The Second Sister Read Free

the shadows, beyond my reach.
    And then it is done and I am on the surface again, lying on my back this time, shivering. Everything is like it was before. The world is cold, white, and boundless. The sky is hard blue. The crack in the ice is sealed over and smooth, as though it never existed. Alice is gone.
    But the shadow is still with me. And it speaks.
    â€œWhere have you been?”
    I open my mouth, but can’t answer. A bell rings. The dream splinters .
    Â 
    I sat up, confused and breathless, panting. The bell sounded again, rude and demanding. I reached for the phone, but there was no one there. Finally, I realized the noise was coming from the alarm clock. I leaned across to the far side of the bed, smacked the black button to silence the bell, and then collapsed back against the pillows, taking big breaths and exhaling slowly.
    I stared into the middle distance of the darkness, collecting myself, and pressed my hand on my chest to measure the gradual slowing of my pounding heart, thinking about Alice.
    I couldn’t go home for Christmas this year, I reasoned. If we won, I’d have to go to Washington to help with the transition. And if we lost—a possibility I never liked to admit, not even to myself—if we lost, I’d need to start looking for a job.
    But Alice’s voice was so pleading, so plaintive. And so persistent. She’d never let it go. Alice never let anything go.
    Even so, I couldn’t go home for Christmas, not this year. I just couldn’t. I had to make her understand. But . . . maybe next year? Yes. With some advance planning, and as long as it was just for a couple of days, I could do that. I didn’t want to, but I could. I would. For Alice’s sake.
    I sat up on the edge of the bed, yawned, and looked at the clock. It was quarter to five, too early to call Alice. I’d tell her later, the next time she called.
    Which, I calculated, would be in about twenty hours.
    Groaning, I flopped backward onto the mattress and closed my eyes. Just five more minutes.

Chapter 3
    A fter five smacks of the snooze button, I finally hauled myself out of bed.
    Getting out the ironing board would have required rising after only two snooze cycles, so I pulled the least creased of my standard-issue blue suits from my still unpacked suitcase and hung it on the back of the bathroom door. Hopefully, the steam from the shower would take care of the wrinkles—the big ones. At this point, washing and drying my hair wasn’t an option either, so I took a curling iron to the top layer, fluffed it out with my fingers so it wouldn’t look quite so flat, then did a quick backcomb and spray job to cover up a recently sprouted crop of dark roots, promising myself that I’d go to the salon the minute the election was over and go back to brunette. Pretending to be blond was just too much work.
    With wardrobe and hair more or less under control, I turned to makeup and accessories. Humming “A Hard Day’s Night,” my usual predawn anthem, I slathered on a coat of tinted moisturizer, a little blush, and some mascara. I didn’t bother with lipstick. It’d be gone before I finished my first cup of coffee. I put on some earrings and a scarf, slipped my feet into a pair of blue pumps, grabbed my car keys, phone, purse, briefcase, and two cookies to tide me over until I got to the restaurant, and headed out the door.
    It was 5:42 in the morning. I was already running late.

    Whenever Joe Feeney comes to Denver on business, we meet at Syrup, the best breakfast spot in Cherry Creek, to eat eggs and catch up.
    Even with his face shielded behind newspapers, I knew the guy at the corner table was Joe. People in Denver don’t drink Bloody Marys at six A.M. on a Tuesday, and nobody else would be so engrossed in the pages of the Washington Post, with copies of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Roll Call sitting at the ready. Joe, who began as a staffer for