The Longer The Fall by Aviva Gat (best new books to read txt) 📗

tone clicked, she immediately changed her tone. “Hi, Officer Austin! This is Jane Randall from Madeline Thomas’ office. So sorry for the inconvenience! Madeline needs to reschedule your meeting. I so hope you aren’t already at the building. If you are, you’ll see it was closed off for a bomb threat! Maybe you could even give us more insight about the incident! OK, well, please do get back to me! Thanks so much!”

Chapter 10

Madeline sat with her eyes closed as the plane landed in California. She wished the flight were a little longer, maybe they could get stuck on the tarmac for a while waiting for a gate to open up. Maybe she could just stay there, sitting in the large first-class seat with an eye mask on for a few more minutes. Maybe they wouldn’t notice her when they were cleaning the plane, she really did need just a few more minutes.

But to her dismay, her on-time flight pulled up to the gate and the flight attendants quickly opened the doors for the rest of the eager passengers to deplane. Madeline stayed seated, letting everyone else pass her by. She’d deplane later she said, she wasn’t in a hurry. Well, she was, but a few more minutes couldn’t hurt.

She had spent the last 48 hours in Washington DC. After the bomb threat at her California office, she and Jane had started working at her kitchen table. Then they got a call about an emergency session in Congress that Madeline just couldn’t miss. Senator Shuker was calling for a vote on his bill that granted additional autonomy to insurance providers to choose which procedures could be covered. This bill, of course, became a battle ground for abortion rights, with pro-choice supporters railing that this bill could allow insurance providers to decide not to cover abortions, specifically medically necessary abortions. Madeline was right at the middle of this debate, as one of the few republican senators who openly opposed the bill. It meant that every time this bill was discussed, Madeline received hundreds of press calls for comment and was requested by her democratic colleagues to attend all hearings and speaking engagements. This time, a group of senators were planning to filibuster the bill—meaning they would be giving speeches on the Senate floor against it until Senator Shuker decided not to pursue a vote. It was a process that could take days, weeks even, which Madeline didn’t have. But she agreed to come support the filibuster, to throw in her own two cents while the filibustering democrats took bathroom breaks.

She spent 48 hours on the hill, sitting through hearings, giving a few short speeches, talking to press out in the hallways, and occasionally changing her outfit and washing her face when Jane forced her to. She hadn’t slept, hadn’t visited her Washington DC studio where she often slept during the week. She would have, if she hadn’t needed to get back to California urgently that Friday.

Yes, she felt guilty for leaving—the filibuster had not yet ended and exhausted senators were still jabbering on the Senate floor trying to block the vote demanded by a tired and cranky Senator Shuker—but Madeline also had other priorities. So she gave a few last press comments and squeezed a few hands in support before she took a car to the airport, leaving Jane to field any calls or colleagues who would be angry at her absence.

Now, she had slept five hours on the plane, but it was not enough to recover from the 48-hour marathon session. But she didn’t have a choice, she would stop quickly at home to change her clothes, apply her face creams and freshen her makeup so she could make it to Noah’s and Adam’s school for Career Day. For the last four years, Brandon had attended Career Day, giving talks to both boys’ classes about being the CEO of a highly successful software company. He would sit with the other parents, listening to each of them talk about their careers as real estate investors, engineers, doctors, and C-level executives and then the children would talk about their own aspirations for when they grow up. The parents would all finish by patting each other on the back for what great role models they were and then they would eat lunch with their children in the school’s pristine cafeteria which served—special for career day—a buffet that would have been more than adequate at a five-star hotel.

Madeline remembered last year’s Career Day. She had been in Washington working on a bill for tax reforms and hadn’t been able to attend. That evening, Brandon spent an hour on the phone with her, detailing the other parents’ pretentious speeches, as each one believed their profession was Godsent, that society just couldn’t function without people like them! Especially the real estate agents! They weren’t just selling houses, they were helping people live their dream! They were providing an unequivocal service! No mention of what people paid for these services, they were invaluable! Of course every parent at Career Day was highly successful, even the stay-at-home-moms who talked about their life choices, the most profound of them all. Brandon didn’t argue that these moms made valuable contributions to their families, their work was necessary in raising their families and supporting their husbands who worked long hours and generated enough income to pay the exorbitant cost of Highland Academy—one of the top private schools around.

This year, Madeline had promised she would attend Career Day. Not only had the school been asking (they had never had a politician at Career Day before, unless you counted Mrs. Baker who had served one term on the City Council), but also because of what Adam had said in his class on the previous year’s Career Day. He had stood up in front of the classroom and said he was going to be a Majority Whip when he grew up.