The Wedding Sisters Page 8
Meg turned to Stowe. “I have to get to the Hill, see if I can catch him before the vote at eleven.”
“They’re calling the vote early, Meg, so I’m heading over. You can ride with me,” Reed said, grabbing his jacket.
“Great.”
Meg texted her editor that she was headed to the Capitol building to try to get something for them to post by noon—to make sure their camera guy was on-site. At worst, she’d get a few quotes for an article. Hopefully, she’d get an on-camera interview that they could post on the homepage.
She followed Reed to the basement level and through a redbrick corridor. The senators traveled to and from Russell via an underground rail car. Climbing into the red vinyl seat across from Reed, she checked her phone for updates.
“So what do you make of this Stackhouse business?” Reed asked. “Does he have a shot?”
Meg smiled. “I think you and I both know he doesn’t. But he can certainly shake up the debate.”
Reed nodded. “Well said.”
She liked Reed. She knew a lot of people found him intimidating—his good looks and his wealth set him apart from most politicians. But he reminded her so much of Stowe that she found it easy to be herself around him. Much more so than around Tippy.
“I want to try to get something on camera,” she told him. “For Poliglot. I wish he’d given me some notice about this. He’d promised.”
“Politicians!” Reed said, shaking his head.
“Exactly.”
The car sped through the tunnel, wind whipping her hair around her face and making it difficult to talk. She checked her phone again. A text from Amy, Omg did you see Page Six? No, Meg had not seen Page Six. She stopped reading the New York gossip column in college. She wished Amy could say the same, but her younger sister had a never-ending thirst for anything to do with the limelight.
Crazy busy, she texted back. Call you later.
The car stopped. Reed helped her out. He was distracted now, also checking his phone. They took the stairs.
“I’ll catch you kids for dinner when I’m back in two weeks,” he said.
“Yes!” she called after him.
He headed for the Senate floor while she made her way to a small anteroom off to the side.
Leland Stackhouse was waiting for her. “Kevin told me you want to do a quick on-camera,” he said. Leland Stackhouse was a fifty-two-year-old three-term senator from Wisconsin. He was white-haired, tall, and lanky. He wore bad ties but had a winning smile and, because of his policy and personality, was normally was one of Meg’s favorites. But not today.
“What happened to the heads-up?” she asked pointedly, not about to let him off the hook.
“It’s just a Web site, Meg.”
She pulled a compact mirror from her bag and reapplied lipstick.
“I’m ready when you are,” the cameraman told her.
Meg motioned for the senator to stand closer to her, in front of a United States Senate emblem and a bookshelf. Under bright lights, cameras rolling, she asked,
“How close are you to actually running for president?”
“I’ve set up an exploratory Web site called DemocratsforProgress.com to see if there is a path for me, a base, outside of Wisconsin. I’ll probably know by April.”
Meg nodded, then named the other contenders for the nomination. “They speak to the same base that you’re going after. So why you?”
“This is what I have to offer: Progress is not just a word, it’s a concept that has to be put into action. Who has an alternative to the floundering foreign policy our current president has enacted? We can’t pretend that we’ll have peaceful coexistence with enemies abroad—or domestically. But neither can we make a move toward isolationism.”
Meg heard her phone ring inside her bag. Damn it, she forgot to turn it to vibrate. Senator Stackhouse didn’t miss a beat, and while he’d started off with platitudes, after a few minutes, she felt she got a couple of good sound bites, and the video would be worth posting. When they finished, he thanked her, and she said, “I don’t want to be surprised again in April. A text next time? Smoke signals? Make me work for it—I don’t mind. Just keep me in the loop.”
He laughed. “I have to get to the floor.”
She nodded, already distracted, checking her phone. The missed call was from Amy. She frowned. What was going on?
* * *
Jo woke up next to a sleeping Toby, with a dry mouth and her eyes nearly swollen shut from all the crying. The first thing she did was look at her phone. Four new messages—all from her mother and sisters.
Her stomach churned, and she ran to the bathroom to vomit. The bathroom was surprisingly small, considering the scale of the rest of the apartment, but that’s the way it was in the old buildings.
She flushed the toilet when she was finished and rested her head on the cold marble floor. It felt good.
“You alive in there?” Toby rapped lightly on the door.
“Unfortunately.”
She hauled herself up, pulling so hard on the towel rack, she was afraid it would come down bringing the wall with it. She looked at herself in the mirror and groaned. It was as bad as she expected.
Opening the door, she found Toby wearing only his drawstring pajama pants (plaid, preppy, totally cute) and bare chested. His blond hair was tousled, his cheeks full of their ruddy European color. He was a gorgeous specimen—a gorgeous specimen she got very up close and personal with last night, if her memory served.
Disaster.
How could she have slept with him? Cheated on Caroline! No. Caroline was the one who’d cheated. Fell in love with someone else. And left her. Forever. Tears started to sting the back of her eyes again. God, was she ever going to stop crying?
She brushed past Toby, out of the bedroom, blindly headed for coffee like a heat-seeking missile.
Mercifully, Toby did not follow her. She pulled open the cabinets until she found the yellow box of Gevalia coffee pods. What she really needed was a latte, but that would involve venturing into the outside world. She felt brittle, fragile—completely helpless. What was she supposed to do now? Every day of the past three and a half years of her life had revolved around Caroline. Or at very least factored her in heavily. Today was not—could not—be any different. Should she call? Should she just go back to the apartment and wait for her to show up? She had to come by eventually if only to collect her things.
Jo slumped over the black marble countertop. As the caffeine hit her system, she felt a sense of urgency, a certainty that she had to get back to the apartment as soon as possible.
It was all clear to her now: Caroline was just having relationship jitters. Meg’s engagement had inspired Jo to want to jump into the relationship deeper, but it had the opposite effect on Caroline. Totally normal! The last few Sunday night dinners had been so wedding-centric. Meg’s guest list, Meg’s dress, the bridal shower … Jo didn’t take it too seriously, but maybe it was freaking out Caroline.
She had to talk to her—and now—tell her she understood, forgave her. Really, they were lucky they hadn’t had a bump in the road before now. And the guilt over straying must have made Caroline confess. She didn’t really want to break up—she just wanted absolution.
The fog of misery slowly lifted. Jo looked around for her phone but couldn’t find it. Grabbing her mug, she rushed back to the bedroom, sloshing coffee on her shirt.
The shower was running. That was what she needed, but there was no time. Standing by the bed, the sheets still rumpled—Oh God, poor Toby! She was such a jerk.—she dialed Caroline. It went straight to voice mail.
“Hey, babe. It’s me. Look, I want you to know that I totally get it. Yes, I lost it a little last night and, I mean, you weren’t making the most sense. But I think we just need to talk. I’m coming back to the apartment. If you’re home, please just hang out till I get there.”
She looked up to find Toby standing in the doorway, his hair wet, a towel around his waist.
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
“I live there,” she snapped.
Toby looked hurt.
“Sorry, Tobe—I know you’re trying to help—and you did help last night. I was a total basket case. And you were … you were so great. But Caroline and I are going to work this out.”
“Okay,” he said. “But do you want, I mean, should we talk about what happened last night?”
No, negatory, not in this lifetime. How could she talk about it when it was something that never should have happened—something she would pretend never did?
“I’m okay with just letting it sort of be, you know what I mean?” she said. She kissed him on the cheek and then looked through her handbag to make sure she had her keys.
* * *
Meg called Amy when she was just outside the Poliglot office on North Capitol Street. “Is everything okay?” It was starting to rain, and she was eager to get to the video to start transcribing it.
“Did you read Page Six yet?”
“Are you serious? Amy, I was in the middle of an interview when you called.”
“Check it now. On your phone. Call me back.”
Irritated, Meg hung up and opened her browser to the New York Post, scrolling down to the gossip section.
It took a few heartbeats to realize what she was looking at. A photo of her and Stowe—a shot taken last month while leaving the restaurant Filomena with Reed and Tippy—was on Page Six.
Sister Act Too
Turning work into play has been mastered by a pair of Upper East Side sisters: Poliglot editrix Meg Becker gets cozy with fiancé Stowe Campion, son of billionaire Pennsylvania Senator Reed Campion, while little sis Amy goes from Jeffrey Bruce flak to future Mrs. Andrew Bruce. A walk down the aisle has never looked more like a climb up the social ladder.
Meg felt her face flush. She looked around the street, half expecting every passerby to be staring at her.
Her first impulse was to call Stowe, but before she could dial, the phone came alive in her hand and Amy’s image filled the screen.
“Crazy, right?” Amy squealed.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Isn’t it hilarious?”
“That’s not quite the word I would use.”
“You look gorgeous. Of course they didn’t even use a photo of me.”
“Yeah, Amy … I don’t think you’re really getting how absolutely uncool this is for me.”
Since the engagement last month, she’d gone out of her way to minimize all mention of her relationship at work. Everyone knew she was dating a Campion. But now that they were engaged, it was different. She had to make it clear to her boss—and the staffers working under her—that it would in no way influence her reporting, or the editorial choices she made for the site. She worked for Poliglot, not for Senator Campion.
But something like this …
“Who leaked your engagement?” Meg said.
“I don’t know! And who cares. You might as well get used to the attention. What did you think was going to happen when you married into that family?”
“Amy, I have to get to work.”
“Okay, one more thing—have you heard from Jo? Her phone’s going straight to voice mail.”
“No. Listen, I’ll talk to you later.”
Meg hung up and walked back into the office building. Her only consolation was that no one in D.C. read Page Six.
The Poliglot office occupied the sixth floor of the building. She’d first walked in the doors as a college junior looking for an internship, and she’d been working for them ever since. Eight years later, she still felt a high flashing her ID card at the security desk, knowing she belonged.
Closing the door to her office, she couldn’t resist looking at the offending Page Six post one more time.
A knock made her jump. She shoved her phone into her bag like it was contraband.
Her boss, Kevin, opened the door. “Got a minute?”
“Yep.” She slid behind her desk, logging on to her computer.
Inside, he closed the door. Meg felt the weight of the trillion things she had to get done before the two o’clock editorial meeting, including getting the Stackhouse story live ASAP.
“How’d things go with Stackhouse?”
“Fine. Got some good stuff. I have to look at the video. Definitely enough to post.”
“Did you call him out on not giving you notice?”
“Of course! He laughed it off. Said it’s just a Web site.”
“Asshole.”
“It could be worse. He’ll never get the nomination, so it’s not exactly like we lost the scoop of the century.”
“I know. But I feel like this is a warning shot. Things are going to be moving quickly from here on out. And I don’t want to be playing catch-up every damn day.”
“You think I do? Trust me—I’m more frustrated than you are.”
“I know, I know. So that’s why I was hoping you’d have a sense about where things are with Reed.”
“Reed? What about him?”
“I heard he’s off to the Middle East next week,” Kevin said.
“That’s right.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I know it was organized by the State Department and the Senate Banking Committee.”
Kevin nodded. “Everyone thinks he’s going to run.”
“What? Says who?”
“You’re really going to play this game with me?”
“Kevin,” she said slowly, her mind racing. “I am not playing anything. This is the first I’m hearing about this, and if Reed were thinking about running, I don’t think that would be the case.”
Kevin nodded, considering this. “Meg, you’re a very important part of the team here.”
“Thank you, Kevin.”
“And your part in this team is changing.”
“What?”
“I see you in a much larger role.”
Meg’s heart began pounding. She’d imagined this conversation countless times in her head over the past year or so. She had steadily worked her way up the masthead to senior Congressional editor. But she had her eyes on the prize, namely the White House beat.
“Obviously I’m thrilled to hear that,” she said. “What do you have in mind?”
“Senior editor, White House,” he said. “I figure I can take it to the powers that be after the new year.”
She nodded coolly, as if this were absolutely to be expected.
“That is, if nothing goes wrong,” he added.
Meg nodded again. It took a few seconds for his comment to register. “What? Wrong? What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kevin said with an exaggerated casualness.
“I’m confident that nothing will go wrong,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “I’ve performed solidly for five years.” She ticked off a list of half a dozen stories she broke about the current administration, and added a few about the Middle East that she didn’t break but augmented notably. Her media presence on behalf of the Web site—Bill Maher, CNN, the Sunday morning shows—was unspoken but obvious. She didn’t like being put in the situation of making the case for her promotion like this—impromptu, pre-caffeinated, with her mind barely bouncing back from the Page Six debacle.
Kevin held up his hands. “Meg, you’re preaching to the choir,” he said. “That’s why it would be such a disappointment for another outlet to break the news of Senator Campion officially running for the Republican nomination for president of the United States.”
Meg froze. Was she hearing him correctly? Her promotion depended on breaking the news of a campaign that didn’t even exist?
“First of all, Reed Campion is not running for president. Secondly, even if he were, it’s unethical for me to leak information—it’s bad for me personally, and it’s bad for all of us professionally.”
“Meg, I’m not asking you to leak anything. A
nd I’m not even asking you to make us look good by breaking the news first. I’m just asking that you save us the embarrassment of not breaking the news first, since it’s all over the papers that our editor is practically a member of the Campion family.” He dropped a copy of Page Six on her desk and tapped the paragraph with her name in bold newsprint. “Do you get what I’m saying?”
Meg nodded slowly once more—anything to get him to leave her office so she could call Stowe.
He smiled at her on his way out the door. “Big things ahead, Becker. Big things.”
He left the newspaper behind.
nine
Meryl woke up with every intention of drumming up more freelance work.
But then there were the voice mails.
First, from Jo.
“Mom, sorry I missed dinner last night. Caroline and I are having a … I don’t know. A rough night. But I’m on my way over there now to work things out. Fingers crossed. Sorry again. Love you.”
And then Amy.
“Hi, Mom! We didn’t get a chance to go into detail about Andy and my thoughts about the location of the wedding. I didn’t want to hog the floor, so the speak, but I do want to nail that down. Give me a call later. Oh—and Jeffrey is designing a dress for me! Love you!”
Meryl made coffee and pondered the facts: (a) Amy was going to get married in a one-of-a-kind Jeffrey Bruce gown—a dress that cost more than a year of their rent; (b) Jo was having relationship troubles just as her sisters were happily getting married. Jo was the least competitive of the girls, but still, it wasn’t exactly ideal timing. She hoped Jo was right, that they’d work it out. Meryl really liked Caroline—as did Hugh.
While neither of them had been surprised when Jo came home with a girlfriend, they were surprised that the girlfriend was Caroline.
“She just doesn’t seem that way,” Hugh had said.
“What way?”
“Gay.”
“And Jo does?” said Meryl.
“Nothing Jo does would surprise me,” he’d said. And Meryl had to agree. Jo had always done things her own way, in her own time. Meg had been the easy baby, the obedient toddler—not even the twos were that terrible—and an ambitious and studious teenager, and Amy had been the colicky baby, the tantrum-prone child, and the lazy teenager. But Jo had been an odd hybrid. She did everything late—talking, walking, reading. The more Meryl tried to push her into something, the more she resisted. But she when she finally did it, she embraced it and ran with it. It just had to happen on her timetable. By middle school, Jo had become fascinated by astrology. Meryl’s Aquarius child had found the explanation for her sensitive and rebellious soul, and Jo seemed to take comfort in the belief that there were forces in the universe that would buffet her and guide her along her path in life. She started looking for “signs,” and to this day tended to make unexpected decisions based on things that Meryl and Hugh considered less than firm ground but knew nonetheless that it was useless to fight her on. “Jo is going to do what Jo is going to do,” they would tell one another.