He keeps his gaze steady on hers. “Let’s keep this simple. Please pack your stuff. We can revisit this in a few weeks. See where things stand.”
She closes her eyes and sees it: placing her belongings into a box at the State Department. People averting their eyes as she walked toward the elevator. Going outside into the crowd of cameras. The years following, unable to get work, turned down for every job, the expression on the faces of every potential employer. He gave up a chance at the presidency for her?
She opens her eyes and looks at Ian. “Nope.”
“Nope?”
“Nope. I’m not leaving. You can’t fire me.”
“Nobody’s firing anybody—”
“I’m not leaving, Ian. I’ll hire an attorney if I have to. But I’m not leaving.”
“But, Nell. I’m . . . it’s—”
“Excuse me for being rude, Ian, but I have to ask you to leave. Consider it a short-term leave of absence from my office.” She turns back to her computer. “I have a training to finish preparing for tomorrow.”
Ian opens her door, walking silently back into the hall. Nell stands to close it behind him, noticing the young man dawdling a few feet away, trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, probably hoping to discreetly snap a photo for his stupid Facebook page.
She returns to her desk, reading numbly through the training manual, trying to block it out. Ian. The kid in the hall. The photographers outside. The article she read before Ian came in.
The same morning former Secretary of State Lachlan Raine is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Ellen Aberdeen is linked to the disappearance of Baby Midas. In fact, she’s been identified as the intoxicated mother drunkenly dancing at the Jolly Llama on July 4, the night of the abduction.
Nell reaches for her purse on the floor, digging through her wallet, thinking about Alma. She shared a few secrets of her own the morning Nell admitted the truth about her past: telling Nell about the guy in Queens who sold her the fake social security cards, the lies her husband told to get the job managing the Hilton by the airport—details that Nell has been wondering if the police have uncovered.
She finds the business card Mark Hoyt gave her and dials the number, staring at a photo of Beatrice on her desk. Hoyt picks up on the second ring.
Nell hangs up the phone. She dials another number, crumbling with tears when she hears the soft hello.
“Mom,” she says. “I need you. Can you please come?”
Colette slides the emerald back and forth along the thin gold necklace. She woke up this morning to find the box on Charlie’s empty pillow. Poppy’s birthstone, on her two-month birthday, the card read. Thank you for being such a great mom.
She picks up her phone. I’m so sorry, Colette types, suppressing the lump in her throat at the thought of the images dominating the news this morning. The photos of Nell as a young woman; the videos of her walking from the taxi into the Simon French building earlier that morning, trying to shield her face with her bag. I wish you’d told me.
The Nose. That was Nell. Colette remembers the scandal well. Her mother was among the chorus of women’s rights activists who spoke out against what happened, who tried to deconstruct the situation for what it was: not the story of a promiscuous young girl trying to sleep with her powerful boss that the media was so eager to present, but the story of a young woman being preyed upon by a powerful man.
She checks the clock above Allison’s desk again, trying to ignore the tingling in her nipples. This can’t be happening: the first time she’s forgotten to pack her breast pump is the one day she may actually need it. She was so upset watching the news about Nell this morning she had trouble getting herself together, forgetting to pump before leaving. Then she was late to leave and had to run back home for her wallet. And now, she realizes, she’s forgotten the manual pump she always carries, leaving it behind on the kitchen island. Plus, Teb is running late after promising he’ll be on time. He knows she has to be back home by two o’clock.
It’s important we’re done on time today, she texted Teb earlier this morning. Charlie has a meeting.
It isn’t just any meeting. The editor of the New York Times Magazine has invited Charlie to a last-minute lunch, to talk about the possibility of running an exclusive excerpt of Charlie’s new novel.
“No, Colette, I can’t risk it,” Charlie said last night. “If you can’t change your meeting with Teb, I’m going to hire a sitter.”
“I’ll be back,” she told him. “I promise. Teb promised. I won’t be late.”
She picks up her bag and walks to the bathroom, her heels clicking loudly on the wood floors. Someone is in the first stall; she takes a seat on the toilet in the second one and checks her phone. Nell has replied to her message.
Screw them. This destroyed me once. Not this time. Not with Beatrice around to see it.
The woman from the other stall smiles as Colette approaches the sink, but her expression changes when she glances down at Colette’s breasts. Colette looks in the mirror. Two wide gray circles are spreading across her white silk blouse. The woman quickly finishes washing her hands, and when she’s gone, Colette turns on the hand dryer, holding her blouse under the hot stream of air, but the spots reappear as soon as they dry. The folded toilet paper she sticks inside her bra leaves jagged wrinkles visible beneath her blouse.
She presses her bag to her chest, feeling the sting of her milk continuing to release as she walks back to the lobby. Her phone chimes from inside her bag. It’s a text from Charlie. I have to leave. Assuming you’re en route. I’m leaving the baby downstairs, with Sonya. It’ll be fine. We spoke. You can pick her up there.
“Colette.” Allison is standing beside her. “He’s ready for you.”
Colette silences her phone and keeps her bag clutched in front of her as she heads into Teb’s office. Sonya? That girl on the second floor they’ve met, what, twice, at the building’s holiday party? Teb is sitting back in his chair, scrolling through his phone. He nods at one of the leather chairs across from him, and doesn’t apologize for the wait. “Have a seat.”
“How are you?” she asks.
“Great,” he says, but his tone—and his expression—are cool.
“It looks like—” He ignores her and leans forward to press a button on his desk phone.
“Aaron, come in.” The door opens almost immediately, as if Aaron was expecting the call. Aaron nods at her and walks to the credenza, lifting the stack of folders onto his lap. She can see Midas’s name written on the top folder. “Okay, Colette.” Teb’s eyes are hard. “We’re in big trouble here.”
Her stomach drops. They know.
They know she was with Winnie that night, and that she took the file. They tested the blood she’d smeared on the papers after the paper cut a few days ago, and found her DNA. They have somehow discovered that she took the flash drive, which is still at her apartment, stashed inside an old purse in her closet. Milk saturates the crumpled toilet paper, trickling through the fabric of her bra. She tries to figure out where to start—how to explain why she’s been hiding the truth from him, the reasons she couldn’t resist looking at Midas’s file—when Teb speaks.
“This book is awful.” Teb is rubbing his eyes.
She exhales. “Okay.”
Teb leans back in his chair. “C, what happened? Why is this so bad?”
Why? An unexpected pregnancy. Sleep deprivation. Her worries about Poppy’s health. Panic that Midas is dead. “Part of it might be that you’re busier now,” she says. “It’s not like the last time. It’s been a little difficult to keep our scheduled meetings—”
Teb shakes his head. “No. That’s not the issue. The issue is that this doesn’t sound like something I wrote.”
“Well, you didn’t write it.”
Aaron shoots Colette a look as Teb swivels slowly toward her in his chair.
“What do you mean?”
Her mouth has gone dry; she wishes she’d packed a bottle of water. “I mean you didn’t write this book, Teb. I did.”