Melissa crossed the room and sat on the edge of June’s bed, close but not touching. “I’m going to fix this. I’m going to find out who leaked, and I’m going to—”
“Going to what? Make it go away?” June laughed, and it came out sharp and brittle. “You can’t make this go away, Melissa. It’s out there. People are reading it right now, making assumptions, judging—”
All the reasons Melissa hadn’t wanted them to go out in public. This was why.
“Let them judge me,” Melissa said. “I don’t care what they say about me.”
“Yes, you do.”
She might act cold and indifferent, but June knew Melissa cared. “I—”
“You care that they’re calling you unstable,” June said. “And I care about that. They’re using me—usingus—to hurt your career. Everything you’ve worked for is falling apart because of—”
“Because of what?”
“Because of me.”
“No.” Melissa grabbed her hands, held them tight. “This isn’t because of you. This is because there are people who want to destroy me, and they’ll use anything they can find. If it wasn’t you, it would be something else.”
“But itisme. I’m the weapon they’re using.” June pulled her hands away. “I need to get dressed. Lila will be awake soon.”
“June—”
“We can talk later. Right now, I need to… I’ve gotta process. I just woke up, I need to wake up before I can think.”
Melissa looked like she wanted to argue, but something in June’s expression stopped her. She nodded slowly and left, closing the door behind her.
June sat very still for a long moment. Then she picked up her phone and called her mother.
“I knew it.” Gary Hollis’s voice was flat with something that might have been anger or vindication or both. “I knew something was going on.”
“Dad—”
“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. I read the article, June. ‘Unusually intimate relationship.’ What does that mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s gossip.”
“Is it?” Her father’s voice sharpened. “Because your mother’s been saying for weeks that something was different about you. That you sounded distracted. Happy in a way that didn’t make sense for someone just working a summer job.”
June pressed the phone harder against her ear. She walked over to the window, looking out over the backyard. In the distance, she saw some of the sunflowers they’d planted sway in the morning breeze. The same sunflowers she and Lila had put in the ground together, full of hope, back when summer still felt simple.
“Has she done something to you?” Gary continued. “Pressured you?”
“What? No. Dad, no, it’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like a powerful woman taking advantage of a young girl who works for her.”
“I’m not a girl. I’m twenty-three years old.”
“You’re my daughter. And she’s forty-two. Old enough to know better. Old enough to know that this kind of thing destroys reputations and—”
“She didn’t do anything to me.” June’s voice was rising now, the careful calm cracking. “It’s mutual, Dad. It’s not what they’re saying in that article.”
Silence on the line.
“So there is something,” Gary said finally. “Between you and the senator.”
June closed her eyes. “Yes.”
