Ladies of the House Read online

  Lauren Edmondson has a BA from Williams College and an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. She teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College and lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and daughter. Ladies of the House is her first novel. Find her on Instagram, @mrslaurenedmondson

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR LADIES OF THE HOUSE

  “I was absolutely charmed by Ladies of the House, a modern retelling of Sense and Sensibility, and a delightful and insightful exploration into finding your own voice, discovering your best self and falling in love, in its many iterations. What a wonderful debut.”

  —ALLISON WINN SCOTCH, bestselling author of Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing

  “A warm, witty, and whip-smart modern spin on Sense and Sensibility, Ladies of the House pulled me in on page one and didn’t let me go until the last, satisfying scene. Edmondson’s talent shines in her expertly crafted story of two sisters using their brains and hearts to break free of their father’s legacy and voice their desires, despite the sexist double standards that would keep them quiet. A sensational debut.”

  —AMY MASON DOAN, author of The Summer List and Lady Sunshine

  “A fun and clever take on Sense and Sensibility, Ladies of the House is replete with witty banter and keen social commentary. Like any good modernization, it also stands alone as a stellar novel, one that celebrates sisterhood and the way women can step out of flawed men’s shadows. I delighted in every page of this fast-paced, redemptive novel.”

  —AMY MEYERSON, bestselling author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays and The Imperfects

  Ladies of the House

  A NOVEL

  Lauren Edmondson

  For Jane and Jim Edmondson

  Contents

  January

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  February

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  March

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  April

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  May

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  June

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  July

  Chapter Forty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  Ladies of the House - Reader’s Guide

  Questions for Discussion

  “I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”

  —Sense and Sensibility

  January

  One

  The brick went through the window on P Street on what would’ve been my father’s sixty-fifth birthday.

  Cricket had scheduled his private memorial service for that morning. He’d been gone for three months already, but she had been insistent we wait. She thought it poetic, for my father was big on birthdays. To be more precise, he loved his birthday, while routinely forgetting those of his immediate family.

  It was predictably freezing, the kind of January day that was too cold to even think about snowing. After we had our coffee, Cricket, sergeant-like, ushered Wallis and me into a black car bound for Georgetown Presbyterian, then staged us in the narthex, where she checked on our postures, our hair. There we stood, the women the great Senator Gregory Richardson left behind, ready to greet the guests, many of whom no doubt suspected the very belated memorial was a ploy to keep our names in the press. But if any of the invitees minded the photographers outside, capturing their exits from their black cars, they didn’t reveal it. This was DC, after all, and being regarded as one of Gregory’s closest friends had a definite cachet.

  My boss was part of the first wave to arrive. Miles was skipping a hearing on financial literacy and retirement, but he said it was fine, nobody would miss him. He took Cricket’s blue-veined hands in his own, looked into her eyes, and told her how sorry he was for our loss, before solemnly choosing a seat in the sanctuary next to the junior senator from Arizona.

  Following Miles was the rest of the staff. L.K. complimented me on my dress; Bo said I cleaned up nicely. A handful of years ago, after I’d spent thirty minutes in a fast-fashion fitting room agonizing over the flashiness of a single blouse, I decided only to buy clothes that were white, black, gray, or cream. Little did I know I’d been meticulously preparing my closet for interments.

  It wasn’t until the secretary of defense and his wife showed ten minutes later—she standing mute as her husband gave Cricket a brief hug, pursed his lips, and squinted his eyes to assume the look of condolence—that the three of us dropped our formal facades.

  “Asshole,” Cricket whispered as he disappeared inside, though her smile remained broad. “Has some nerve showing up here, when he’s been going all over town saying Gregory Richardson owed him money.”

  “Dad owed someone money?” Wallis asked.

  I glanced at my mother as she reached for another close family friend. My parents had never wanted for anything in their adult lives, but rumors spread like the flu in this town, and I didn’t want a bad germ to spoil her day. The friend, a governor, pecked her on the cheek, then did the same to me and Wallis.

  “Of course he didn’t,” Cricket said, turning back to us. “Secretary of defense! Unbelievable. Couldn’t find his own ass with a map, let alone lead the armed forces into battle. It’s like he’s spitting on your father’s grave. And now I’ll have to smile and serve him pound cake at this afternoon’s reception.”

  Yes, the reception. I still had questions about the final guest count, what she’d arranged for parking. Had she given the caterers the check? They’d left me a voice mail that morning wondering when—

  Wallis’s abrupt squeal of joy interrupted my thoughts. “He made it!” she cried, and Cricket and I spun toward the narthex stairs in time to see Atlas taking them two at a time. My best friend, whom I hadn’t seen in close to a year, was back stateside, and the sight of him in his favorite tailored, dark blue suit had me teetering close to the edge of grateful, sloppy tears. The months since my father had passed had been grueling, and I’d wished countless times that Atlas hadn’t been three thousand miles away.

  He reached Cricket’s open arms first, bending from the knees to envelop her as she mumbled something about delight and my name, Daisy, into his narrow suit lapel. Then Wallis hugged him tightly and all but threw me into his arms.

  “Hi, Daisy,” he said softly, pulling me close and resting his cheek on my hair, his hand on the back of my head in the way that made me
feel delicate.

  “I can’t believe your adventure getting here,” I said when he released me. “What a debacle.”

  “One canceled flight, another delayed, and a couple of British Airways agents who would do well never to see me again. You should’ve been there when they called my name from the standby list,” he said. “I shrieked like a little girl. I didn’t know my voice could even reach that high.”

  “Sounds like a thrilling performance,” I said. “Will you stage a reenactment for us at the reception?”

  “Certainly,” said Atlas. “I just need my own trailer to get into character.”

  Behind the altar, the organist began to play a dirge. I wanted Atlas to keep us laughing but, sensing his time was up, he squeezed my hand and left to take his pew.

  Cricket and Wallis looked at each other and then at me.

  “He came all the way from London,” Cricket said, as though I didn’t understand how travel works.

  “He was moving back anyway, Cricket,” I said quickly, anticipating where this conversation was headed, wanting to cut it off at the pass. “He didn’t come here just for us.”

  “And is he back for good?” Cricket procured a vial of lip gloss from the pocket of her full, black skirt and aimed it at my face.

  “Atlas is hard to pin down,” I said, swatting her away, “when it comes to long-term plans. He gets restless. London is where he was born and raised. I can’t imagine he’ll stay away from it forever.”

  Another couple, Georgetown doctors both, hustled in, and Cricket was forced, reluctantly, to abandon her beautification efforts. The pair seemed to appreciate that the service was about to start; from the sanctuary doors they blew us kisses and mouthed talk to you after.

  “People leave their hometowns all the time, Daisy,” said Wallis, holding her smile and waving. “That’s a thing that happens. And anyway, I think the timing is right for you and Atlas.” She turned to me, then said bluntly: “Finally.”

  “He has a girlfriend,” I reminded her as the last guests receded inside.

  “In London,” Cricket said.

  “How long do you think that will last now that he’s back in DC?” Wallis asked.

  “Sorry to interrupt.” Our soft-spoken pastor, out of nowhere, made Wallis jump. Thankfully, he was not there to judge our unchurchy topic of conversation, only to borrow Wallis; he wanted a few words about her eulogy.

  As I watched them review her script and the funeral program, I had to note that my sister wasn’t wrong. Long-distance relationships were tricky. But this was Atlas—steadfast, loyal, undaunted by things like time differences and the Atlantic Ocean. And I was just a friend. How far would he go for a lover?

  While I still had Cricket beside me, I diligently tried to ask her about the caterers, the reception. But she wanted to talk about none of these things. Instead, she chatted easily about how well Atlas looked. How tall. “His shoulders look broader,” she said. “He looks fit. Was his hair always that blond?” She liked that he seemed to be letting it grow. “It works,” she said. She agreed with Wallis, that the timing for the two of us might now be perfect.

  I considered walking away because it pained me to hear the hope in her voice. I’d been trying to fall out of love with the man for approximately fifteen years. But my father was gone, and she was my only parent left, so I stayed beside her, and listened, and tried to forget the feel of Atlas’s fingertips in my hair.

  Two

  The heart attack was so strong that the paramedics didn’t even have time to get him to the hospital. This was the first thing Cricket had said when she’d called me three months ago. I’d been cozy in my club chair by the small bay window in my Corcoran Street apartment, looking forward to reading all my usual Sunday stuff: romance novels, pages of legislation that would never pass, drafts of speeches for Miles. They call this kind of attack a widow-maker, Cricket had said. My father had been at the lake, in the cottage Grandduff had left him. He was alone. He died alone.

  Wallis had recently finished her teaching contract in South Korea, but she’d been planning to travel through the fall; when we’d gotten ahold of her, it was via a hostel’s landline somewhere south of Ho Chi Minh City. She landed at Dulles seventy-two hours later with barely enough time to splash water on her face and under her arms before we were off to Richmond to view our father lying in state, then back to DC, to the Capitol, where more mourners waited in line for hours to pay their respects to the distinguished yet down-to-earth senator who considered public service a higher calling, but never missed an opportunity to crack a disarming, cheesy joke or get on the dance floor with moves less embarrassing than one might expect. Even when you disagreed with him, the consensus around DC was you couldn’t help but think of him as a friend.

  A month had passed by the time we organized his public funeral at the Cathedral, a massive see-and-be-seen kind of affair, a competition of: Who was my father closest to? Who was the saddest? Who would miss him the most? People had networked in the pews. The Secret Service had been there, and so had the television cameras.

  I’d already returned to work at that point—Cricket had considered it quick, my decision rash, but I had been determined to carry on my father’s legacy—and the planning involved in his send-off had become like a second job. We had to do all the important rituals, and then some, to honor his life, mark our loss, and publicly acknowledge our shift from one type of family to another. In the flood of flowers and tributes and personal notes and Did I wear this dress already?, I’d barely had time to process his death. So when Cricket and Wallis wept through the eulogy, given by a senior statesmen, I was too numbed to produce a single tear. As booming as the eulogist’s voice was, my father’s voice, in my head, had been louder: Jesus, Daisy, he said. You know how to cry on cue. I was the one to teach you. People will think you’re glad that I’m gone.

  Now, two months later, in the middle of yet another church service in my father’s honor, as I studied the brass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling so at least it would appear I was blinking back tears, it occurred to me that in many ways the whole mourning experience had been a performance. Even though this was the smaller, invitation-only memorial for family and close friends, I still felt their gazes on my back, couldn’t avoid the stares coming from the pews on either side of us. And though there was nothing in their faces to signal anything but sincerity, I still thought of them as an audience with expectations for how Gregory’s elder daughter—the daughter, as the story went, he’d been closest to, who had followed him into politics and once upon a time even worked for him—should grieve. Sad, but not overcome. Staid, but not emotionless. Appreciative of the time I had with my father, but not celebratory.

  By the time the service reached the Lord’s Prayer, I’d pretty much captured what I hoped was the right expression, the correct body language. But then the phones started.

  First the small ting, coming from the back of the sanctuary, followed closely by more insistent buzzing from the row behind us. I was between my mother and sister and let them do the job of pointedly turning to shush, jaws set, eyes blazing.

  Give us this day our daily bread...

  More phones made music from purses and jacket pockets. I knew I shouldn’t—we were supposed to be praying, for God’s sake—but the suggestion I might be missing breaking news was too great. I shifted my folded hands ever so slowly and snuck a look at my own phone in my purse at my feet. The screen lit up with text after incoming text.

  And forgive our debts, as we forgive those who debt against us...

  “Let me just—” I whispered, bending to retrieve it. The sheer volume of notifications—whatever had just happened outside the church had to be very, very bad. Only anger and fear spread that quickly.

  For thine is the kingdom...

  “What is happening?” I heard Wallis ask, after someone a few rows back actually murmured, “Hello? Y
es, I’m here...”

  And the power, and the glory...

  Seventeen missed calls, and a dozen texts from an editor I knew at the Times. “Shit,” I said, clutching my phone tighter.

  Forever and ever...

  “What?” Wallis and Cricket asked at precisely the same time.

  No longer caring about propriety, I held up the phone so they could see the latest Times news alert on my screen. Gasps, perhaps from them, or from others, echoed in the room, one after the next.

  Amen.

  Three

  The last word of the minister’s benediction was still hanging in the air when the exodus started in earnest. Even he, from the center aisle, was bewildered as folks made haste for the sanctuary doors. “Was my homily that awful?” he asked Cricket, who remained immobilized with shock next to me in our front pew.

  “It’s not you.” I looked up from my phone for a second. “It’s us.”

  “We apologize, Pastor,” Cricket managed to say, collecting herself enough to pat his arm reassuringly. “There appears to be some new rumor about my husband that people are taking seriously. The timing couldn’t be worse. I’ll just squeeze by you and go out and tell our friends that everything is—”

  I caught her elbow. “We can’t be seen until we figure out how to respond to this. We don’t need to churn the rumor mill.”

  “It’s not a rumor!” exclaimed Wallis, flushed and flustered. “It’s in the Times!”

  “We don’t know what it is yet,” I hedged. She was right—this story, this scandal, hadn’t been broken by some gossipy magazine. But my words were true. I hadn’t even had a chance to read the whole article! “I’m getting calls,” I said. “We need to deal with this now, preferably not in a house of worship, and ideally not around a crowd of people who are absolutely out there talking about Gregory, and about us. With that being said, Pastor—if we use that fire exit door there, will the alarm go off?”