So it was just the two of them—Bowen and Cleo—for the train ride up to Manhattan. Cleo had emailed the staffer set to travel with her—she nearly always went with at least one minder—and gave her the weekend off. This was a semipersonal trip, and the last thing she wanted was a lackey. Bowen was dressed down, and Cleo found she liked it. Jeans, a crisp light-green button-down, trendy navy sneakers. She was suddenly aware of how much she would like to sleep with him. This was not a feeling she welcomed or found particularly useful. He was here because she needed his help. She willed this notion out of her mind. It proved harder than she thought.

Bowen bought them both Starbucks and himself a giant scone; then they headed to the tracks and waited for the train to blow by. He asked no questions—she didn’t even know where he was staying in New York—though she imagined he had a penthouse in Tribeca that was wall-to-ceiling glass windows. He seemed, she thought, genuinely amused that she had texted him but not condescending or patronizing about it at all. Amused in a kindhearted way.

They settled into their seats and finally, as the train’s engines masked the sounds of their conversation, he said: “OK, Cleo, you have my attention. I’m headed all the way to New York for you. I assume this is not a whirlwind date.” He paused. “To be clear, if it is, that’s entirely fine with me too.” He read the look on her face, which she imagined was a bit like a schoolmarm’s. “All righty,” he continued. “Definitely not a date. So, then . . . what?” He furrowed his brow. “Are you OK?”

“I want you to cover a story. About me,” she said quietly, and she didn’t know if he could hear her over the rattle of the train. “Not just about me. About something I did.” She inhaled, stopped. Tried to start over. This wasn’t coming out correctly. “A long time ago, at law school, I made a bad decision—I mean, you probably read about it, sort of the half-truth about it, in that op-ed. And until recently, I blamed myself. But I think what I’m realizing is that I was young and he . . . wasn’t. And . . . maybe something should be done about that now.”

Bowen’s eyes were wide but compassionate. He nodded.

“I’m not very good at . . . ,” Cleo started, then stopped again. “Well, I’m really terribly shitty at asking for help. But I thought I could trust you. You’re smart. And you’d tell me if this were a bad idea—”

He cut her off. “It’s probably a bad idea.”

Cleo glared at him.

“Why are you asking me this instead of Gaby? Isn’t she your other half?” he asked.

“Because she’d talk me out of it.”

“And you don’t want me to?” Bowen asked. It was a fair question, and Cleo liked him precisely because his questions always were.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said finally. She thought of Arianna, of all the other girls who might have endured the same, from Nobells, from men like Nobells. She was in a position of power now, and she’d tried—really—to spur change with that position. But if she couldn’t confront the abuses of power in her own past, how could she expect other women to do the same?

“The right thing to do is often not the most prudent thing to do,” Bowen cautioned.

The train was picking up speed now, flying out of the DC corridor and headed toward Columbia, headed toward her past.

“I know.” She met his eyes. “That’s why I asked you along. To get it down for the record. So once I realize how stupid this is—because Senator McDougal does not do stupid things—you can remind me that it was the right thing to do regardless.”

Cleo kept a small apartment on the higher streets of the Upper West Side. When she bought it in law school, the neighborhood had been dicey at best, but over the past decade it had gentrified, and now her little two-bedroom was worth four times what she paid. Maybe five. She knew she was privileged: to have the money to purchase a small apartment in a so-so building in Manhattan at twenty-four. But after her parents died and her grandmother sold her childhood home and the life insurance came in, the money had been split with Georgie, then placed in a trust and released to her upon graduation from Northwestern, where she accepted her diploma with only her sister in the audience.

(Georgie had insisted on flying in, though Cleo also insisted that she needn’t.)

“It’s just a ceremony,” Cleo had said.

“I’m coming,” Georgie had replied.

She had young twins at the time, and had Cleo chosen to confide her terror over being newly pregnant, surely Georgie would have understood. But Cleo didn’t breathe a word about it to her. She already felt out of sorts that Georgie, who had never been particularly reliable, was now steadfastly reliable and showing up to offer her support in lieu of their parents. Looking back on it, Cleo wondered if she might have made different choices with Nobells if she’d had anyone else she trusted or felt that she could rely on. So maybe she should have told Georgie about the pregnancy back then, not when she was eight months along. Maybe depending on one person leads to depending on other people, and then you don’t wind up making self-defeating decisions because you are lonely. Regret.)

Now, in the hallway of her apartment, she reached for the keys in her bag, digging past a half-eaten chocolate bar, a few Veronica Kaye lipsticks, a bunch of pens that worked only on occasion, and dental floss, and remembered how Nobells, a few months into the affair, had been the one to push her toward it—home ownership, that she wouldn’t regret it. He hadn’t been wrong. She didn’t begrudge him that. It gave her roots and made her feel a little more grounded once she moved in with Lucas, whose room she painted a bright royal blue. He was almost two by then, and so she read magazine articles that said it was time for a big-boy bed, and she took him to Pottery Barn Kids and bought him the one that looked like a race car. He couldn’t believe it. That he got to sleep in a race car! And though Cleo so rarely gave herself over to pure joy, she remembered thinking that she’d found it, right there in Pottery Barn Kids, and she had Alexander Nobells to thank for it.

It wasn’t difficult to see why she had been so ingratiated to him. He taught her things, he believed in her, he made her think that she was more special with him than without him. So many years later, Cleo hated this last thing the most: that she could allow a man to convince her that somehow she was more valuable, more coveted, more exceptional because he had chosen her. Also intertwined with this approval was, of course, the fact that he held her future at his firm in his hands. Cleo forgot that a lot of the time when she was with him. She didn’t know how often he forgot it, or if he forgot it at all.

The apartment smelled of lemony 409 cleaning solution, which pleased Cleo. She paid an older woman, Dora, to clean it every Thursday, even when she wasn’t coming into town. But she knew Dora needed the paycheck, and she’d been with her (legally, on the books) since Cleo was in her third year of law school. Back then, Dora had pitched in with an extra set of hands when Lucas was wild or filthy or cranky or hungry—even with the reliable day care, Cleo sometimes felt like she was drowning, and now, when Cleo could repay her, literally and with gratitude, she did. They weren’t friends, rather something akin to friendly business associates, and this level of relationship suited Cleo perfectly.

Cleo hadn’t expected Bowen to accompany her back to her apartment, but he insisted.

“So . . . this is my place,” she said, dropping her keys in a little yellow glass bowl that sat on her foyer console table, just as it had once sat in her childhood home. Her grandmother had given some of her parents’ furnishings to Georgie, who was twenty-seven and in a real home after their accident, and sold most of the rest. But a few trinkets, like vases and their china and picture frames and, of course, most of her mother’s own paintings, she stored away for when Cleo would want them. When her grandmother died, Cleo kept paying for the storage space until she was finally a grown-up of her own. Then, when she put the down payment on this apartment, she paid the storage facility a fee, and they shipped her the boxes via freight.

Cleo glanced at Bowen, a little insecure, a little off her game with him in her space. She didn’t entertain often, well, ever, and she rarely brought men to the apartment. Having him here felt invasive, even though she’d invited him. She hadn’t completely thought it through—that he’d trail her back here, that she’d feel as if she were jumping out of her skin.

“Um, I guess I have a guest room if you’re staying?” she asked, praying quietly that please please please, he wasn’t staying. “It’s my son’s. So the sheets have soccer balls on them.”

“Cleo, I’m not sleeping over.” Bowen laughed easily. “Relax.”

Cleo allowed herself a tiny exhale and padded to the small kitchen, which she’d redone a few years ago. “Good. I just want to be sure that this is professional.” She opened up the fridge, found a Diet Coke, offered him one.

“With due respect, Senator, if I wanted something personal, I’d be back in DC right now. Getting personal.”

Cleo raised her eyebrows. “Your reputation precedes you.”