Chapters (59)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Praise
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- January
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- February
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- March
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- April
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- May
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- June
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- July
- Forty-One
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Author’s Note
- Ladies of the House - Reader’s Guide
- Questions For Discussion
- Excerpt
“I see.” Her placid smile remained in place. “The or else goes unsaid.” The room was quiet again. On the wall behind her desk was a framed yellow flag: the words DON’T TREAD ON ME were printed below a coiled rattlesnake, its hissing tongue extended like a bayonet. I tried not to let it make me nervous, but my heart was now beating unevenly at her acknowledgment of the grenade we had just thrown on her desk. “You’ve done your research,” she said. “And—actually—we have, too. It’s all a little embarrassing, isn’t it? Having to get into the muck like this. But that’s the job.”
“My job is working for the people of Mary—”
She cut him off, a slice of her hand through the air. “Save it. You know, you bring up the time when Blake was at college. So, I can’t help but remind you about your own chief of staff, and how she paid for college. Rather, how her father paid for it.” Melinda stared at me for a moment, daring me to speak. I could not, for I wasn’t really there anymore. I was in my mind, tumbling through possibilities, turning over stone after stone, wondering how in the world she knew. Melinda Darley waited, patiently, until I came to. Then she held my eyes, so when she said the next thing, it was right at me. “Your choice to employ the daughter of one of the most corrupt and shameless thieves this body has ever seen speaks volumes about your judgment, Senator, does it not?”
A less adept politician might have let his shock at this revelation show. Miles did not. “It seems that we are at an impasse.”
She drummed her fingernails on her desk. “An impasse? No, a compromise, I think. We will both sit on our respective piles of—what did you call it?—information. And the sanctity of the system will be somewhat preserved. I don’t expect your vote to advance me out of committee. Nor do I need it. But I would prefer not to be met in committee with a walkout.”
Miles, sturdy as can be, pushed back. “You know I don’t have the power to decide—”
“Then find some power,” she said, all perkiness and pep. “Maybe it is in the same place you found this ludicrous gossip about me.” She spun to her chief of staff. “Can you imagine?”
“I think we’re done here,” Miles said, rising, arms stiff at his sides.