Ladies of the House

by Lauren Edmondson

  Steps in the hallway, and Wallis and Cricket made their entrance before he could say another word. They greeted Atlas without their usual warmth, courteous but stiff. They stood, awkwardly looking at their feet and at the strange, beige carpet newly slapped over the original heart pine. Wallis broke the silence. “Congratulations,” she told him.

  “For what?” he asked, without the slightest hint of insincerity. I had the urge to scream.

  “Your engagement,” Wallis said. “Obviously.” Her little laugh was skeptical. “We saw Ari’s post. You did a nice job picking the ring. It’s huge. It suits her.” Wallis was needling him, and I wasn’t sure I minded.

  “Oh,” he said. His eyes flicked back and forth between all of us. “Oh, no—I mean—yes, Ari’s engaged, but not to me.”

  “Not to you!” Cricket said, drawing back in disbelief.

  “No,” Atlas said. “No, we’ve been broken up for about a month now. She went traveling for a bit, back to London, actually. She reconnected with a former boyfriend there, and he proposed. When you know, you know, it seems. She called me last week to inform me.”

  That young couple from before, holding hands, came to the door, peeked in. Wallis rounded on them. “Move along,” she snapped.

  “Are you serious?” the woman asked her.

  “Deadly,” Wallis said.

  They grumbled, but did as they were told. Perhaps they saw that I was failing to hold back tears. Perhaps that scared them off.

  “Don’t cry,” Atlas murmured, rubbing my shoulder. “I’m so sorry to have upset you.”

  “She thought you were going to marry another woman,” Wallis said. “Let her be upset for a minute.”

  “Of course,” Atlas said, repentant, hand back at his side.

  From me, this question, as soon as my tears allowed: “Why did you break up?”

  Atlas waited a moment, chewing his bottom lip, as Wallis and Cricket backed out of the room. Then: “A few weeks ago, I was staring at my lease renewal, and Ari demanded my answer about living together. I’d postponed it long enough, she said. She was right, of course. So, I opened my mouth, thinking I was going to say yes because it was so clearly the next step for us, but what came out was very different. It was borderline incoherent, but as I was giving her the longest possible answer about why we couldn’t move in with each other, I stumbled into the truth I’d been trying to resist for ages. The thing I’d been doing, I just couldn’t do anymore.”

  I knew exactly how he felt, and I couldn’t hold back, not for another second. “I’m in love with you,” I said, because that’s all there was. “I’m glad you stumbled into your truth, but there’s mine. I love you. So, I hope you’ll understand when I say, unless all of this is about how you love me, too, I’ll have to go. And you’ll have to talk about your breakup with your buddies, or someone else. Because I just can’t nod and pretend. I can’t. I love you, but I can’t.” I pressed my fingers into my wet eyes, then released them, snuck a peek at the man beside me.

  “Thank God,” he said. He lifted his face to my old ceiling, the one that looked down upon all of my teenage imaginings, the dark dreams of my early adulthood, and shivered as though he’d been caught in the rain. “Here’s the truth, and it doesn’t make me look good, and I blame myself over and over again for not seeing it sooner. But for so many years, I believed that if I couldn’t have you, I guess I should have someone. I was able to spend many months thinking I could trick myself into loving Ari like I love you.”

  I’d waited so long to hear those words that I had trouble staying upright. I leaned sideways, let my flushed face slip onto his shoulder. “Atlas,” I said. “That’s awful.” I wiped my nose with my sleeve.

  “I was stupid,” he said, his fingers, tentative, on the nape of my neck. “I treated her incredibly unfairly. When I told her I was in love with you, she was furious, as she had every right to be. I’m just hoping—like I’ve never hoped before—that you’ll forgive me for taking so long to get this right.”

  “I kissed you.” I tugged his hair to draw his head down toward mine, searched his eyes. “And you didn’t think you could have me?”

  “After,” he said softly, his warm breath on my jaw, just below my ear, “you told me it was a mistake. I believed you. God, that word followed me around for months.”

  “But I was lying,” I said, sniffling.

  “Well,” he said gently, smiling, “I guess I can see that now.”

  “I just need you to know,” I said, my voice now steady, “that if we do this, if we get together, you will be forbidden from changing your mind. No takebacks. No undos. You won’t be able to get rid of me. Do you understand?”

  “Completely. Why are you trying to scare me?”

  “Because this is it for me. It is. And if that doesn’t scare you, then I don’t know if this can be.”

  I barely blinked, and I was on his lap. I think he’d lifted me there. His arms were around my waist, his hands underneath the bottom of my shirt, and he was clinging so hard I thought he might leave prints on my skin. Someone, Wallis or Cricket, had shut the bedroom door. “This room is off-limits,” I heard Cricket say to a passerby in the hall. “Doing some construction in there.”

  “I love you,” he said, his voice thick, “and I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

  In my childhood bedroom, surrounded by syrupy brown walls that used to be a hopeful shade of pink, he kissed me. My past, all around me, paved over; inside I felt a shift. I wrapped my arms around his neck, wondering if something this good could be sustained. Eventually we came up for breath. He touched the cold tip of his nose to mine, and I thought, yes, lovely world, it can.

  Epilogue

  Wallis has packed us a picnic: soft cheese and salami, wheat crackers and spinach dip, lots and lots of rosé. Cricket brought the good, thick knit blanket from the back of her couch; Bo had one from his place, too, and we pick a viewing spot in the grass near the edge of the Mall, just north of the Reflecting Pool, facing the Lincoln Memorial. Atlas, wanting to be helpful, arrives with his rain jacket and a poncho still in its wrapper, thinking the ground might still be wet from the thunderstorm yesterday, thinking of our bottoms. We laugh when he unveils this, and applaud once it is revealed he’s also brought champagne, which is much better received.

  The sky becomes peach sherbet, and we eat strawberries and dark chocolate caramels that Wallis has somehow kept from melting most of the day. On the main stage back at the Capitol, the drummers and the fifers and the military chorus get going; we hear wisps of their cadences, but mostly the classic Springsteen mix from the portable radio of the group immediately to our right. Evening arrives, and the frieze of Lincoln’s temple is lit, and the columns, and the worn, resolute face of the man himself.

  We take turns telling stories, walking through memories, filling each other in on parts of our lives the others have missed. Wallis has her legs flung over Bo’s lap, and on her ankle he is tracing intricate designs with his thumb.

  I snuggle further into Atlas, grateful for where this world has spun us. He is dressed, as is his patriotic duty, in a plain white polo and navy blue shorts; he’s even brought his red Nationals cap. I know what’s under that hat, a mind that is thoughtful and generous and inquisitive and reliable.

  Who are we kidding? I should also add—

  I know exactly what is under those shorts.

  Because he and I both agreed that we’d wasted too much time apart, and threw ourselves into making up for it. Considering those first hours and nights together, I’ve felt myself wanting to call the thing between us easy. But that is the wrong word. Because, yes, waking up tangled, laughing, sharing a slice of toast and a bathroom mirror, his breath on my neck and his hands in my hair, all that is as comfortable as a dance to a familiar song. But there is also something so stupefyingly rare and fragile about finding your person and choosing them
for forever.

  The night is finally dark enough for fireworks, and the hundreds of people around us on the Mall start to straighten, expectant. Any second now.

  Cricket takes this opportunity to clear her throat, then, once she has our attention, she says, as matter-of-fact as one can be, “This is going to make a good last scene in my book.”

  Wallis and I don’t closely resemble each other, but catch us at the right moment, and you’ll see our expressions are often identical. Cricket looks between us and simply shrugs a shoulder. “I’ve been approached by a few agents, one of whom I actually like. She thinks I might have a book proposal in me somewhere. I’ve been journaling, as you know. And with Daisy off telling her story, I thought it’s high time I tell mine.”

  “A book, Mom.” Each word of Wallis’s might’ve been its own sentence.

  “Don’t look so dumbfounded. I wrote for the Vassar Miscellany,” Cricket reminds us. “I read The Elements of Style.”

  “Amazing achievement,” says Atlas, beginning to clap.

  “Bravo,” says Bo, reaching over Wallis to give Cricket a high five.

  “We underestimated you,” I say to our mother, grinning.

  “When can we read it?” Wallis is still bewildered but smiling.

  “When it’s done,” Cricket says. We groan and begin to complain but she clucks her tongue. “Respect the artistic process, please.”

  “Just give me nicer hair,” I request. “And soften my most strident edges, please.”

  “And I’d like to be less of a sad sack,” says Wallis. She cozies further into Bo, and I hear him whisper something into her ear. Whatever he’s said makes her smile.

  “If you’re taking entreaties,” says Atlas, “and if I end up appearing at all, could you make me less of a bumbling fool?”

  “No promises,” says Cricket. “Now Atlas, where’s that champagne?”

  We fill our plastic glasses with bubbly and get a toast in, just before the first firework shoots up over the river, with a pop and a bang and oohs and aahs from the crowd, and explodes into the sky in a perfect patriot’s red dahlia. Right on its tail, a shining white pom-pom flashes forth, then gracefully falls, like branches of a willow tree, glittering tendrils reaching down to marvel those below.

  * * *

  If that ending wasn’t happy enough, I’ll offer a new one.

  Women begin to see that our fates are linked more with each other than with the fates of men. As such, we begin to act less in our own self-interest, and more in the interest of all women.

  Good guys win. So, naturally, Blake Darley loses his race. Bad guys—exiled to the trash heap of history, their statues taken down, their names taken off buildings. How easy it becomes to differentiate between the two!

  The world changes, and so does DC, is what I’m saying.

  But you’ve made it this far, so it’s safe to say that you know: this way of the world is not to be, at least not yet.

  What will Atlas and I do, then, once the fireworks have ended, once we allow our shoes back on our feet, once we let each other out of arm’s reach? What of Wallis? Of Bo and Cricket? Like my father, someday we’ll all be gone. We’ll have lived and died within an era, within a chapter—a paragraph?—of a history book. We might not know what the pages will say. Or who will write them.

  For now, though, we will not worry about what will become of us.

  We will ask instead: What will the world become because of us?

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  Melanie Fried took scraps of a story and knitted them into something real. Her enthusiasm and dedication were undiminishing. I’m in awe of her editor’s mind.

  Sarah Phair championed this book, and believed in the Richardsons and me from the start. Thanks for letting me hitch my wagon to your star.

  Thank you to the team at Harlequin/HarperCollins for their advocacy: Pamela Osti, Justine Sha, and Samantha McVeigh. Quinn Banting designed the beautiful cover, which captures Georgetown and the novel so perfectly.

  Thank you to those who graciously provided help, insight, and inspiration at various stages of the novel: Blake Albohm, Tricia Chambers Batchelor, Broderick Dunn, Meghan Faughnan, Daniel Meyer, and Amanda Whiting.

  Jim and Jane Edmondson, to whom this book is dedicated, were also first readers. Thank you for always flagging when I incorrectly use I instead of me.

  Bellamy Meghan Carstens cannot read yet, but for when she does: I love you.

  And to Christopher Vollmond-Carstens, who continues to give me such support on this journey, I can’t thank you enough for your patience, good humor, and unconditional love.

  Author’s Note

  Sense and Sensibility has long been my favorite Jane Austen novel; the concept of a modern retelling was floating around in my head for many years before I actually had any idea of what that would, in practice, look like on the page. It seems many readers don’t find Sense as hilarious as Emma or romantic as Pride and Prejudice, but I’ve always been drawn to the novel’s pointed depictions of womanhood. Unlike in Austen’s other works, fathers are mostly absent from Sense, and the Dashwood sisters’ love interests almost entirely disappear from large sections of the novel. This absence of men focuses our gaze on the female characters, but the patriarchal systems of power still drive the story, allowing Austen room to explore what it means for women to demonstrate “proper” conduct.

  Long fascinated by how women have approached such societal expectations across history, I thought adapting Austen’s framework to a contemporary setting would provide an enlightening contrast and benchmark for how women’s lives have and have not changed. Like Sense and Sensibility, my novel, Ladies of the House, also features two sisters, Daisy and Wallis Richardson, who must rebuild their lives following the passing of the family patriarch. But, as they live two centuries later, they have tools the Dashwood sisters would envy: they can vote, their educational and employment opportunities are greater, there is less stigma around premarital sex and cohabitation. They don’t have to marry men and give birth to sons in order to have security and protection.

  Still, while the Richardsons have far more legal rights and agency than women in Austen’s era, they too find themselves constrained by that question of how a woman should be. When older sister Daisy Richardson is faced with the dilemma to speak out or stay quiet regarding her late father’s corrupt behavior, at first she chooses the latter. Her silence, she rationalizes, is the safest, most practical choice because women are often excoriated when they publicly speak truth about powerful men. I wanted my novel to be hopeful, though, and so while at first Daisy obeys the demands of the patriarchy, she and Wallis ultimately triumph by writing and following their own set of rules, learning how to use their power in a way that reflects who they are and not who society says they should be.

  While some may read Marianne and Elinor Dashwood as each representing two contrasting types of impulses—sense and sensibility—in my view, Austen’s novel, and my own, are not so much about the differences between the sisters, but the unbreakable bond between them—how the women’s support and love for each other is the real, transformative power.

  Ladies of the House

  Lauren Edmondson

  Reader’s Guide

  Questions for Discussion

  Discuss the plot differences between Ladies of the House and Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. How does Lauren Edmondson’s novel update Jane Austen’s?

  What do you think Jane Austen might say about the society in which Daisy and Wallis operate? What has or has not changed for women since the Austen era?

  Did you understand Daisy’s justifications for not initially going public about her father’s behavior?

  Did you think Daisy’s ultimate decision to speak out was the right move? Why or why not? What might you have done in her situation?

 
How did you feel about Wallis at the beginning of the novel versus the end? Do you think she grew as a character? In what way?

  Daisy at first has trouble accepting Blake because of his family’s actions. Is this something you have ever faced in your own life? Can you separate a person from their beliefs?

  Toward the end of the novel, Daisy tells Blake Darley: “You think you’re something special, don’t you? You think you’re unique. But you’re just one of the millions in this town who will regularly choose power above all.” Is this a fair assessment of him? Or did you have more sympathy for Blake?

  As parents, how are Gregory Richardson, Cricket Richardson, Melinda Darley, and Judge Collette Reed similar and/or different?

  Which character(s) did you most identify with in the novel? Why?

  How can society better support women and raise up their voices?

  ISBN-13: 9781488078057

  Ladies of the House

  Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Edmondson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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