says. "So I get it for free."
Abigail's mouth drops open in a perfect O, barely able to believe what she's hearing.
"Don't worry," she says finally. "I'll send the bill to Daniel."
The afternoon closes in outside the window, and the two of them are still in the living room — no longer on the sofa, but at the table with their laptops.
"When do we leave?" Eleanor asks, referring to the getaway they talked about not long ago.
"Give me two days," Abigail says. "I need to get Marcus's petition on track, prepare your public statement, and lock in the two interviews that need to happen first."
"Two interviews?"
"One to make clear you're okay and you have a future, even if you don't know yet what it looks like. One to give this whole thing the closure it needs." Abigail picks up her phone from her lap. "Agreed questions, limited time, no improvising."
Eleanor exhales sharply. She wants this over with.
"Where are we going?" she asks.
Abigail rests her head against the back of the sofa and looks up at the ceiling.
"I've been thinking about Greenwood," she says. "I found a rental — a country house on the outskirts. No journalists, no party, no FBI. Just you and me."
Eleanor smiles, and it's not any smile Abigail has seen on her before.
"Two days," the politician says.
"Yes, two days," Abigail confirms. "And then we go."