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Back Ladies of the House Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Author
  3. Praise
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. January
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. February
  13. Six
  14. Seven
  15. Eight
  16. Nine
  17. Ten
  18. Eleven
  19. Twelve
  20. March
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. April
  26. Seventeen
  27. Eighteen
  28. Nineteen
  29. Twenty
  30. Twenty-One
  31. Twenty-Two
  32. Twenty-Three
  33. Twenty-Four
  34. Twenty-Five
  35. May
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. June
  43. Thirty-Two
  44. Thirty-Three
  45. Thirty-Four
  46. Thirty-Five
  47. Thirty-Six
  48. Thirty-Seven
  49. Thirty-Eight
  50. Thirty-Nine
  51. Forty
  52. July
  53. Forty-One
  54. Epilogue
  55. Acknowledgments
  56. Author’s Note
  57. Ladies of the House - Reader’s Guide
  58. Questions For Discussion
  59. Excerpt

My tears stopped, after a while, but Wallis’s continued. Eventually, she pulled me closer, and I hugged her back. My arm numbed and my shoulder cramped, and when her breathing slowed, I thought she might’ve fallen asleep. But she soon turned her face into the pillow and wailed again. I was familiar with this pain; there was nothing to do but let it be spent.

After a half hour of this cycle, she was able to speak. “Who was that person in the bar?” she asked, her voice cracking. “I didn’t know him. That couldn’t have been Blake. Was it? Was it really?”

“Yes,” I said, wanting her to feel angry instead of sad. “It was every inch Blake Darley.”

But this only caused a new batch of tears to pour onto the pillow sham. Once she had collected herself, and some tissues from the box on the nightstand, she continued. “He said that once his mother’s campaign was over that we could talk. He said now that she was looking at cabinet, there wouldn’t be a campaign to run. He said...” Her eyelids drooped. “He’d asked me to wait for him. I can show you the emails, Daisy. I’m not making this up.”

“I believe you,” I said softly, stroking her hair.

“He said he still thought about me all the time. That he hadn’t gotten over me, not even close. He used the word love.”

“I think,” I said, knowing now was the time, “that I can explain why he went from saying all of that to how he acted in the bar.” I shifted up and rested my head on my hand. “I just found out maybe an hour ago. There had been rumors, but I didn’t want to tell you until we knew for sure.” I took a breath. “When Melinda Darley is confirmed, Blake will run for her open seat.”

Wallis scoffed, and drew her arms to her chest. “Not possible,” she said.

I summarized for her what Bo had learned, and from whom. She went very still. “I’m so sorry, Wallis,” I said.

She did not speak again, even when I informed her that I would move our flight earlier. She left the bed to put on her pajamas and run water over her face, moving with a calmness born of desperation. When she asked me for a sleeping pill, I obliged.