“And if she hasn’t changed? If it’s just more of the same?”
“Then at least you’ll know. And you can move on.” Another pause. “But June, I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen.”
June was quiet for a long moment. She thought about what Tyler had said. About walls and real choices and what it would mean to give someone the chance to choose differently.
She thought about Lila’s face in the doorway.You left, just like everyone.
She thought:why should I be the one to show up for her, when she didn’t show up for me?
And then she thought about all the ways she’d failed to show up too. Not just in the last week. All summer.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“That’s all I’m asking.” Rachel’s voice softened. “For what it’s worth… the way she looks at you is different from anything I’ve seen before, even when she was with Michael. That’s not nothing.”
The line went dead.
June lay in the dark for a long time. Then she reached for her phone and set an alarm for six-thirty—early enough to drive to Salem, early enough to be there by nine-thirty—and put it face-down on the nightstand.
She lay there listening to the quiet house settle around her, and thought about sunflowers planted in hope, and a child who asked for waterfall braids, and a woman who had never once been told she was enough until someone showed up and said it without being asked.
She thought:maybe showing up is the whole point.
She didn’t sleep for a long time. But in the morning, she got up when the alarm went off.
Chapter 19
Honesty
Melissa
Thursday, August 13th
The Oregon State Capitol building had never felt so cold.
Melissa stood in the hallway outside Committee Room 3, her heels silent on the marble floor, her hands steady around the folder of notes she’d been reviewing since four in the morning. The hearing was scheduled for ten o’clock. It was nine-forty-five, and the hallway was already filling with people—lobbyists, reporters, legislative aides, citizens who’d driven hours to watch democracy in action.
Or watch it fail. Depending on how the next few hours went.
The building looked the way it always did. She’d spent years learning to feel at home here, in these marble corridors, under these fluorescent lights. She’d told herself this was where she belonged.
This morning it felt like a place she was visiting.
“Senator Brandt.” David appeared at her elbow, tablet in hand. “The committee chair wants to see you before we begin.And there’s a situation… Thornfield sent Arnold Webb to testify during public comment.”
“Webb?” Melissa’s jaw tightened. Arnold Webb was Thornfield’s most polished attack dog—smooth, articulate, and ruthless. “They’re pulling out all the stops.”
“They know this is their last chance to kill the bill. If it passes committee today, it goes to the floor vote on Tuesday, and they know they don’t have the votes to stop it there.”
“Then we don’t let them stop it here.”
She walked into the committee room with her shoulders back and her expression calm, every inch the composed senator she’d trained herself to be. The room was smaller than some of the hearing rooms, designed for maybe fifty observers, now crammed with nearly twice that. Camera crews lined the back wall. The press gallery was full.
She scanned the crowd automatically, looking for familiar faces. David near the front. A few friendly colleagues scattered through the seats. Rachel in the back corner, which was unexpected; she must have taken the morning off from the hospital.
Melissa didn’t see June. She told herself she wasn’t looking.
The committee members were already seated at the raised dais, shuffling papers and murmuring to aides. Senator Morrison, the chair, caught Melissa’s eye and nodded, a neutral acknowledgment that gave nothing away about how he planned to vote.
