“Oh.” She waved a hand and at least a dozen gold bangles clinked together. “A client was flying back and offered me a ride. We worked through some of her issues and we did some meditation, so it was a fair trade.”

She pulled Cleo back into a second embrace, and Cleo inhaled deeply—much like Veronica Kaye, Georgie smelled magical. They hadn’t seen each other in at least a year, likely longer. Cleo had done a fundraising stop in Los Angeles about sixteen months back—big donors at a mansion in Pacific Palisades—and she’d spent the night at Georgie’s and said hello to the twins and Peter, Georgie’s husband, who worked in real estate development. She wished she could say, there tangled up against her sister, that it was as if no time had passed, but it wasn’t like that. Time had passed. Their lifetimes—thirty-seven years for Cleo, forty-seven for Georgie—had passed, and she didn’t know her sister much better than she knew Mariann, the saintly nurse who had provided Oreos and a clipboard to fill out Lucas’s insurance forms.

“Hi, Aunt Georgie,” Lucas said when he woke, and honestly, Cleo was a little relieved that he remembered her. He barely knew his cousins, and he’d met Georgie on occasion but no more than half a dozen times. He offered her a shy smile, and Georgie rushed to him and clutched his cheeks and said, “My God, you are so goddamn handsome. How many girlfriends do you have?”

And Cleo said, from behind them, “Two, actually. It’s a bit of a chauvinistic problem.”

And Lucas groaned and said, “Mom, it’s under control. Please stop. I was raised by a woman half the country considers their feminist true north right now, so Jesus, I’m not going to become an asshole.”

Georgie laughed so hard that her bangles all clanged together again, and so Cleo managed a smile too, and already, just by adding one person to their small tribe, Cleo felt a little more optimistic.

“Besides,” Lucas said, “Marley is committed to, like, her camp boyfriend too.” He winced a little, and Cleo wasn’t sure if it were at his incision or at the camp boyfriend. “It’s all fine, Mom; no one has to be together together. Your generation is the one hung up on labels. We’re just cool with, like, whatever.”

Cleo didn’t know what to say to that, since she thought half her life’s work was dedicated to redefining labels, so rather than reply, she gazed at her son with wide, teary eyes and thought that she’d never been prouder of him in her life than now.

Lucas stared back at her, a little horrified that she was weeping openly, and said succinctly: “I’ve never seen you cry, Mom, like, ever.”

“I’m sorry,” Cleo said, though she still couldn’t stop.

“It’s OK,” he said back. “Crying is fine. It doesn’t bother me at all. Coach Beckett is always saying leave everything on the field, even your tears.”

Cleo thought that she should spend more time around men like Coach Beckett and less around men like Senator William Parsons.

Georgie took her house keys and promised to stock the kitchen.

“You’re too thin,” she said and then paused. “My God, when did I become Mom? I promised myself it would never happen.”

Cleo started crying again, batting her hands in front of her face as if that ever in the history of meltdowns slowed the crest of tears. She hadn’t spent a lot of time missing her mother until recently and now, having unearthed her paintings from the storage space and having also evidently unearthed a swarm of unresolved feelings about at least five to a dozen regrets, she found that she was an open wound. She wished very much that Lucas’s nurse could come in and re-dress hers as well.

“Oh, Cleo,” Georgie said. “I didn’t mean anything by that. You look fine. Really.”

“Thank you for c-coming,” Cleo sputtered and spotted Lucas staring at her with astonishment.

“Oh, baby sister, all you had to do was ask.”

On Thursday, the next day, Cleo was working from home, which she never, ever did during the week, but the condo was closer to the hospital than the office, so she allowed herself this convenience. Senator Jackman, who had raised two children of her own, told her that she and her legislative staff could put the finishing touches on the housing bill before they sent it off to Leg Counsel for the legal jargon, but Cleo didn’t want to sit it out.

“It’s nice to actually be putting forth some policy that really will spur positive change,” Cleo had said in their last sit-down.

“Spoken like a presidential candidate,” Senator Jackman had replied and winked, then grew serious. “If you run, I’ll do everything I can to help you. God knows that women of my generation didn’t have a shot.”

Cleo promised her that she would be among her first calls.

“Not really if I run,” she had said. “Rather when.”

Senator Jackman thumped her manicured hands against her heart and beamed. Cleo wasn’t even sure when she had made the concrete decision that she would, that she was wholeheartedly going to chase the presidency. She hadn’t had much time to really weigh it, what with one recent calamity after another, but maybe it was one of those ideas that lurked around your subconscious, hidden but quietly calling out, until one day you woke up and you just knew. Maybe deciding to run for president for Cleo McDougal was a little bit like falling in love. One day she realized that she was done for.

Emily Godwin stopped by with two casseroles just after Cleo wrapped up doubleheader conference calls. Lucas had a steady stream of friends stopping by the hospital who were, she guessed, ditching school to say hi, in and out, so he practically begged her to give him some privacy and/or not embarrass him in front of them. Georgie had gone to a yoga class that she’d researched online. (“Why don’t you come?” she’d implored, as if Cleo couldn’t think of many things more embarrassing than attempting to morph herself into a pretzel in public, and then Cleo remembered that she’d agreed to dance in public this weekend.) So it was just Cleo, home alone, when Emily rang her doorbell.

Emily stood in her kitchen, and Cleo fumbled with her words. She hadn’t seen her since that night when Jonathan had tucked his arm around that (extremely) young woman and exited the ballroom. It felt like two years ago, but Cleo met Emily’s eyes and realized, good Lord, that was last week.

“Listen,” Emily started. “I saw what you did with your old professor. I was really proud. I hope you aren’t second-guessing it.”

After Gaby’s stint on Bowen’s show, the protests outside her office had grown even rowdier. Arianna had emailed this morning to say that she was calling the Capitol police in to help. I did make sure to give them all the finger tho, she typed, then added the middle finger emoji.

Cleo shook her head. “No, not second-guessing it, though I probably didn’t think it through as well as I should have. A lawsuit has been filed against one of the young women. I didn’t mean it to spiral that way.”

“Well, he deserved it,” Emily said emphatically. “Fuck that guy.”

Cleo emitted something like a hiccup, which she meant to sound like a laugh. Then she said: “I wasn’t the only one he did it to, I guess. He’s taking a ‘leave of absence.’” She bounced her shoulders. Nobells facing his comeuppance felt good, but maybe not as good as she expected. But then, she didn’t know what she expected.

“Also,” Emily started, then stopped, wrung her hands and dropped them.

Cleo felt a swell of panic rise in her exhausted guts. She didn’t want to be the one to tell Emily that her husband was just as much a piece of shit as Nobells. She didn’t want to change everything in this simple, wonderful friendship that for Cleo was both rare and precious. She didn’t want Emily Godwin to be yet another one of her regrets. She thought of MaryAnne then and for one short, piercing moment missed their complementary friendship, their Canadian bacon and pineapple pizza slices, their quest to be the highest scorer on her brother’s Pac-Man game. God, why had she been so shortsighted back then to think the mayoral internship trumped their sisterhood? That the editor of the paper mattered more than MaryAnne’s loyalty?

“I know—” Emily started.

“I ran into Jonathan the other night—” Cleo said.

“I know.” Emily exhaled and focused on Cleo’s countertop, which Georgie had cleaned that morning with a nonchemical expensive-smelling cleaner and looked better than it had in quite some time.

“We talked by the buffet. But I left early,” Cleo said, hoping they could leave it at that, knowing that they probably couldn’t. She didn’t want anything to change between them; she didn’t want to sacrifice this one woman she hadn’t yet done anything to hurt.

Emily inhaled, then exhaled sharply. “I assume you saw him; I mean, I know what he does at these dinners.”

“Oh,” Cleo said. She very much wished she could disappear.

“It’s not . . . it’s not what it looks like.”

“You don’t have to explain.” Cleo flapped her hand. “You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“No, you’re my friend, and it’s OK.”