Dissident Read Free Page A

make the leap.
    Her first three years in office solidified her as a reasonable politician who could be counted on to reflect the common sense of the people of her district, if not the rest of the country. She didn’t take radical positions, listened to the other side, introduced bipartisan legislation, formed coalitions, and never disrespected her colleagues. That was probably why she’d collected a small but diverse group of friends in the House from both parties, including Tom’s wife Christine, a woman most would describe as a tough but open-minded Catholic conservative.
    Tom and Caroline hit it off at a House Freshman mixer after she noticed the Notre Dame Monogram Club pin he’d been wearing. He’d played linebacker for the Irish then gone on to medical school at UPenn where he met Christine. Caroline always joked that he was the best man she knew aside from Nicky because he’d overcome the odds and put his feelings aside to marry a Wolverine who bled maize and blue.
    Tom and Nicky connected over their love of beer and other random rural Midwestern guy things, and Caroline was glad that Christine, who was frosty at first, finally warmed up to her. She was still fairly certain that Chrissy thought she’d been flirting with Tom before she came over to join the conversation with them the night they met. This was despite the fact that Nicky was standing next to the two of them the entire time. Christine was naturally suspicious.
    But over the past year it had all fallen apart. Nicky was killed in an accident in late January. He was on his way to a meeting in Baltimore when he lost control of his car on some black ice on I-95.  Caroline pleaded with him to take the commuter train that morning but he hated abiding by someone else’s schedule. Their daughters took it extremely hard. They’d been close to their daddy. Caroline needed two Clonazepam to get through the funeral. It had not been pretty.
    Tom and Christine had been wonderful friends and confidants, keeping her from tumbling over the edge.  Christine sublet her Capitol Hill apartment and moved in with Caroline and the girls, despite the often painful commute from Rockville to downtown D.C. Tom had driven down for every daddy/daughter event at school so that Marguerite and Sophie could still try to enjoy them. The Sullivans were Caroline’s rock, her anchor, her surrogate family. And they knew how much that meant to her. 
    She had been drifting in a sea of anger and despair for most of the year, clinging to whatever she could in order to continue to function and take care of her girls. She’d seriously considered resigning her seat and going back to work as a federal prosecutor but she knew that would mean less money and much less flexibility.
    It was also highly unlikely that a change in employment would help her emerge from her emotional quagmire.  She battled on, her bitterness fueling her. Her tone sharpened and her desire for compromise seemed less important. Shockingly, the Democratic nominee, now the President-elect, made her the keynote speaker at that year’s convention anyway.
    She gave what political commentators described as a glorious, career-altering performance, but she didn’t remember a word of it. It was stuck in the back of her mind, filed away. She could retrieve it if she wanted to, but she still hadn’t. Her chief of staff Jen told her later that she hadn’t used the teleprompter at all, that she’d changed the course of her speech several times without missing a beat. Her press secretary and speechwriter Kathleen jokingly threatened to quit, saying it was obvious she was no longer needed.
    Caroline still couldn’t figure out how she’d done it and had no desire to ever watch it. The memory of her daughters walking on stage to join her afterward without Nicky was too much to bear. He would have loved to revel in that moment with them, despite his disdain for politics. And the positive vibe that surrounded her after the speech