Blake and I stepped apart to let a group of teenagers wearing matching neon T-shirts and lost expressions ramble through. “Oh, I remember,” I said once they were out of earshot.

“The pressure to leave Wallis became intense.”

“You should’ve pushed back, with equal pressure,” I said.

“I did,” Blake said, and it was awfully close to a whine. “Me leaving DC—that was pushing back! That was the only thing I could think of to keep both my family happy and Wallis in my life. I just needed time to figure something out. I thought my mother would come around.”

His eyes silently begged me to take it easy on him. I could not. “You strung her behind you for weeks, Blake. You gave her hope. You tossed her crumbs. For weeks this went on, until Charleston, when you acted—”

“I know! I know. Seeing her in Charleston was devastating for me. I know it seemed like I was a sociopath, but I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know what to say or how to act. My mother had sent her chief of staff down to spy on me, and I knew he was going to report back.”

“Do you hear yourself?” I asked him, truly astounded at how easily he deflected blame, and onto a woman, no less. Onto his own mother.

“Daisy!” he said. “Of all people, how do you not understand? This family is my life. Their work is my life. There’s no separating it. There are no professional and personal compartments for me. How could Wallis coexist with my mother? What would family meals look like? Wallis can’t just sit and nod politely. When she disagrees, people hear about it. Maybe if there had been a way for her to be a little more accommodating—”

“Accommodating? Of your family? The corrosive nonsense you all spout makes my hair stand on end!” My voice was raised, and I feared soon I would be shouting. All he was explaining to me was that he was playing the same old game of linear ambition and domination at all costs, and I was tired of it. “You think you’re something special, don’t you? You think you’re unique. But you’re just one of the millions in this town who will regularly choose power above all.”

“Do you despise all those millions forever?” he asked. “Or just me?”

A dawning—yes, finally, I understood. “You’re worried,” I said slowly, and my anger of a moment ago morphed into something more manageable, something that felt a lot like smugness. “You think Wallis and I have dirt on you?”

“You do.” He glanced around, worried, seemingly for the first time, that someone would hear us. “My mother told me.”

“And now that I’ve aired my dirty laundry, you think I would air yours? What kind of person do you take me for?”