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
The answer to this question wasn’t as complicated as I might’ve predicted. I’d done the taping earlier that day, and although I’d been in news studios before with Miles, it had always been behind the cameras, never underneath the impossibly bright lights myself. So yes, I had nerves regarding seeing myself on television. But they weren’t leaden. The anchor, Monica, imposing and confident, had begun the segment by saying she’d been fascinated by my story. I must’ve said a few passingly intelligent things, because when we had stopped rolling, and a production assistant unraveled the mic and its wire from my blazer, Monica had told me I’d done well. I had left the studio thinking about what Miles said recently, about how people can be infected by optimism.
There were things to look forward to: I had a job interview scheduled for Monday—my birthday, it turned out—in Alexandria. A nonprofit advocacy group for open and honest government needed a new deputy director of operations, and I’d be meeting with the HR rep, the president, the chairman of the board. They seemed excited; so was I.
And Atlas was coming back from London next Sunday, almost exactly nine and a half days away, but who was counting? He’d been in England for almost two weeks already, moving his father, resistant and incontinent, into a smaller place. Although there had been some moments of reconnection and grace, the experience was, as he explained it to me, mostly torturous. I was anxious to wrap my arms around him. There was only so much encouragement that could be doled out over FaceTime.
“Yes, I’m actually really excited,” I told Wallis as we began our walk up the hallway stairs. An earlier version of me might’ve been inclined to downplay my expectations, but I was going to try to follow my sister’s example and rip up those tendencies by their poisoned roots.
“Me, too,” she said. “I’m just over the moon for you. I just wish I were as brave. And...well, you see the world for what it is, Daisy. You’re not floating around believing if we just loved harder things will get better. I wish I could be more like you.”
Her contrite tone, and the fact that she was comparing herself to me unfavorably, gave me pause. “You are as brave as I am,” I said, stopping her on the third-floor landing with a hand to her arm. How could she not see? “Wallis, you were the one who encouraged me.”