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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

She seemed desperate, and I could sense she needed reassuring words about how she shouldn’t worry. About how she wasn’t like Gregory at all. But the day had been long, and I was tired, and I wasn’t sure it would come out the way it should.

“Don’t do anything else tonight.” I pulled away from her, silently begging forgiveness. “Get some sleep. We’ll have the day tomorrow to pack up the rest of this room.”

She told me she loved me, and I just managed to say it back before I slumped outside her door, exhausted and terrified that I might go back in there and tell her the truth. Our childhood home was up for sale because of what passion did to Gregory Richardson. Entitlement, power, and hunger can’t be untangled. I wonder, then, why it caught us all by surprise. We should have known. The only thing uglier than politics is love.

Seven

Atlas entered my apartment messenger bag first. It took a minute to unburden himself of his gear, umbrella, sodden coat, and Converse, then we were sitting on the couch and I was watching him run his fingers through his soft hair. It was Saturday, a week after Cricket and Wallis had moved upstairs. He’d been on an assignment in New York all week and promised to swing by once he’d returned. Cricket and Wallis were right, of course. He did look wonderful. Smelled it, too—like vanilla and spring water. If sliding into a bed with cool, fresh linens had a scent, it would be his. He’d been living in London the past two years, but when he sat close to me, he appeared absolutely the same, which was both nice and painful.

I was glad to have him back in DC, but to want to not want something is a peculiar kind of torture. Like a student furiously erasing a wrong answer from an exam, I’ve been hovering for the past decade and then some, trying to scrub off any stray mark that would hint at my wrongheaded love. It’s not lost on me that while I was working, harder than ever, to fall out of love with my best friend, my father had been, by all accounts, falling into bed with a woman who was not his wife.