You, August, have carried in your belly

every song of affront your characters

have spoken, and maybe you waited

too long to howl against the night.

I return to the senate building where I'm sure that Silas is still at work. Harrison works until really late at night, I know, so I assume that all of the government is like that. It's pretty time consuming to run the federal government. I use my badge to get through security and then I go up to Silas's office, ready to get the truth out of him.

I want to believe that Bonnie was lying, but why would she crawl out of whatever hole she's been living in for the past fourteen years just to lie to me? Unless Chelsea paid her to lie or something like that. I don't want to jump to any conclusions until I talk to Silas.

Once in the office, Silas's secretary is surprisingly still at his desk. He looks to be packing up to go home now though.

"I'm sorry, Silas isn't taking visitors right now," He stops me from going into his office. "You're Eleanor, right? I can tell him that you stopped by and he can get back to you tomorrow."

"No, he needs to get back to me right now," I insist stubbornly. "It's an emergency."

"Is it really?" He looks at me skeptically as he stands from his desk with an amused look on his face. I can tell that he really does think that I'm another one of Silas's sluts, and that I'm here for sex. "I'm sorry, but Senator Barkley is busy right now. Come on, I'll walk you out."

"I would chop my tits off with a hatchet before I fucked the man in that office," I assure the misled secretary. "Go tell him that Bonnie is in town, and see if he's still too busy for me."

He seems to think about it for a moment, but then gives in and sits his stuff down on the desk and goes into Silas's office. A short moment later, he comes back out and says, "Alright, you can go on in."

"Thank you," I sigh, rushing past the secretary and into Silas's office. I shut the door behind me so that the guy in the other room can't hear our conversation, which I guess might further his suspicions that I'm sleeping with Silas.

"What is so important that you need to see me right now? I have an important hearing tomorrow," Silas asks me as he looks up from his computer.

"Bonnie came to town," I tell him, even though I thought that his secretary just told him that.

"Oh. I thought that you just told Kevin to say that so that you could talk to me," He says slowly, looking shocked now as he realizes that his ex-lover is back in the city. "Have you talked to her?"

"Yes. I want to know if what she's saying is true," I stay standing near the door.

"You've got to be more specific, Eleanor. I don't know what she's saying," He reminds me.

"Well, if what she's saying is true about what happened when I was eight, then you should know why I'm upset, demanding the answers from you," I decide, crossing my arms over my chest. "So do you have any idea what she might have told me that has brought me here so upset?"

"Look. It was fourteen years ago. What matters now is that I'm trying to make things right with you," Silas insists without denying anything, or asking me again what it is that she told me. By the apologetic look on his face, I can tell that he knows exactly what she told me, and that she was telling the truth.

"You knew," I say just for confirmation. "That whole time, where I was. You specifically told me that you thought that we were with my mom, but you knew. You lied to me."

"Only because I wanted to start again," He promises me. "I did want you to be a part of my family, and I thought about you every single day. You and your brother. But I knew that you were better off far away from me. I know that you've had a tougher life than I'd thought, but you grew up without being under public scrutiny like Maryanne and Jay have been. That sort of pressure is excruciating for a child. I was protecting you."

"Stop lying," I demand, trying to stay calm. It's getting harder to do so. "You don't care about anybody but yourself, and if you've convinced yourself of anything else, then you're even crazier than Bonnie. You wanted us but then you threw us away? That doesn't make any sense. And you only wanted to start fixing things after we accidentally ran into each other. When you found out that I'm still in the city, you were afraid that I could spill your secret. That's the only reason that you've done anything to help me."

"That's not true. When I realized how bad things were for you and Casey, that's when I started to help," He defends himself. "Bonnie was probably exaggerating the situation. What did she tell you?"

"That you conned her into having children, and then abandoned her. She told me that you had the exact address of where I was living in the foster system, and that you did absolutely nothing about it," I'm so angry that my hands are shaking now, but I try to keep my voice down.

"I never conned her into doing anything. I told her that I wanted more children, but that was it," He insists.

"That's not the important part of this, you jackass. We were in that foster home fighting for our lives every day, and you knew that, and you did nothing. You're a fucking coward. I don't care about anything else. Who conned who, why we were conceived, or any of that. The fact is that you were the one who knew where we were, and you let us rot there for a decade," I rant as angry tears start to fill my vision. "You were just a twenty minute car ride away, and you knew that. You knew, and you were right here in the same city. You could have done something."

"What was I supposed to do, Eleanor?" He looks exasperated now. Maybe irritated at me for being so upset at him. "If I brought you into my home, you would be a completely new scandal. The next Monica Lewinsky type of thing, only worse."

"Did you ever try to check up on us? To see how we were doing in that home?" I ask him. "Did you even care? How do you wire it in your mind to make yourself think that we weren't your responsibility? I don't care whose idea it was to have kids, the fact is that you had them. How do you convince yourself that it's okay to just do that? To create two human beings, and then just completely forget them for over ten years?"

"I didn't forget you," Silas stands up from his desk and walks around it to stand closer to me.

"Get away from me," I sniffle and wipe away a few of those embarrassing angry tears that keep seeping from my eyes. "I don't care what excuses you give to me or to yourself, but the truth is that you always do what's best for you. You told her that you wanted kids because it's what she wanted to hear so that you wouldn't lose her. You left us in the dust because you couldn't be bothered with our existence. You let us rot there to avoid a scandal, and that was for you. Not us. You tell people what they want to hear to get what you want. I guess that's what makes you such a great politician."

"Eleanor," He steps closer again but I step back. He stops trying to get closer to me when he can tell how freaked out I am. If he tries to comfort me again, I'll punch him in the face. "I'm sorry. I was afraid."

"So was I," I snap at him. "But at least you got to sleep comfortably at night because you weren't worried about the two kids suffering just twenty minutes away. Two kids that you could have saved, just by taking responsibility for your actions. We needed you."

"What happened in that foster home?" Silas asks me, trying to look concerned for me, but I don't buy it. I don't believe anything that he says or does. His only talent is reading a situation, and being able to tell what the right thing is to do for him to come out on top. And he can tell that his best bet right now is pretending to be a concerned dad, apologetic for his mistakes. I'm not buying it anymore.

"What are you going to do about it?" I wonder. "I got us out of there on my own, your four years too late to do any paternal protecting."

"I'm just trying to make things right. I know that I was wrong back then but like you just said, it was four years ago. I'm sorry that you had a hard time in your foster home, but the only thing that we can do now is move forward, and work on our relationship now."

"No. I don't want a relationship with you. I don't want anything to do with you. You're selfish, and you're a monster. If you would have just tried, just once, to see me or ask somebody about me. Or just drive by the house to say hi. Anything. You were twenty minutes away, but not once in ten years, did you ever try to see how I was doing. It would have just taken one time to see what was happening. Just once."

"I wish that I knew what you were talking about."

"No, you don't," I shake my head at him. I'm going to leave now before I start upsetting myself even more with what could have been. If he had just cared, for one moment, to see what had happened to his children, things could have been different. He could have saved us, Davis wouldn't have been able to touch me for so long. All it took was a twenty minute ride for him to save us, and he knew it this whole time. "If you ever try to talk to me or my brother again, I will get a restraining order. I want nothing to do with you. Ever."

"Eleanor-" He starts to say my name, but I dramatically storm out of the office and I return back to my car. Once my eyes are dry, I drive with trembling hands toward Silas's neighborhood.

I don't know why it was easier to understand when it was my mother that I could blame for me ending up in that foster home with Davis. Sometimes, I thought that she was dead, or she'd been so drugged up that she didn't even remember that she had children. She never wanted children, so it was easy to dismiss things as thinking that this is just how things had to be. Even if we were with our mother, things wouldn't have been much better. She never would have gotten the care that she needed.

Who knows how many more times I would have found her bloody on the kitchen floor before I found her too late? Maybe growing up with her wouldn't have been as bad as Davis, it's hard to tell now, but I can't imagine it being much better.

But knowing that it wasn't her fault, that it was Silas's, and he was so close. He was healthy, capable of taking care of children. He raised Maryanne and Jay, who aren't miserable people. He could have done it if he had just one ounce of empathy in his entire body. Or at least gotten us out of that volatile home.

Once I get to Silas's house, I park the car that he'd bought me right in the middle of his pristine lawn and I bury the keys in the garden. I hope it's the only set that he has. I'll pay him back for the tuition that he paid for, for Casey's school. I don't want his charity, or anything else to do with him. I have survived this far without him, I will continue to survive.

I take the metro home, just like old times, and I make myself some tea in hopes of calming myself down. I wish that there was something that I could do to Silas that wouldn't drag my brother's name into it, but I can't think of anything. It's awful how he can treat everybody like pawns and just get away with it.

Not just me and Casey, but Bonnie and Chelsea too. The only thing that I can be grateful for is that I don't get the sociopath gene, and that I'm not like that. I would never, I could never abandon my family.

My entire belief system of looking forward, not worrying about the ugly past, it all went out the window tonight. I know that if I had my head on right, I would be telling myself to cheer up because what has already happened is unchangeable. Sure, living with Davis was excruciating, but it already happened and it's done. I survived it, I got past it, and I'm stronger because of it.

But knowing that help was just twenty minutes away that entire time... it just stings a lot and I can't stop thinking about it.

I'm sitting still on my couch just drinking my tea when there's a knock on the door, so I stand up and go see who it is. I'm hoping that it's Micah, because I would love to see him right now.

At least this one thing goes my way tonight. It is Micah, I can see through the peephole, so I open the door and let him in.

"Hey, I came right over after the study group. I've been trying to call you. How'd things go?" He looks worried. I've had my phone on silent in my purse, I wasn't purposefully ignoring him, but I should have known that he'd try to call.

"About the worst case scenario, I'd say," I decide. "But I don't want to talk about it. I just want to get out of here."

"Out of where...?" Micah looks confused.

"This toxic fucking city," I elaborate for him. "I want to get as far away as possible and I want to never look back."

"Where would you like to go?" He asks me.

I don't know if that's him offering to go with me, but it sure does seem like it. He's in his third year at Georgetown, but he'd give that up just to be with me? I wouldn't let him do that, even if that is what he's offering. "I don't care."

"You just want to get on the road and go?" He questions. "What happened tonight?"

"How about just for the weekend?" I wrap my arms around his shoulders and hold him close to me, forcing him into a hug because it comforts me and he easily reciprocates. Just being in his arms makes me feel a thousand times more calm. "I don't care where we go, but can we please get out of here?"

"Of course," Micah just goes with it because he's the most amazing person ever.

I know that I went through a lot to get to this moment, but as Micah starts to help me pack my things for a weekend out of Washington, I suddenly realize something. If Silas had made that twenty minute drive to save me from Davis, or if anything else had happened differently, then maybe I would have never met Micah.

Everything that had happened to me to get me into that hotel bar where I met Micah was worth it. The abandonment, the abuse, all of it. I wouldn't give him up for anything, not even a sane childhood or reliable parents. This is how things were supposed to be, and even though it's hard for me right now, I know that I'll be okay with that. I don't have any other choice.