# THOMPSON-HAYES: THE INSIDE OUT
## Chapter Twenty-Eight — The Night Before
Washington in May was different from Austin in May.
The same warmth but a different quality to it — more humidity, more green, the kind of city that was built to be significant and had been doing it long enough that the significance was structural rather than performed. They flew in Wednesday morning, she and Nathan and Diana, and Diana went to the subcommittee chair's office for the afternoon briefing while Mia and Nathan walked the Mall.
Not as preparation. She was done preparing. She had been done since Sunday, when she had read the testimony to Nathan for the third time and he had said: *stop. It's ready. Reading it more changes it.* She had put it away.
They walked for two hours in the May afternoon and t
