Eighteen Acres: A Novel by Nicolle Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

they get out to Tahoe later this season.”
    “I’m so glad they still enjoy skiing. I was afraid they’d lose interest when we pulled them out of ski team.”
    “Me, too.”
    There was an awkward silence, and then they both spoke at once.
    “Go ahead,” Peter said.
    “I was just going to say that I’ll, uh, see you when I see you, and, um, I hope you have a good week. Penelope said you have a meeting in New York tomorrow …” Charlotte drifted off, not sure what else to say to the man she’d been married to for nineteen years.
    “Yeah, I will be in New York tomorrow, and then I give a speech Wednesday in Chicago with two players from the Bears about the importance of staying in school, and then I’m in the San Francisco office for the rest of the week,” Peter said.
    “That’s great. Anyone I would have heard of?” Charlotte asked.
    “Two rookies—I’m sure you haven’t heard of them. I signed them last year while you were crazed with the midterms.”
    “Oh, yeah. I’ve tried to block out that period in my life completely,” she said. Her party had lost twenty-four seats in the House and two Senate seats in the midterm elections the year before.
    “A president’s party always loses seats in the midterm,” he said.
    “I know, I know—the old ‘history was against you’ excuse. I’ve got that one down,” she said.
    Peter laughed. “I will be at the state dinner next week,” he offered.
    “Fantastic,” Charlotte said, a little too cheerfully to sound genuine. “Three hundred and fifty of our closest friends all gathered to honor the great nation of Panama,” she added.
    He laughed. “Ralph wouldn’t have it any other way.”
    Charlotte laughed, too. “Have a good week, Peter,” she said.
    “Thanks, Charlotte.”
    She hung up and felt lonelier than before. She wished she hadn’t called at all. Confronting your husband as the stranger he had become was a lot more depressing than remembering a time when he wasn’t a stranger at all.
    She changed out of her clothes, now covered with dog hair, into an identical pair of black slacks and a black turtleneck. She slid into low heels and made her way downstairs. The three dogs walked a few steps ahead of her to where the twenty-car motorcade with flashing lights and men with automatic weapons hanging out of SUVs was waiting to escort her the two and a half miles to Roger and Stephanie’s house.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Melanie
    Melanie passed the motorcade and waved at the agents as she pulled into the White House. Sunday night work sessions were Melanie’s secret weapon. They allowed her to start Monday mornings on the offense, as they’d say during the campaigns. Late Sundays, she’d distribute what the staff called Melanie-grams.
    To the White House press secretary, she sent an article from the Sunday paper about how calls seeking comment on Friday night went unanswered. Melanie circled the comment and wrote, “This is what interns and the night-duty officers are for!” To the domestic policy council, she sent an article from
Science Times
about organ transplants in cloned sheep, with a note asking them to schedule a policy time on medical ethics for the president. To the national security advisor, Melanie attached her own comments to Charlotte’s notes from a classified memo on the increased use of women and children as suicide bombers in Afghanistan. And to Vice President Neal McMillan, Melanie sent a recipe from
Cooking Light
for a jerk spice rub for ribs, which the vice president was famous for making at his ranch in New Mexico.
    She had a separate stack for Ralph, most of it responses to things he’d sent in her direction. His strategy was to bury her in paper, but she didn’t have time to engage in the bureaucratic infighting Ralphhad mastered in his fifteen years on the Hill. Ralph was a student of Lee Atwater, James Carville, and other great political gurus, and he saw in himself the same genius. All Melanie saw was his insecurity