A funny, frank and bittersweet look at sisters, marriage and moving on, from the New York Times bestselling author of the Blue Heron series

Letting go of her ex-husband is harder than wedding-dress designer Jenny Tate expected…especially since his new wife wants to be Jenny’s new best friend. Needing closure, Jenny trades the Manhattan skyline for her hometown up the Hudson, where she’ll start her own business and bask in her sister Rachel’s picture-perfect family life…and maybe even find a little romance of her own with Leo, her downstairs neighbor, who’s utterly irresistible and annoyingly distant at the same time.

Rachel’s idyllic marriage, however, is imploding after she discovers what looks like her husband’s infidelity. She always thought she’d walk away in this situation but now she’s wavering, much to Jenny’s surprise. Rachel points to their parents’ perfect marriage as a shining example of patience and forgiveness; but to protect her sister, Jenny may have to tarnish that memory—and their relationship—and reveal a family secret she’s been keeping since childhood.

Both Rachel and Jenny will have to come to terms with the past and the present, and find a way to help each other get what they want most of all.

If You Only Knew

Kristan Higgins

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Shaunee, Jennifer, Karen and Huntley,

with heartfelt thanks for the laughs, the wine and especially the love.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1: Jenny

Chapter 2: Rachel

Chapter 3: Jenny

Chapter 4: Rachel

Chapter 5: Jenny

Chapter 6: Rachel

Chapter 7: Jenny

Chapter 8: Rachel

Chapter 9: Jenny

Chapter 10: Rachel

Chapter 11: Jenny

Chapter 12: Rachel

Chapter 13: Jenny

Chapter 14: Rachel

Chapter 15: Jenny

Chapter 16: Rachel

Chapter 17: Jenny

Chapter 18: Rachel

Chapter 19: Jenny

Chapter 20: Rachel

Chapter 21: Jenny

Chapter 22: Rachel

Chapter 23: Jenny

Chapter 24: Rachel

Chapter 25: Jenny

Chapter 26: Rachel

Chapter 27: Jenny

Chapter 28: Rachel

Chapter 29: Jenny

Acknowledgments

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1: Jenny

TODAY IS ONE of those days when I realize that staying friends with my ex-husband was a huge mistake.

I’m at the baby shower for Ana-Sofia, Owen’s wife and my replacement. Indeed, I’m sitting next to her, a place of honor in this circle of beaming well-wishers, and I’m probably beaming just as hard as everyone else. Harder, even, my “gosh, isn’t it wonderful, she’s so radiant” smile that I give at work quite often, especially as my brides get bitchier or their mothers get more critical or their maids of honor get more jealous. But this smile, the baby-shower smile…this is superhuman, really.

I know that coming today is incredibly pathetic, don’t worry. It’s just that I didn’t want to seem bitter by not showing up—though I’m pretty sure I am bitter, at least a little. After all, I’m the one who always wanted kids. Every time I brought it up, though, Owen said he wasn’t sure the time was right, and he loved our life the way it was.

Yeah. So. That turned out not to be quite true, but we did stay friends. Coming today, though…pathetic.

However, I woke up this morning utterly starving, and I knew the food would be amazing at the shower. Ana-Sofia inspires people. Plus, I’m moving out of the city, so for the past three weeks, I’ve been trying to eat or give away every morsel of food in my apartment. Let’s also mention that I couldn’t figure out an excuse that people would buy. Better to be an oddity here than Poor Jenny at home, scrounging through a box of Wheat Thins of indeterminate age.

Ana-Sofia opens my gift, which is wrapped in Christmas paper, despite it being April. Liza, my host, glowers; the red-and-green cocoa-swilling Santas are an affront to the party vibe, which Liza noted on the invitations.

In an effort to create a beautiful and harmonious environment for Ana-Sofia, please adhere to the apricot-and-sage color scheme in your clothing and gift-wrapping choices.

Only in Manhattan, folks. I’m wearing a purple dress as a middle finger to Liza, who used to be my friend but now posts daily on Facebook that she’s LOL-ing with her BFF, Ana-Sofia.

“Oh! This is so lovely! Thank you, Jenny! Everyone, look at this! It’s beautiful!” Ana-Sofia holds up my gift, and there are gasps and murmurs and exclamations and a few glares that I have brought the best present. I cock an eyebrow at the haters. Suck it up, bitches. My gift was actually dashed off last night, as I kind of forgot to buy a present, but they don’t have to know that.

It’s a white satin baby blanket with leaves and trees and birds stitched into it. Hey. It only took me two hours. Nothing was hand-stitched. It wasn’t that big a deal. I sew for a living. A wedding-dress designer. The irony is not lost on me.

“Couldn’t you have just bought a stuffed animal like a normal person?” murmurs the person on my left. Andreas—born Andrew—my assistant, and the only man here. Gay, of course—do straight men work in designer bridal wear? Also, he hates and fears children, which makes him the perfect date for me under the circumstances. I needed an ally.

Have I mentioned that the shower is being held in the apartment I once shared with Owen? Where, so far as I could tell, he and I were extremely happy? Yes. Liza is hosting, but the power went out in her apartment, thanks to the ham-fisted construction crew installing her new glass countertops—granite being so very last decade—and so we’re here instead. Liza is sweaty and loud, rightfully worried about being judged on her prowess as hostess. This is the Upper East Side, after all. We’re all about judgment here.

The gifts—including mine—border on the ridiculous. The shower invitation—engraved from Crane’s—asked, at the behest of the parents, for donations to the clean-well-water charity Ana-Sofia founded—Gushing.org, the name of which brings to mind a particularly bad menstrual period, but which raises funds for wells in Africa. Yeah. Therefore, everyone donated fat checks and tried to outdo each other with gifts. There’s a Calder mobile. A 1918 edition of Mother Goose stories. A mohair Steiff teddy bear that costs about as much as the rent on my soon-to-be former apartment in the Village.

My gaze drifts across the now-tastefully furnished apartment. When I lived here, it was cozier and boho—fat, comfortable furniture; dozens of pictures of my three nieces; the occasional wall hanging from Target, that bastion of color and joy for the middle class. Now the decor is incredibly tasteful, with African masks on the wall to remind us what Ana-Sofia does, and original paintings from around the globe. The walls are painted those boring neutral colors with sexy names—October Fog, Birmingham Cream, Icicle.

There’s their wedding photo. They eloped, so thank God I didn’t have to go to that—or, heaven forbid, make her gown, which I would’ve done if asked, because I’m still pretty pitiful where Owen is concerned and can’t figure out how to divorce him out of my heart. Though the photo was taken by the justice of the peace in Maine, it’s perfect. Both bride and groom are laughing, slightly turned away from the camera, Ana’s hair blowing in the sea breeze. The New York Times featured the photo in the Sunday Vows section.

They really are the perfect couple. Once, it was Owen and me, and while I didn’t expect perfection, I thought we were pretty great. We never fought. My mom felt that since Owen is half-Japanese, he was a better bet than “those simpletons” I dated—all of whom I hoped to marry at one point or another, starting with Nico Stephanopolous in eighth grade. “The Japanese don’t believe in divorce,” Mom said the first time I introduced her. “Right, Owen?”

He agreed, and I can still see his omnipresent, sweet smile, the Dr. Perfect Smile, as I called it. It’s his resting expression. Very reassuring to his patients, I’m sure. Owen is a plastic surgeon, the kind who fixes cleft palates and birthmarks and changes the lives of his patients. Ana-Sofia, who is from Peru and speaks five languages, met Owen eleven weeks after our divorce when he was doing his annual stint with Doctors Without Borders in the Sudan and she was digging wells.

And I make wedding dresses, as I believe I’ve already said. Listen, it’s not as shallow as it sounds. I make women look the way they dreamed they would on one of the happiest days of their lives. I make them cry at their own reflections. I give them the dress they’ve spent years thinking about, the dress they’ll be wearing when they pledge their hearts, the dress they’ll pass on to their own daughters someday, the dress that signifies all their hopes and dreams for a happy, sparkling future.

But compared with what Owen and his second wife do, yeah, it’s incredibly shallow.

In theory, I should hate them both. No, he didn’t cheat with her. He’s far too decent for that.

He loves her, though. Ostensibly, I could hate him for loving her and not me. Make no mistake. I was heartbroken. But I can’t hate Owen, or Ana-Sofia. They’re too damn nice, which is incredibly inconsiderate of them.

And being Owen’s friend is better than being without Owen entirely.

The quilt has made the rounds of admiration and is passed back to Ana. She strokes it tenderly, then looks at me with tears in her eyes. “I don’t have the words to tell you how much this means.”

Oh, shut up, I want to say. I forgot to buy you a gift and dashed this off last night with some leftover Duchess satin. It’s no big deal.

“Hey, no worries,” I say. I’m often glib and stupid around Ana-Sofia. Andreas hands me another cream puff. I may have to give him a raise.

“I’m so excited about your new shop,” Ana continues. “Owen and I were talking about how talented you are just last night.”

Andreas gives me a significant look and rolls his eyes. He has no problem hating Ana-Sofia and Owen, which I appreciate. I smile and take another sip of my mimosa, which is made with blood oranges and really good champagne.

If I’m ever pregnant, though the chances of that are plummeting by the hour, I imagine I’ll have the unenviable “I sat on an air hose” look that my sister had when she was percolating the triplets. There was no glow. There was acne. Stretch marks that made her look as if she’d been mauled by a Bengal tiger. She gnashed on Tums and burped constantly, but in true Rachel fashion, my sister never complained.

Ana-Sofia glows. Her perfect olive skin is without a blemish or, indeed, a visible pore. Her boobs look fantastic, and though she is eight and a half months pregnant, her baby bump is modest and perfectly round. She has no cankles. Life is so unfair.

“We just found out that our daughter’s classmate is her half brother,” says the taller woman in Lesbian Couple #1. One of them just became a partner in Owen’s practice, but I don’t remember her name. “Imagine if we hadn’t known that! She could’ve ended up dating her half brother! Marrying him! The fertility clinic gave out fourteen samples of that donor’s sperm. We’re filing a lawsuit.”

“It’s better than adopting,” says another woman. “My sister? She and her husband had to give back their son the fourth time he set fire to the living room.”

“That’s not so bad. My cousin adopted, and then the birth mother came out of rehab and the judge gave her custody of the baby. After two years, mind you.”

On the other side of the circle, there seems to be a heated debate over whose labor and delivery was most grueling. “I almost died,” one woman says proudly. “I looked at my husband and told him I loved him, and the next thing I knew, the crash cart was there…”

“I was in labor for three days,” another states. “I was like a wild animal, clawing at the sheets.”

“Emergency cesarean eight weeks early, no anesthesia,” someone else says proudly. “My daughter weighed two pounds. NICU, fifty-seven days.”

And we have a winner! The other mothers shoot her resentful looks. Talk turns to food allergies, vaccines, family beds and the sad dearth of gifted and talented programs for preschoolers.

“This is fun,” I murmur to Ana-Sofia.

“Oh, yes,” she says. Irony is not one of her skills. “I’m so glad you are here, Jenny. Thank you for giving up your afternoon! You must be very busy with the move.”

“You’re moving?” one of her extremely beautiful and well-educated friends asks. “Where?”

“Cambry-on-Hudson,” I answer. “I grew up there. My sister and her family are—”

“Oh, my God, you’re leaving Manhattan? Will you have to get a car? Are there any restaurants there? I couldn’t live without Zenyasa Yoga.”

“You still go to Zenyasa?” someone says. “I’ve moved on. It’s Bikram Hot for me. I saw Neil Patrick Harris there last week.”

“I don’t do yoga anymore,” a blonde woman says, studying a raspberry. “I joined a trampoline studio over on Amsterdam. Sarah Jessica Parker told me about it.”

“What about brunch?” someone asks me, her brow wrinkling in concern. “What will you do for brunch if you leave the city?”

“I think brunch is illegal outside Manhattan,” I answer gravely. No one laughs. They may think I’m telling the truth.

Now, granted, I love Manhattan. To paraphrase the song, if you make it here, the rest of the world is a cakewalk. And I have made it here. I’ve worked for the best—even Vera Wang, as a matter of fact. My work is sold at Kleinfeld Bridal and has supported me for fifteen years. I was named one of the Designers of the Year when I was at Parsons. I’ve been to not one, but two parties at Tim Gunn’s place. He greeted me by name—and yes, he’s as nice as he seems.

But while I love the city, its roar, its buildings and smells, its subways and skyline, in my heart of hearts, I want a yard. I want to see my nieces more often. I want the happily-ever-after that my sister nailed, that’s unfolding for my ex-husband and his too-nice wife.

I hope I’m running to something, not away. The truth is work has felt a little flat lately.

Cambry-on-Hudson is a lovely little city about an hour north of Manhattan. It has several excellent restaurants—some even serve brunch, shockingly. The downtown has a movie theater, flowering trees, a park and a Williams-Sonoma. It’s hardly a third-world country, no matter what these women think. And the latest shop is Bliss. Custom-made wedding gowns. My baby, in lieu of the human kind.

My phone beeps softly with a text. It’s from Andreas, who has put in his earbuds in order to drown out the stories of blocked milk ducts and bleeding nipples.

Check out the nose on the great-aunt. I hope the baby inherits that.

I smile at him gratefully.

“Did you hear about the obstetrician who fathered fifty-nine babies?” someone asks.

“That was an episode on Law & Order.”

“Ripped from the headlines,” someone else murmurs. “Someone in my building was one of his patients.”

“Oh. Oh, dear,” Ana-Sofia says.

I turn to her. She looks a bit startled. “It’s probably not true,” I tell her.

“No… I think… It appears my water has broken.”

There is a silence, followed by a collective roar.

I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that, despite there being a dozen women who’ve given birth all jockeying for position, my hand is the one Ana-Sofia clutches. “Oh, Jenny, it’s happening,” she says. “I feel something.” Her beautiful brown eyes are wide and terrified, and then I’m easing her onto the floor and crouched between her still-slim thighs—really, it’s like she’s showing off. I slide off her thong—she’s maintained her bikini wax, FYI—and, holy Mother of God, I can see the head.

I fumble in my purse for the travel-size Purell (if you ride the subways on a daily basis, you carry Purell) and slather some on my hands. “Get some towels and quiet down!” I bark at the other shower guests. I’m kind of good in emergencies. Liza hands me a stack of towels—very soft and about to be ruined by whatever comes out of a woman during childbirth.

“Let me help,” Liza whines. Indeed, this would make a great Facebook post. Just delivered my BFF’s baby, LOL!—with Ana-Sofia Marquez-Takahashi.

“I need to push,” Ana pants, and she does, once, twice, a third time, and a face appears—a baby! There’s a baby coming into my hands! One more push, and I’m holding it, slimy and covered in white gunk and a little blood and incredibly beautiful.

Dark hair, huge eyes. A miracle.

I ease her out all the way and put her on Ana’s chest. “It’s a girl,” I say, covering the baby with a towel.

It seems like just a few seconds later that FDNY clomps in, and I entertain a quick and deeply satisfying fantasy—The head firefighter is filled with admiration for my cleverness, checks me out and asks me to dinner in the cutest Brooklyn accent the world has ever heard. His biceps flex hypnotically, and at the end of the date, yes, he does pick me up to demonstrate just how easy it would be for him to save my life, and a few years later, we have three strong sons, twin daughters on the way. And a Dalmatian.

But no, their attention is quite taken with Ana-Sofia—as it should be, I guess, though it would be nice if just one of them checked me out. Someone cuts the cord, and Ana is weeping beautifully over her daughter, and Liza holds her phone to Ana’s ear so my ex-husband can sob his love and admiration for his wife, who just set the land-speed record for labor and delivery.

From down the hall, I can hear Andreas dry-heaving in the tastefully decorated powder room over the murmurs of admiration from the shower guests and the brawny firefighters as they tell Ana how amazing she is, how beautiful her daughter is.

Seems as if I’m leaving the city in the very nick of time.

Chapter 2: Rachel

THE LAST TIME my husband and I had sex, I fell asleep.

Not after. During.

Just for a second. Adam didn’t even notice; I think he just thought I was having my mind blown and it was all part of the grand finale.

But I did. I fell asleep. And it felt so good. The sex felt good, too…but the sleep! That gentle floating sensation, the skittering thoughts, the warm, comforting smell of my husband, the rocking rhythm, and just for a second there, I was…away.

This has been bothering me. I told Jenny about it, and she laughed till she cried. And I did, too, but I was thinking about how I’d vowed never to be that woman. The kind who’s too tired for sex. The kind who regards making love as just another chore in an endless blur of days.

“Cut yourself some slack,” Jenny had said, patting my hand. “You’re an amazing wife. But tell Adam you need a nap, for the love of God! Or have him give you a massage instead next time.”

Except I don’t want to be one of those wives who’d rather have a back rub instead of sex, though if Adam did give me a back rub, I’d probably cry with gratitude. Fourteen hours a day of lifting kids, buckling car seats, picking up toys, sitting on the floor, lugging diaper bags because Charlotte is still holding out with potty training… Of course my back hurts.

But it’s a small price to pay. Our girls are so lovely, so wonderful and precious and miraculous that I can’t even believe they’re mine.

“Mama!”

My middle daughter, lifted out of me one minute after Grace and one minute before Rose, snaps me out of my reverie. Charlotte’s chubby little torso is smeared with paint—nontoxic, made from organic vegetable dye… Once you learn there are products like that out there, it’s impossible to ignore them, and the Perfect Mommy faction here in Cambry-on-Hudson, New York, makes sure you know exactly what kind of paint their toddlers are using.

We’ve been finger-painting, and I always strip Charlotte and Rose down for that, Charlotte in her Sesame Street diaper, Rose in her tiny flowered underpants. Rose has moved from her poster board to the kitchen floor, but that’s okay. I’ll wash the floor later. Grace, on the other hand, is fully clothed, because even at three and a half, she’s very tidy. Her little brow is wrinkled as she carefully draws on her paper. My serious baby. Not for the first time, I worry that she’s on the Asperger’s spectrum; she’s too neat, too fastidious. Then again, she has cut my cleanup by one-third.

“What is it, Charlotte?” I ask, stroking her blond curls.

“I poop, Mama. My bum hot.” She shoves a hand in her diaper, then withdraws it to show me. “Sticky.”

Where’s that chapter in the parenting books, huh? “That’s fine, honey. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I glance around the kitchen; all the drawers and cabinets have safety locks on them, and the girls and I are fenced in with baby gates. “Rose, Grace, I’m taking Lottie to the bathroom, okay? Stay here.”

“No! I coming, too, Mama!” Rose demands. Both Rose and Charlotte are behind Grace in the speech department, which the pediatrician assured me was normal with multiples. Still. I worry a little.

“Grace, are you okay on your own?” I ask.

“Yes, Mama. I’m making circles.”

“They’re beautiful, honey.”

I scoop Rose up, hold Charlotte so she can’t touch anything with her poopy hand, and walk down the hall to the powder room. Dang it. Somehow, Charlotte just managed to wipe her hand on my leg, so I’ll have to change again. Well, that’s life with three kids. Laundry every day. Besides, I was going to change anyway before Adam came home.

In the triplet group the girls and I occasionally go to, there are moms who look fifteen years older than they are. Who have inches of gray roots showing, who wear their husbands’ clothes and smell like stale milk and spit-up, who are weepy and exhausted. They terrify me, because some days, I feel as if I’m one inch away from that myself. I never want my girls to think they’re exhausting me; they’re the loves of my life. I’m the mother who actually misses them the four hours they’re at preschool three days a week. Being a stay-at-home mommy was all I ever wanted.

“Time to wash hands, Lottie,” I say now, setting Rose down and turning on the water. “Rose, do you have to go?”

“No,” she says. “No fanks, Mama, I fine.” She smiles, and my heart floods with love. I’ll have to write that down on one of my note cards so I can tell Adam about that. No fanks, I fine. I try to store up those little moments to tell him, since he has such long hours. Also, my memory isn’t what it used to be.

I wash Lottie’s hands, then take off her diaper and clean her up.

“I poop more,” she says.

“Okay,” I say, putting her on the potty. Rose and I wait. Charlotte grunts, her face going red. “No poop!” she announces grandly, and the three of us laugh.

I love being a mother so much, it’s a wonder my heart fits in my chest anymore. Adam and I made these perfect girls, and I can’t quite get over that. For most of my life, I’ve fought shyness. I’m still shy, even around Adam sometimes. You know how it is… If I have a stomach issue, I use the guest bathroom. I still have to give myself a pep talk before we go to a party.

And while I still blush and feel awkward when I’m out in public sometimes, I have this, the knowledge that my girls adore me, that I know exactly who I am and what I’m doing as a mother. The memory of my days as a graphic designer at Celery Stalk, a company that made computer games for kids, are shadowy now, but I remember the effort it took, talking to everyone, trying not to worry so much. How it took an hour for my shoulders to drop after I got home.

This…this is what I’m made for.

We wash hands again, all three of us. The soap dispenser is new, and the girls are still fascinated by its wonders. I put a clean diaper on Charlotte, and we’re good to go.

Just as we leave the bathroom, Rose squats and pees on the floor, soaking through her panties.

“Oopsy,” I say.

“I sorry, Mama.”

The usual stash of paper towels isn’t under the sink. Dang. “No, that’s okay, honey. Don’t worry a bit.” I glance down the hall. “Grace? How are you, sweetheart?”

“Fine.”

I can tell by her voice she’s not fine.

“What are you doing, honey?” I walk down the hall to the kitchen, holding Rose by the hand. She’s dripping, which means I’ll have to wash the hall floor, too.

“Nothing,” Grace says. Then there’s the sound of something spilling.

Cheerios. All over the kitchen floor. Those things have impressive sliding power. “Don’t dump the cereal, sweetheart. That’s our food.”

“I want more circles,” Grace says, emptying the box. “I want to color all circles.”

Charlotte is already stomping on the Cheerios, grinding them into fine powder, which makes Grace scream in fury. Rose hesitates, then joins in the stomping. “Settle down, girls,” I say, scooping up Grace.

“My circles! My circles!” she wails, arching her back so that I nearly drop her.

Nap time. Such blessed words. I am eternally grateful that my daughters are such good sleepers.

Twenty minutes later, Rose is in clean clothes but weeping because I won’t let her drink the Windex I used to wipe up her pee. Grace is angry and stony-faced and has told her sisters she hates them, which made me flinch; I don’t think Jenny and I ever said that to each other, and I have no idea where the girls learned the word hate, especially in reference to other humans.

Charlotte is making the strained poop face again.

“Mama, more pooping,” she confirms.

“Great,” I say. “Not a problem.”

It’s 1:34 p.m. Bedtime is six hours away.

But no, it’s not that bad. It’s just…well, it’s tiring, having three kids at once. People like to tell me how blessed I am, and trust me, I know that. Four years of trying to have a baby, three on hormones, four in vitro attempts…four years of hope and yearning… Adam and I went through a lot to have this family.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not tiring some days.

“I not sleeping,” Charlotte tells me. “I hate sleeping. I hate! I hate!” Grace’s anger seems to have infected her.

“Sleeping is a happy time,” I say, kissing her head. She rubs her eyes and glares at me, but she’ll be the first one asleep. Grace will be the last, and she’ll need a good twenty minutes of snuggling when she wakes up, flushed and confused. Rose already has her little butt in the air, thumb in her mouth. She gives me a drooly smile and closes her eyes.

Their room is my favorite place in our gorgeous house, yellow and green with mobiles that I made, an overcrowded bookcase and three hammocks filled with stuffed animals. Unlike a lot of the houses I’ve seen, this room isn’t a showplace, an adult’s idea of how a child’s room should be, with four tasteful stuffed animals and books arranged by height. No. This room is real and beautiful, sunny and light and airy. These books are read. “Sleep tight, my babies,” I say, closing the door.

Charlotte kicks the wall a few times, but that’s tradition. I now have an hour and a half of what Adam calls “your time.”

Me Time is spent vacuuming and washing the kitchen floor, cleaning the bathroom, putting the lids back on the paint pots, washing the brushes, chipping dried paint off the table, hanging up Grace’s picture on the fridge. I then wash out the sink and check the menu I made on the weekend. Being organized is kind of a must when you have to grocery shop with three little ones. Tonight’s dinner is salmon with couscous and roasted almonds and a broccoli salad. I stick a bottle of sauvignon blanc in the fridge, take the broccoli and red cabbage out of the fridge, then pause, glancing at the computer.

It’ll just take a second.

I Google “five star hotels, new york city” and scroll through the list. The Surrey—nah, too fussy. The Peninsula—just looked at that one last week. Anything Trump—no, thanks, too overdone.

Ah ha. The Tribeca Grand. I click and look at their suites, then call up. “Hi, I’m interested in booking a suite for a weekend in September,” I tell the woman, who has a gorgeous accent. Swiss, I decide, not that I’d know. “No, just for one person…Business with some entertaining thrown in…Well, I’m looking at that one right now, but I’m not sure that’ll be big enough. Is the penthouse suite free the weekend of the twenty-first?… It is? Great. And the rooftop terrace…that’s for penthouse guests only, correct?”

The dishwasher kicks on as the woman tells me about the cost, the amenities, the restaurant, and I imagine lying on a chaise longue on the terrace, looking at the city, or sliding into that giant bed, the thrill of those polished cotton sheets. I’d get a martini at the bar; a specialty martini, not something on the menu, but something I’d ask the bartender to make just for me.

Then I glance at the clock, realize I only have forty minutes of Me Time left, thank the Swiss woman and switch the laundry.

* * *

WHEN ADAM COMES home just before seven o’clock, I’m clean—thanks to taking a shower while the girls played on the bathroom floor with my makeup brushes—and dressed in clean clothes. The house is picked up, I managed to put some flowers in a vase—after scooping a tulip head out of Rose’s mouth and calling the poison hotline to ascertain that she’d be okay. Dinner is in the oven, the wine is in an ice bucket, the table is set, the girls are fed and bathed and sweet and in their little jammies, jumping up and down with excitement at the sight of their father coming through the door.

“Princesses!” he exclaims, kneeling down to hug them. He smiles up at me.

God, I love him.

He’s still so good-looking. Better-looking, one of those boyish faces that’s improved with age since we met ten years ago. His black hair is starting to gray, and smile lines fan out from his eyes. He’s the same weight he was when we got married. So am I, though I’ve had to fight for it, and some of my parts aren’t exactly where they used to be. But Adam is nearly unchanged.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, standing up to kiss me.

“That’s fine,” I tell him. “We can eat after they go to bed.” We try to eat all together every night, but sometimes life interferes. And honestly, how nice this will be! Almost a date. Hopefully, Grace won’t keep getting out of bed, because if she does, Rose will, too.

“Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” Charlotte chants.

“Rose, put that down, honey,” he says as she tries to carry his briefcase. “Rach, I’ll put them to bed, how’s that?”

“That would be great,” I say. “They’ll love that.”

A lot of people in this area work in Manhattan. Two of my friends have apartments in the city, and one’s husband lives there during the week. A lot of folks don’t get home from work until eight or nine. But Adam has always worked here, in Cambry-on-Hudson, ever since he graduated from Georgetown, and it’s just one more thing I’m grateful for. He spends more time with the girls than most of my friends’ husbands, the type of dad who has tea parties with our daughters, pushes them too high on their swings and has promised a puppy for their fourth birthday.

In Cambry-on-Hudson, being a stay-at-home mom is common, and the lovely neighborhoods are full of slim, highlighted mothers in Volvo Cross Countrys and Mercedes SUVs, moms who get together for coffee at Blessed Bean and go shopping together for a dress to wear to the latest fund-raiser.

I do some of those things, too—Mommy and Me swim class at the country club that I’m still a little embarrassed about joining. Adam said we needed the membership to schmooze for his job as a corporate attorney. But I still feel shy. And incredibly lucky, too.

Adam takes off his suit jacket and drapes it over the railing. “Story time!” he announces, then scoops all three girls into his arms and carries them upstairs. Grace’s dark cloud has lifted, Charlotte is shrieking with delight and Rose has snuggled her head against his shoulder and waves to me.

I pick up Adam’s jacket automatically and put it in the dry-cleaning bag in the hall closet, then go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. Fifteen more minutes for the salmon. From upstairs, I can hear Adam singing “Baby Beluga” to the girls.

This little window of quiet is a gift. I look around the kitchen, which I love. I love our whole house, a big 1930s house that has no particular style, but is gracious and warm and interesting. Jenny teases me about being a throwback, and it’s true, I love all the homey stuff—baking and gardening and decorating. Our childhood home was nearly perfect until Daddy died, and Mom and Dad were so happy, so solid, so together…that was what I wanted, ever since I can remember.

From the hall closet, I hear a phone chime. I guess Adam’s phone is in his suit pocket. Can’t have him lose that, because, like most people these days, it’s practically an appendage. I retrieve the phone and glance at the screen.

The text is from Private Caller. There’s an attachment. No message.

“Baby Beluga” is still being sung upstairs.

The phone chimes again, startling me. Private Caller again, but this time, a message.

Do you like this?

I click on the attachment. It’s a slightly blurry picture, but of what, I’m not sure. A…a tree, maybe, though it doesn’t look so healthy. It looks diseased, moist and soft. There’s a knothole that looks damp and sick. Whatever it is, I can’t imagine why someone would be sending it to Adam. He doesn’t know anything about trees.

A vein in my neck throbs. The vampire vein. Maybe it’s an artery. I don’t know.

Baby Beluga, Baby Beluga…

This was clearly sent to Adam by mistake. That’s it, because otherwise, Adam would have this person in his contacts list. His phone is always completely up-to-date. In fact, he lost it last week, and he went a little crazy looking for it. All those contacts, he said. All those saved texts and apps and calendar notes and everything that I don’t use on my phone. I just use it to call or text him or Jenny, or in case the nursery school needs to get in touch with me.

I think it’s a tree. I’m almost positive.

But Adam doesn’t know anything about trees. This was probably meant for the…the…the tree warden or something.

Baby Beluga… Baby Beluga…

I forward the picture to my phone.

Then I delete it from his.

That throbbing vein makes me feel sick. I put the phone back in his jacket pocket, put the jacket back in the bag, and then I go back into the kitchen and take a big sip of wine, then another.

The girls’ door closes upstairs. Adam is always faster at tucking in than I am.

His feet thud down the stairs. “Babe,” he says. “Have you seen my phone?”

“No,” I lie. “But I did just put your jacket in the dry-cleaning bag. Maybe it’s in your pocket?”

“Right.” He goes to the closet, retrieves the phone, checks it. Then he looks at me with a smile. “What’s for dinner? It smells fantastic in here.”

“Salmon.”

“My favorite.”

“I know.” And then I smile, though I have no idea how my face actually looks, and pour him some wine.

I remember what I wanted to tell him. No fanks, Mama, I fine.

I don’t tell him. I keep that to myself.

When we go to bed a couple of hours later, Adam checks his phone, kisses my temple and is asleep within seconds.

Usually, we make love on Friday nights, since the next day is Saturday and Adam doesn’t have to get up early. He tells me I can sleep in, too; the girls are big enough to play in their room for an hour or so, and he’s even offered to get up with them. But he never hears them, so I wake up anyway, and then wake him up, and then I can’t ever get back to sleep once I hear the girls moving and talking.

But this Friday night, nothing. A kiss on the temple. No expectant smile, no nuzzling, no “you look beautiful” or “you smell fantastic,” his traditional opening volley when it comes to sex.

Maybe he noticed that I fell asleep last time after all. Maybe he’s being thoughtful.

Or maybe it’s something else.

Chapter 3: Jenny

THE DRIVE FROM Manhattan to Cambry-on-Hudson is one I could make in my sleep. COH is my hometown, a place my sister never left except to go to college, a place I visit at least twice a month.

But it’s different, coming here to live. On many fronts, it’s perfect, because I never did want to stay in Manhattan forever. COH is a pretty town on the banks of the Hudson, saved from true depression by its proximity to the city and some really smart planning on the part of the town council. Years ago, they preserved the riverfront, which is now home to restored brick buildings filled with dress boutiques and home goods shops, a bakery and café, an art gallery and a few restaurants and salons.

And Bliss.

There, in the center of the block, is my new business, the shop name announced in sleek steel letters over the door. Rachel designed the logo, a simple branch of cherry blossoms, and three days ago, we tackled the window display—pink silk cherry blossoms tied to dangling white ribbons. The interior of the shop is the palest pink, the floors a dark cherry, newly sanded and polished.

In the window, being admired by three young women, is a strapless peau de soie dress with lace overlay, a pattern of tiny rosebuds woven into the Chantilly.

Cambry-on-Hudson also is home to three country clubs, an equestrian club and a yacht club—it’s on the very border of Westchester County, you see. With all those wedding venues and deep pockets in town, Bliss should do just fine. And maybe I’ll get the old tingle back, now that I’m not surrounded by memories of Owen.

I’ll miss the city, but I admit that I feel a little relieved to get out of there, too. It’s a hard place to live—the constant noise, the endless blur of humanity, the exhaust and pavement and strangely sweet steam rising from the subway grates. It takes a toll, all the walking in heels, navigating through crowds, grabbing on to subway poles and stair railings that have been touched by thousands of people. And last I checked, I was allowed to go back to visit, though my friends and colleagues made it feel a bit like I was walking the green mile to my execution. Such is the nature of New Yorkers.

So, yes. This is a good move, a year in the making, and I can’t wait to get settled. Life will be quieter here. Easier. I’m not just moving because Owen and I got a divorce. Honest.

I head up the hill from the riverfront, where there is block after block of gentrified old row houses. Some streets are a little careworn and rough, and the other side of Broadway gets seedy fast, as we are not quite as Westchester County as the rest of Westchester County. The Riverview section of the city, where my sister lives, is quite posh, with big sprawling houses and glimpses of the Hudson.

But Magnolia Avenue, where I’m renting, is lovely without being snooty. Real people live here, people who have to work for a living.

As I pull up to Number 11, my phone rings.

I sense my hard-won optimism is about to get a smackdown. The Angel of Death, also known as my mother, Lenore Tate, long-suffering widow and professional pessimist.

Best to take the call; otherwise, she’ll call the police to check on me.

“Hi, Mom,” I say, making sure I sound chipper.

“I’m just checking in. Honey, I’m so sad for you. Horrible that you have to move,” she says in her trademark tone—mournful with a dash of smug.

“I don’t have to, Mom. I chose to.”

“You sound so depressed. Well, who can blame you?”

My eye twitches. “I’m not depressed. I’m really happy. I’ll be closer to you, and Rachel, and—”

“Yes, but these aren’t exactly ideal circumstances, are they? It should’ve been you and Owen, not him and Ana-Sofia. Though she is quite beautiful. The baby, too. Did I tell you they had me over last week?”

“Yes. You’ve mentioned it nine times now.”

“Oh, you’re counting. Poor thing. I can only imagine how hard it was, delivering the baby who should’ve been yours…”

“Okay, I’m hanging up now.” She’s not exactly wrong, and she knows it. Such is her evil power.

“I’m coming over to help you unpack. Do you have pepper spray? The neighborhood is seedy.”

When I went to college, Mom moved across the state border to a posh little town in Connecticut and began viewing COH as akin to the slums of Calcutta. It’s irritating, but at least she doesn’t live too close by.

“Mom, the neighborhood is gorgeous,” I tell her, using my “calm the bride” voice.

“Well, it’s not what it was when your father was alive. If he hadn’t died, it still might be a nice place to live.”

This is one of those illogical and unarguable statements so common from Mother Dear. Westchester County is hardly a hotbed of crime and urban decay. Even if COH was hit by urban blight—which it hasn’t been—it’s not as if Dad, who was a dentist, would’ve single-handedly stepped in and saved the day.

“You should’ve moved to Connecticut, Jenny. Hedgefield would’ve been perfect for your little dress shop. I still don’t understand why you didn’t want to come here.”

Because you live there. “I have to go, Mom. Don’t come over. I’ll have you up over dinner later this week, okay?”

“I can’t eat dairy anymore. It gives me terrible diarrhea. Ana-Sofia made empanadas that were delicious. Maybe you could call her for the recipe, since you’re not the best cook.”

Cleansing breath, cleansing breath. “Anything else?”

“Well, don’t make duck. I’m morally opposed to duck. Do you know what they do to ducks at a duck farm? The cruelty! It’s barbaric. But I do love veal. Can you make veal? Or is that too hard for you?”

“I’ll make something delicious, Mom.” I won’t. I’ll buy something delicious.

“See you in a few hours, then.”

“No, no. Please don’t come. I won’t even be here. I have a bride coming in.” A lie, but it’s de rigueur when dodging a maternal visit.

“Fine. Maybe I’ll call Ana-Sofia. She asked for some advice on getting the baby to burp, so…”

“Okay, bye.” I stab the end button hard. My twitch has grown into a throb.

I’d like to say that Mom means well, but that wouldn’t really be true. When things are good, she looks not for the silver lining, but for the mercury toxicity. When things are bad, her eyes light up, she stands straighter and her life is filled with purpose. She views my move to COH as both my inevitable failure at marriage—she always hinted Owen was too good for me—and also a gauntlet I’ve thrown at her feet. If I do better after my divorce—personally and professionally—it might imply that she should, too.

Well, no point in crying over spilled milk. Spilled wine, yes. But I have a long day of unpacking in front of me, and I want to get started. Unfortunately, the moving truck is nowhere in sight. Luis said he knew the street, but they’re late just the same, even if they left just a second after I did.

Hopefully, this will be the last time I move—which is exactly what I said when I moved in with Owen. He was the fourth boyfriend I lived with, but I thought he had staying power. But seriously, this could be the last time, because my new place is flippin’ beautiful. The real estate lady said it’s possible that it’ll go up for sale next year; it was an impulse buy on the part of the owner, and my lease is only for one year—a hint, she said, that the owner might want to sell it.

So I could live here forever, and why not? It’s elegant and cozy at the same time, a four-story brick town house painted dark gray with black trim and a cherry-red front door. Iron window box holders curl up in front of all the windows, and I immediately picture planting trailing ivy and pink and purple flowers in a few weeks. The trees along the street are dressed in green fuzz, and the magnolia across the street is in full, cream-and-pink glory.

My apartment consists of the middle two floors of the building—living room, dining room, tiny galley kitchen and powder room on the first level, then three small bedrooms and a full-size bath up the wide wooden staircase. The Victorian claw-foot tub was impossible to resist. There’s a tiny backyard with a slate patio, which I get to use, and a tiny front yard that belongs to the super, who has the first floor—the pied-à-terre, the Realtor called it, which made it sound very fabulous and European. The fourth floor is being used by the owner for storage. With the three dormered windows up there, the light would be fantastic. If I owned the place, I could use the entire floor as a home studio. Or a nursery for my attractive and cheerful babies.

A man comes down the street, walking a beautiful golden retriever.

He looks my way, and our eyes meet. He lives right next door in that gorgeous brownstone, and he’s single, go figure, a chef who’s just signed a contract to let his name be used on a line of high-end French cookware. His sister is engaged, and guess who’s making her dress? Jenny Tate, that’s who! What a small world! The Christmas wedding is at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and I wear a wine-red velvet dress to the reception and he’s in a tux, and as we dance together, he slides an engagement ring onto my finger and drops to one knee, and his sister—in her gorgeous satin modified A-line dress with green velvet trailing sash—is all for this. In fact, she’s in on the proposal and is already crying happy tears. We get married and buy a charming old farmhouse with views of the Hudson so our twin sons and little daughter can run and play while we harvest vegetables from our organic garden and we’ll breed Jeter, our faithful Goldie, and the kids will all be valedictorians and go to Yale.

The man fails to make eye contact. Instead, he’s yelling something into a phone about “your bitch of a sister,” so I regretfully cross him off my list of potential second husbands.

Owen never yelled. One of his many qualities. I never, ever heard him raise his lovely, reassuring voice.

I wait till the guy is safely past—just in case he’s a serial killer, as my mother would no doubt assert—and get out of the car, swing my cheerful polka-dot purse onto my shoulder and check myself out in the window. Eesh. Andreas and I killed the last two bottles of Owen’s wine last night while watching Thors 1 and 2 for the eye candy. Part of my divorce was that I got half of Owen’s small but wonderful wine collection, and I didn’t object.

An image from our marriage flashes like lightning—Owen and me, on a picnic in Nova Scotia a few summers ago, holding hands. He picked a daisy and tickled my ear with it, and the sun reflected off his shock of black hair so brightly it almost hurt my eyes. His hair was—is—adorable, standing up in a way that defied gravity, perpetual bedhead that made him instantly appealing and almost childlike. No wonder his patients love him instantly.

The bewilderment is the worst part. That’s what they don’t tell you in divorce articles. They talk about anger and loneliness and growing apart and starting over and being kind to yourself, but they don’t tell you about the untold hours in the black hole of why. Why? What changed? When? Why was I the one you chose to marry, but all of a sudden, I’m not enough anymore?

But I’m not about to start off this phase of my life bewildered. Fuck you, Owen, I think, and it’s oddly cheering.

The super is supposed to meet me here and give me my keys. I tighten my ponytail, summon a smile and go through the iron gate to the super’s door. This courtyard could be adorable with some plants and a little café table, but right now, it only holds a ratty lawn chair that’s seen better days… It’s the aluminum-frame kind, the seat woven from scratchy nylon fiber. The image of a fat, unshaven man wearing an ill-fitting bowling shirt, scratching his stomach with one hand and nursing a Genesee with another, a mangy dog by his side, leaps to mind with unfortunate clarity.

But no. No negativity! In ten minutes, I’ll be unpacking in my beautiful new place. I can put the kettle on, even though I don’t like tea, but the image of tea is very cozy on this cool, damp day. Red wine is even cozier.

Maybe I’ll invite the super to have a drink with me. Or not, if he looks like the guy I just envisioned. Did the Realtor say if it was a man or a woman? I can’t remember. Better yet, a neighbor will come over—not the angry golden retriever man, but a different neighbor. An older man, maybe, someone who has a good bottle of wine in one hand. I saw the moving truck, he’ll say, and wanted to welcome you to the street. I teach Italian literature at Barnard. Are you free for dinner? I happen to be cooking a roast. Then again, what kind of single man cooks a roast? Scratch that. I’ll come up with something better.

I knock cheerfully on the super’s door—shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits!

There’s no answer. I knock again, less cheerfully and more loudly. Still nothing. Pressing my ear to the door, all I hear is quiet. One more knock.

Nothing.

I go back to my car and call the Realtor, getting her voice mail. “Hi! It’s Jenny Tate. Um, the super doesn’t seem to be here, and the moving truck will be here any sec, so…maybe you could call him? Thanks so much! Bye!”

On cue, the phone rings, but it’s not the Realtor.

It’s Owen.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hey, Jenny.” His voice is low and holds that intimate timbre that makes the parents of his patients name their next baby Owen, boy or girl. It also works well with women. Between that and his omnipresent faint smile, it always seems as if he’s about to tell you a secret, and you’re the only one he can tell, because you’re just that special. We women get a little feeble-minded around Owen Takahashi, MD. He could say, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about strangling a few kittens. You in?” and you’d find yourself answering, “You bet I’m in! When can we get started?”

“You made it okay?” he asks now.

“Yeah! Just fine,” I say, eyeing my house. “I can’t wait for you and Ana-Sofia to see it. And the baby! How is she? I love her name! Natalia! It’s so gorgeous!”

We’ve been divorced for fifteen and a half months. Soon, I hope, my need to be überchipper will fade.

“She’s beautiful. Jenny, I can never thank you enough.”

“No!” I sing, rolling my eyes at myself. If Andreas were here, he’d give me a nice brisk slap. “It was an honor.” Make that a punch.

“So listen, Jenny. We’d like to use Genevieve as a middle name. After you.”

Oh, God. “Uh, well, that’s not my name,” I say. For some reason, Mom just wanted Jenny. Not even Jennifer.

“Yes, I remember,” he says in that “I’ve got a secret” voice, evoking late Sunday mornings in bed. “But still.”

You know what, Owen? Don’t. Okay? I don’t want your baby to be named after me. Come on!

“That’s very…nice. Thank you.”

There’s a silence. A drop of rain slaps the windshield, but just one, lonely and useless.

“You’ll always be special to me,” Owen says softly.

I clench my teeth. What he means is I’m sorry I stopped loving you and found all that meaning with Ana-Sofia and discovered that I was dying to be a father—once I had the right wife, that is—and am living the dream right now, thanks to your clever hands and my perfect wife’s amazing uterus that just pushed the baby out in a matter of minutes. No hard feelings, right?

“Well,” I say in the same idiotic, chipper voice. “You’re special to me, too! Obviously! I married you, right? But I mean, you and Ana are both special to me. And so is Natalia! Right? How often do you get to deliver a baby, after all? It was fun.”

He laughs as if I’m the most delightful person in all the world (which he once told me I was, come to think of it). “I miss you already. We’ll see you for dinner next week, right?”

“You bet.” Because, yes, I’m going to their place for dinner next Friday. How civilized! How urbane! We’re so New York! You couldn’t pull this shit off in Idaho, let me tell you. Probably because people are more honest out there. “Give Ana-Sofia and the baby my love.”

Before I can say anything else that’s stupid or spineless or inane or all of the above, I click off, grab the steering wheel and shake it. “Do you have to be such a dickless wonder?” I ask out loud. “Do you, Jenny? Huh? How about a little dignity, hmm? Is that so much to ask?”

My phone dings with a text.

Mom:

I bought you a rape whistle. There was a gangland slaying on your street last week.

“No, there wasn’t, Mom!” I yell, strangling the steering wheel with even more gusto. “There was no gangland slaying!”

“Hey. You okay, Charlie Sheen?” comes a voice, and I jump against my door, grappling instinctively for the handle to escape my would-be rapist or gangland murderer. A man is leaning down, peering at me through the passenger window.

“Uh…can I help you?” I squeak.

“You were screaming. You seem to be the one who needs help.” He looks pained, as if I’m the nineteenth crazy person he’s dealt with today.

“I—It was… I was talking to myself. I work alone for the most part. Occupational hazard. Anyway. Sorry.” I try to remember that I’m a fabulous and creative person with an impressive work history in a very competitive field. Nevertheless, I feel like an ass. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

His hair is flippin’ beautiful, chestnut-brown and curling. His eyes are blue. Blue-gray, really. Or maybe green-blue. Yes, he’s looking at me like I’m insane, but those are some very nice eyes.

“Keep it down next time,” he says. “There are children around.”

I feel my cheeks start a slow burn, which is generally what happens when I’m confronted with an attractive man under the age of ninety-five. I clear my throat and get out of the car, the cool, damp air making me wish I’d worn a sweater.

“I’m Jenny,” I say. “I’m moving in, but the super’s not around, and he has my keys.” See? All perfectly normal, pal.

“You’re moving in?”

“Yes. This house. Number 11. Do you live around here?”

“I do.” He doesn’t elaborate. Probably doesn’t want to point out his house to the crazy woman.

“Well, do you happen to know the super?”

He’s tall. And thin. Suddenly, I want to feed him. Also, that’s some seriously gorgeous hair, even better than at first glance. Married. Hair like that wouldn’t remain single. He’s wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a T-shirt, and while he looks like he just rolled out of bed, it kind of…works.

He brings me a bottle of wine and flowers to welcome me to the neighborhood. He’s a boatbuilder, and he invites me for a sail on the Hudson next weekend, and the stars wink and blaze overhead, and he’s never felt this way before; he always believed the universe would give him a sign, and what’s that, a comet? If that’s not a sign, then he doesn’t know—

“You eye-fucking me?” he asks.

“What? No! I’m just… I’m not, okay? I just need my key, but the stupid super isn’t here.”

“The stupid super is right in front of you.”

I close my eyes, sigh and then smile. “Hi. I’m Jenny. The new tenant.”

“Leo. Keep your eyes to yourself, for the record.”

“Can I please have my keys?”

“Sure.” He tosses them over the car roof, and I catch them. “So why the screeching?” he asks.

“I wouldn’t call it screeching, really,” I say.

“Oh, it was screeching. Let me guess. Man trouble?”

“Wrong.”

“Ex-husband?”

“No. I mean, yes, I have one, but no, he’s not the trouble.”

“Did he remarry yet?”

“Would you like to help me carry some stuff in?” I ask, forcing a smile.

“So yes, in other words. Is she younger? A trophy wife?”

I grit my teeth. “I have to unpack. And no. She’s fourteen months older than I am, thank you.” I yank a canvas bag from the backseat. I’m not the most organized person in the world—my sister holds that title—and I forgot to pack my underwear drawer in my suitcase, so it’s in with my drill and hammer and a pint of half-and-half. Leo the Super looks in but refrains from commenting.

“Feel free to help,” I say, grabbing a Boston fern with my free hand.

“I’m afraid you’ll read into it. I already feel a little dirty.”

“Great.” The guy seems to be a dick, his hair notwithstanding.

I lug my bags up the eight stairs to my front door, then fumble for the keys, nearly dropping my fern.

“Hey, Leo!” calls a feminine voice, and we both look down the street. A woman about my age—younger, let’s be honest—is dragging a small child with one hand, holding a pie in the other. “Happy weekend, you!”

“Same to you,” he calls. “Hi, Simon.”

“Your son?” I ask.

His eyes flicker back to mine. “My student. I teach piano.”

“Oh. Nice. I love piano music.” I mean, I guess I do. I’ve never thought about it much. I like Coldplay, and Chris Martin plays piano, so that counts, right?

“Classical piano?” His voice implies that an unstable woman such as myself has never heard classical piano. He’s almost right; aside from what I hear at weddings, I tend to veer toward things written in this century.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” I lie. “I love classical piano. Beethoven and, uh…those other guys.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Name two pieces.”

“Um…‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel.”

“Oh, God.”

“And ‘Tiny Dancer’ by Elton John.”

He grins suddenly, and his face, which is already too nice of a face, transforms into gorgeous.

“Simon’s been practicing so much this week!” says the mom, and speaking of eye-fucking, she’s not very subtle. I gather Leo the Super is single. A quick glance to his left hand shows no ring.

So he’s single. Hello! I feel a prickle of interest. After all, I do want to get married and have kids…

“God,” he mutters. “I’m a person, okay? Not a piece of meat.” He opens the gate of his courtyard and holds it for the mom, ruffling Simon’s hair.

The mother thrusts the pie—and practically her boobs—into his hands. “Strawberry rhubarb,” she announces. “I thought you could use some feeding.” A husky, fuck-me laugh ensues. Her kid, who’s about six, rubs his nose on his arm, then wipes the arm on his mother’s very short skirt. I hope she’s cold.

“This is very nice of you, Suzanne,” Leo says. “Come on, Simon, let’s hear you play, buddy.” He puts his hand on the kid’s shoulder and steers him in through the gate. I only realize I’m still watching when Suzanne gives me a pointed look, then follows Leo into his apartment.

* * *

BY 4:30 P.M., my furniture is in place, hauled in by the brawny movers who arrived five minutes after I unlocked my front door. Rachel was supposed to come by this afternoon, and I texted her a little while ago but she hasn’t answered. She’s not one of those people glued to her phone. Probably got lost in baking or stenciling or something. Adam was going to take the girls to the children’s museum so she could help me, but maybe something came up.

Still, it’s not like her to blow me off. Not at all.

I start unpacking one of the boxes labeled Kitchen. Cooking has never really been a great love of my life. Eating, sure. But Owen was the better chef. Once we divorced and I moved to the Village, my tiny apartment was two doors down from an Italian restaurant. Problem solved. But maybe I’ll cook more now. It could happen.

My kitchen windows overlook the little courtyard. All day, Leo’s had a steady stream of students, ranging in age from four or five to middle-aged. All the adult students seem to be women, and there is not one father in sight. Many women carry foil-wrapped goodies. The sound of easy piano pieces floats up to me, as well as some popular songs; I recognize “Clocks” by Coldplay—see? I wasn’t that far off—as well as a few Disney songs. I also recognize a lot of flirting going on between Leo and the females.

Owen never flirted. He was—is—earnest and kind, which smothered any flirting ability he had.

I take out a weirdly shaped whisk and wonder what it’s for. I’m going to miss Phil’s Wok and Porto Bello, that’s for sure. I had six restaurants on speed dial in the Village. But Cambry has a few cute places and, of course, Rachel will feed me whenever I want. She lives to feed people. I love eating with her and Adam and the girls, in that big sunny kitchen where Rach always seems to have cut flowers in a vase on the table, where the girls say grace before they start eating.

The biggest plus to moving back here—I’ll get to see them whenever I want. Every day, even.

The thought brings a warm rise of happiness. My sister is and always has been my best friend, and I adore her husband, who’s handsome and charming and just dull enough. And my nieces are the lights of my life. Nothing feels better than their little arms around my legs when I come through their door, or their tiny, soft hands in mine, or their heavy heads on my shoulder when they’ve fallen asleep on my lap. When they were first born, I spent two precious weeks living with Rachel and Adam, changing the tiny diapers, swapping girls with Rachel depending on which one was hungry, changing the laundry and folding the little preemie outfits.

Even if I never get to be a mommy, at least I’m a beloved aunt.

I unpack a pretty wooden bowl I got in Australia when I was doing an internship down under. The red-and-orange polka-dot chicken I bought at Target; not exactly an irreplaceable artifact, but so cheerful and happy. Another pair of misplaced panties. A picture of Rachel and me, which I place in the living room in the built-in bookcase.

I really love this place. I can make curtains for the big windows, lace panels that would look perfect and still let in light. A big old Oriental carpet for in front of the gas fireplace. My red velvet couch and leather club chair look as if they were made for this living room. I think I’ll buy a butler’s table and get a few orchid plants. Rach will tell me how to keep them alive.

Some movement on the street catches my eye. Oh, hooray! Speaking of my sister, she’s here, standing in front of her minivan. She looks a little…strange. Her hair is in a messy ponytail, as is mine, but for me, it’s normal.

Also, she’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt. As someone who wears a uniform to work—I own five black pencil skirts, five sleeveless black silk shirts, five long-sleeve black silk shirts and four pairs of black Jimmy Choo pointy-toe heels—the first thing I do every day when I get home is rip off my sleek clothes and get into pajamas or jeans. My days off—Sunday and Monday—are for sloth, I’ve always felt.

But Rachel is always turned out, as Mom says, usually in a dress and cute shoes. I don’t know how she does it, to be honest, raising the girls, keeping that house so beautiful and still looking great.

I knock on the window and wave, but she doesn’t hear me, so I head out onto my stoop. I should get some pansies or something for out here. A planter full of flowers would make it look so cheerful.

“Hey, Rachel!” I call.

She looks up, and I realize she’s been talking to Leo, who is now sitting on his lawn chair, drinking a beer. A multicolored lump of fur lies beside him. I presume it’s a dog, as it is dog-sized. Seems like I wasn’t too far off in my mental image of a super.

I go down the steps to give my sister a hug. “Hi! Thanks for coming!”

“Sorry I’m late.”

I glance at Leo, who’s petting the dog with one hand. His expression is…naughty. “You okay? Did he say something to you?” I ask my sister in a low voice.

“Who?”

“Him. Leo. The super.”

“Oh, no. He’s very nice.”

“Well, come on in. The movers were great, and I’m just putting stuff in drawers. Want some tea?”

“Do you have any wine?”

“Shoot, no. I can run downtown and get some, though.”

“I have wine,” Leo says.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “But thanks.”

“That would be great,” Rachel says.

“My pleasure.” He unfolds himself from the chair. Six-three, I’d guess. “Loki, stay,” he orders. The dog, who looks rather close to death, doesn’t twitch.

My sister looks a little pale. “Are you okay, Rachel?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer, just goes up the stairs into the little foyer. “This is great,” she says unconvincingly. And the thing about Rachel is, she loves home decorating and all that stuff. It’s her art form. She’s Martha Stewart meets Maria Von Trapp; in fact, she found me this place, and when we came here with the Realtor a month ago, Rachel raced around like a kid at Christmas.

“Thanks,” I say. “Rach, you seem weird, hon.”

Then she takes out her phone and taps a button. “Do you know what this is? Is this a tree? With some kind of disease or blight or something?”

I look, then flinch. “No. It’s… Where did you get this?” Because, shit.

“What is it?”

I swallow. “It’s…um, it’s a va—It’s girl parts. A crotch shot.” Hey. Owen and I watched a little porn from time to time, back in the day. The picture is blurry and super close-up, which is quite icky, so yeah, I guess I could see how Rachel, who is very innocent, could think it was a diseased tree. “Who sent this to you?”

But my sister doesn’t answer, because now her face is the color of chalk, and her legs buckle, and Leo catches her just as he comes in the door.

Chapter 4: Rachel

A DISTANT PART of me is so, so embarrassed that a total stranger has seen me faint. I’ve never fainted before. I mean, I’ve wanted to, a thousand times, usually when I’m at a party, trying to pretend that I’m having fun, and trying to eat when no one else is looking. I’m always worried about how I look when I’m eating. I think people who throw parties should offer private little carrels where guests can go and eat in private. So I generally don’t eat at parties, then the wine goes right to my head, like now, and that makes me feel even more self-conscious, because I’m afraid people will say, “That Rachel got so drunk at our party last night!” so in the end, I neither eat nor drink. I just stand around, hoping to faint, because leaving the party, even by ambulance, would be preferable to trying to look like I’m having a good time.

But I suppose I really earned the faint today. And Jenny’s friend is very kind. He has sad eyes. Sad for me, because I’m an idiot.

I guess I knew what the picture was. All morning long, I smothered the thought, watched as Adam read on his iPad and accepted gifts from the girls—a picture from Rose, drawn in nursery school, a tulip head from Charlotte, a rubber band from Grace. Charlotte was chattering, Grace sitting at his feet with a notepad and pen, pretending to write a book, all three girls content to bask in his half attention. Before, I never would’ve faulted him for that, those delayed responses and absentminded pats on the head. He works hard. He deserves time to relax.

But this morning, I wondered what he was looking at. Who might be messaging him. And, as ever, his phone was on the table next to him. That’s nothing new. I wouldn’t let myself read into it. It was a tree sent by mistake. I didn’t look at the picture again.

Instead, I went to the computer and looked up that hotel again. The soothing colors, chocolate and cream and white. The lobby bar, with its palm trees and beautiful clock. Looked at that for a long time after he took the kids to the museum, and though I had to go to my sister’s, all I did was sit there, looking at the penthouse suite, imagining how calm and confident I’d feel there, sipping that martini and looking out over the city.

“Rachel. Drink some more water, honey.” My sister’s dark eyes are worried. I obey. I’m sitting on Jenny’s lovely, soft old couch, and my sister is teary-eyed and furious at the same time. Leo—that’s his name, Leo Killian, a nice Irish name—is looking at me too sympathetically. Tears are leaking out of my eyes, but they’re faraway tears, tears I’m not really even aware of, except Jenny keeps handing me tissues.

Adam loves me. I know he loves me.

To think I thought it was a tree. A knothole. Some kind of hole, yes, but really, I am such an idiot. Almost forty, and pathetically naive.

I hope he’s not giving the girls macaroni and cheese for supper. Yes, it’s organic, but I like to save it for when I’ve had a really hard day. If he uses it, he preempts me. And you know what? He should never make macaroni and cheese from a box! I’m the one who gets to do that. I stay home with them all day, every day. I get to be lazy once in a while. He should make them chicken and broccoli and…and…

Oh, God, he’s cheating.

My thoughts surge and roll like a riptide, crashing into each other from all directions, then shushing back before I can figure out the current. I just… I just don’t know what to think or where to swim.

Leo hands me a glass of wine. “Thank you,” I say.

Is my life over? Life as I knew it?

My heart starts thudding in hard, erratic beats. I love my life. Our life. Finally, we seemed to hit the sweet spot. Before, even though I liked my job and my coworkers and friends, I was waiting for my real life to begin. Marriage. Motherhood. Just as I was starting to worry that I’d never meet anyone, I met Adam. The courtship and marriage part was strangely easy. But then came four years trying to get pregnant. Hormone injections and trying desperately to keep our love life fun and spontaneous—and, please, there is no spontaneity when you’re trying to get pregnant, but I did my best to trick Adam into believing I was just incredibly horny and creative. Then thirty-three weeks of sheer terror, because when you’re pregnant with triplets, you’re a time bomb, and all you pray for is to make it to twenty-seven weeks, then another week more, and another week more.

Those first few weeks, when Rose and Grace got to come home but Charlotte had to be in the hospital, and then with all three of them, at least one baby always awake, always hungry, always crying, always needing to be changed, the pain of my huge cesarean incision, my rock-hard, ever-leaking breasts… Even then, I loved it.

But this past year, with the girls all sleeping through the night, eating regular food, and the no-dairy restriction lifted from Grace, and nobody having a peanut allergy, and Rose seeming to have outgrown the asthmatic bronchitis… I’ve loved every day of so many months, been so grateful for every day.

Please don’t let these days be over. I don’t want things to change. Please, God, don’t let Adam be cheating.

I guess I said that last thing out loud, because my sister squeezes my hand.

“Maybe…” I begin. My voice sounds as thin and weak as rice paper. “Maybe whoever sent it just hit the wrong number?”

“Sure,” Jenny says, but she’s stiff and tight next to me, so it’s clear what she thinks. I look at Leo.

“Do you think it’s a wrong number?” I ask him. He’s a man. Maybe he’ll know.

He hesitates, then runs a hand through his hair. “No.”

“Why?”

“Because if you were going to send a picture like that, wouldn’t you make sure it was going to the right person?”

Yes. Except I would never send a picture like that.

I gulp a mouthful of wine. My head is starting to pound.

My husband might be having an affair.

My husband is having an affair.

The words don’t sink in.

“So you’re a piano teacher?” I ask him.

“That’s right.”

The wine in my glass trembles, as if we’re having an earthquake. Oh, no, it’s because my hands are shaking. “Some of my friends use you. Elle Birkman? Her son is Hunter. And um, um…Claudia Parvost. Her daughter is Sophia.”

“Sure. Nice people.”

Elle and Claudia aren’t really my friends. We’re in the same book club. We all belong to the COH Lawn Club. The girls and I take Mommy and Me swim classes there. Elle just had breast implants and now wears a string bikini that makes the teenage-boy lifeguard extremely uncomfortable.

Apparently, my brain will think about anything other than that…picture.

“My girls… We want them to take an instrument. I always thought piano would be the nicest.”

He smiles. It’s a sad smile, because he knows. “How old are they?”

“Three and a half.”

“Twins?”

“Triplets.” I smile, but my smile is broken and weak, wobbly as a newly hatched baby bird. “Are they too young?”

“Not necessarily. If they can sit still for half an hour, they’re not too young.” It’s a kind answer, because he doesn’t want to deny me anything right now, because I’m a pathetic, stupid wife, the wife is always the last to know, my wife doesn’t understand me, my wife will never find out, I’m leaving my wife.

I chug the rest of the wine in my glass.

“Why don’t I go?” Leo says.

“Yes. Thank you,” Jenny says, standing up. She walks him to the door, and they murmur for a second, no doubt expressing their horror and sympathy for me.

Jenny comes back and sits next to me, her pretty face concerned. This was supposed to be her weekend. I was supposed to help her, and the girls were supposed to come to cheer her up, because it’s really real now, her divorce from Owen, Owen’s new family, and she loved him so much, and God, I hope he never cheated on her, she said he didn’t but who can really know anything anymore? No one. That’s who.

Suddenly I’m crying very hard, not just leaking tears but full-on, chest-ripping sobs that hurt, they’re so vicious.

“Oh, honey,” Jenny whispers, holding me close. “Oh, sweetie.”

“Don’t tell anyone. I have to figure out what to do first,” I choke out between the awful, shuddering convulsions.

“No, I won’t,” she says. “And…Rachel, whatever you need, I’m here. If you and the girls want to stay here—”

“No!” I yelp, startled out of my tears. “No! It’s way too early to think about anything like that. I don’t even know if it’s true. Please, Jenny.”

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

My phone chimes with a text. Adam:

We’re home. How’s Jenny’s place? Should we come over?

A completely normal text. Normal husband talk. “Look at this,” I say, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. “I mean, seriously, it was probably a mistake. Whoever sent that just dialed the wrong number.”

“It… Sure. It could’ve been.”

I stare at the phone, then hand it to my sister. “Could you answer? Just say the place is a mess and I’ll be home later?”

She types my response, then hands me back the phone.

Adam replies, Okay, babe. Love you.

See? He loves me. Of course he does.

When we were engaged, we talked about cheating. I brought it up, even though it was hard, even though my heart was sledgehammering through my chest wall. I mean, I’m not really the ultimatum type, but certain things have to be said. I wouldn’t be able to stay with you if you ever cheated, I told him, and he said he’d never, ever do such a thing. He only loved me. He only wanted me.

He didn’t feel the need to warn me that cheating would be a deal breaker for him, too. Obviously, I’d never cheat on him. It went without saying, even back then.

He loves our life as much as I do. He wouldn’t risk it.

“I think this was all a mistake,” I say with more conviction.

Because if it’s not, everything is different now.

The doorbell rings. Jenny stands and looks out the window. “Shit. It’s Mom. I’ll get rid of her. Why don’t you hide in the bathroom?”

I obey. My legs feel weak, and that wine is throbbing in my brain, thick and sluggish.

“Hey, Mom, I’m not feeling so good,” I hear Jenny say. “I have a wicked headache. And I’m almost done, really.”

“You must be so depressed,” Mom says. “You look awful. Was it heartbreaking?”

“Um…not really. We’ve been divorced for more than a—”

“Of course it was. Oh, honey. I’m so sorry for you. Even though Rob’s life was cut short, at least we never had to even think about divorce. We might not have had many years together, but we made them count. You don’t even have that, you poor thing. Want me to rub your head?”

“I’m good.”

Nothing makes our mother happier than discussing the troubles of those around her—even her daughters, and sometimes especially us—so long as she can come out the winner. Those four years that I tried so hard to get pregnant, all she could talk about was how easy it had been for her. When the girls were born by C-section, all of them just about four pounds—which was great, given that they were triplets—Mom delighted in telling me for the thousandth time about how both Jenny and I came into this world at twice that weight. Both you girls were perfectly healthy, she said, sounding slightly perplexed. Well. I’m sure yours will grow.

If she saw me now, she’d home in on me like a missile. And unlike Jenny, I can’t hide anything.

My face in the mirror is nearly unrecognizable. I look terrified. I can’t lose Adam. I can’t. I love him so, so much. There has to be a mistake.

After my father died, I couldn’t look in the mirror, because the heartbreak was written over my face so clearly.

I look the same now. Eyes too wide. Skin too white.

They’re still talking; Mom doesn’t want to leave, wants to talk about Owen’s new baby and hear again how Jenny had to deliver her.

“Look, Mom, you’re right,” my sister says. “I’m incredibly depressed, I have a migraine—”

“I’ve never had a migraine. I never even get headaches.”

“—and just want to be alone so I can wallow. Maybe we can have lunch this week. Come by the shop, okay? It’s really cute.”

“Yes, but it’s hardly Manhattan, is it? I hope you won’t go bankrupt. You should’ve moved to Hedgefield. You could live with me until you get on your feet, and we—”

“Okay, Mom, thanks! Bye.” The door closes, and another minute passes. “It’s safe,” Jenny calls.

My college roommate was from Los Angeles, and she described being in an earthquake. If you can’t trust the ground to stay still, she’d said, the entire world seems wrong.

I feel that way now.

“What can I do?” Jenny asks as I come out on my fearful legs.

“I don’t know.”

I have to believe that Adam was not the intended recipient of that hideous, disgusting picture. How do gynecologists do it all day, look between the legs of their patients and not just…just throw up?

My sister takes my hand. Even though she’s younger, she’s always been more certain.

I take a deep breath. I’m a mother. I’m not a weakling, and I have to be logical and smart. I have three children with this man. I can’t just react. “I have to talk to him, I guess.”

“Want me to babysit, and you guys can go somewhere? Or I can take the girls out. They can even stay over here tonight. I’d love that.”

“I don’t know. I just… I don’t know.”

My sister nods, then takes a slow breath. “I hate to ask this,” she says, “but are there any other…red flags?”

Anything that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was cheating, she means.

“I don’t think so. He’s been tired lately. But people get tired. He’s been working on this really complicated case, and… Well. He’s been tired.”

It’s just that tired never meant too tired before.

She doesn’t say anything. Is she pitying me? Disagreeing? Agreeing?

Adam’s a corporate attorney. He knows things that save his clients millions of dollars each year. He’s great at his job, was made partner at the firm, second in seniority only to Jared Brewster, who grew up down the street from us and used to sit on the bus with me. And since Jared’s grandfather founded the firm, I’d say Adam is doing even better, maybe. He’s important. He works a lot, it’s true.

Maybe his lover is a client.

His lover. My stomach heaves at the word. I’ve always hated that word. It’s too intimate, too romantic, too smarmy. I don’t want my husband to have a lover. I’ve never even thought of myself as his lover. I was his girlfriend, then his fiancée, then his wife.

“There’s a lot to lose here,” I whisper.

“Yes.” Jenny squeezes my hand, and I hate that I need a hand squeeze. I’m usually the giver of the hand squeezes…well, in the past year or so, anyway.

It’s now past 7:30 p.m., so the girls are almost certainly in bed and sound asleep.

I guess I have to go home.

For the first time in my life, that thought fills me with dread.

* * *

I SLIP IN the house like a shadow and go right upstairs when I get home. Opening the door to the girls’ bedroom, I feel a rush of love so strong that it momentarily crushes all the horrible worming thoughts that have twisted through my mind for the past twenty-four hours.

This room is pure. I know exactly who I am in this room.

My little girls are asleep; Charlotte is snoring slightly, Grace is sucking her thumb, Rose is sleeping upside down, her feet on the pillows. I kiss Grace first, then Charlotte, then turn Rosebud right-side-up and kiss her, too. I whisper “Mommy loves you” to each of them, breathing in their sweet and salty smell.

Here, in this room, I know everything that really matters. I was born to be a mommy. These girls are my life.

Some of the sticky fear slips away.

I go downstairs, through the living room and into the den, where Adam is talking on the phone. “I feel the same way,” he murmurs, then catches sight of me and jumps.

Guilty.

“Hi,” I say.

“Eric, my beautiful wife just came home,” he says, smiling. Not guilty? “Can we talk on Monday? Great. Thanks. You bet.” He clicks off the phone and stands up. “Hi, babe! I didn’t hear you come in. Want a glass of wine? I made the girls mac and cheese, but I could make you an omelet or something.”

Of course he made the mac and cheese.

And yet, these are not the words of a cheating husband.

“I’ll have some wine,” I say. We go into the kitchen, he pours me a glass of white, and I take a sip. The kitchen is sloppy; granted, I’m almost obsessive about neatness, but the pot from the girls’ unnutritious dinner is sitting in the sink, the powdery cheese sauce hardening, and mail is strewn over the counter, which hasn’t been wiped down.

Usually I’m just grateful that Adam doesn’t view spending the afternoon with his children as a heroic feat, like some fathers do. But it would be nice if he just once cleaned up the way I do a thousand times a day.

“How’s the new place?” he asks, grabbing a beer from the fridge. “Is Jenny happy with it?”

“It’s great,” I answer. My heart pumps too hard, and I picture a big ugly hand around it, squeezing ruthlessly, forcing the blood to gush through my veins. Arteries. Whatever. “It’s really charming.” What are we talking about? Oh, yes. My sister’s place.

He waits for more. He likes my sister.

I wonder if he finds her attractive.

God, where did that come from?

“Adam, I need to talk to you about something.”

“Sure, babe.” He waits, his dark eyes expectant. I love his brown eyes. Mine are boring blue; Jenny got our father’s dark, dark eyes, almost black. But Adam’s are light brown, whiskey-colored and special.

“Um…how were the girls today?” I ask, suddenly dreading what I’m about to say next.

“They were great. Well, Rose was a maniac at the museum, and Grace’s shoe came untied, and you know how she hates that, and I had to take all three of them into the ladies’ room. Got a lot of dirty looks from some women, but really, what am I supposed to do? Take them into the men’s room? No way.” He grins. “My babies aren’t going to see a man’s junk for forty more years.”

I smile. A tiny ray of relief seems to break through the clouds around my head, checking to see if it’s okay to stay.

This is not how a cheating husband talks. It had to have been a wrong number.

“So what did you want to talk about?” he asks.

I fold my hands, which still seem to have a tremor. “Well, um, yesterday, something happened.”

“What?”

Should I even show him? Maybe it would be better if I didn’t. Maybe—

“Rachel? Hello? What, honey?”

I showed Jenny, and I asked Leo, and he’s a stranger. I have to show my husband of the past nine years. He deserves to know.

I pull my phone from my bag and tap on the text so the disgusting picture fills the screen. Slide it across the counter to him.

Color rises from the collar of his polo shirt, up his neck, into his jaw and cheeks, a heavy, dark red.

Guilty.

Oh, God. Guilty.

Adam clears his throat, then slides the phone back to me. “What is that?”

“You know what it is, Adam.” My voice trembles.

“Yeah, okay, I can guess. Who sent it to you? And why would they do that?”

“It was sent to you.”

He blinks. Is his face getting redder? “What are you talking about?”

“When you were putting the girls to bed last night, someone texted this to you. I forwarded it to myself and deleted it off your phone.”

“You deleted it? Why? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me last night?” He presses his lips together. “And why are you checking my phone all of a sudden? Why would you do that?”

“I was putting your jacket in the dry-cleaning bag, and I saw it.”

“So you just… You… Why didn’t you tell me someone’s sending me porn?”

“Who sent it?”

“I don’t know!” His voice slaps off the stainless-steel appliances. “How should I know? Did you call them back? Let me see that again.” He grabs the phone back. “Private number.” He looks up at me. “Could be anybody.”

“Anybody sending a crotch shot, that is.” I sound like Jenny.

He stares at me. “Do you think I’m cheating on you?” His eyes are hard.

I don’t answer. All of a sudden, the tables are turned, and my face is the one that grows hot.

“Jesus, Rachel! Are you kidding me?”

“Keep your voice down,” I say. “Don’t wake the girls.”

“I’m sorry! I’m a little upset! My wife thinks I’m cheating on her. I guess she thinks I’m a really shitty person!”

“Adam, there’s a picture of…that on your phone. What am I supposed to think?”

“Maybe you could think ‘Hey, this must be a mistake, because my husband isn’t some douche-bag scum.’”

“I—I’m sorry, okay?” I take a breath, feel the burn of tears in my eyes. “It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be sent by mistake, that’s all. I’d think you’d be really careful about getting the right number if you were sending that to someone.” Thank you, Leo.

“You told Jenny about this, didn’t you? I bet she had a fucking field day. She hates men these days.”

“She does not. And no, she didn’t have a field day. I showed her because…well, I wasn’t sure what it was. I hoped it was a mistake. I did. But I needed to talk to you about it, and it’s new territory, okay?”

He gives a short laugh. “Yeah. I guess so.” He takes a breath and releases it slowly. “I love you, Rachel. I thought you loved me, too. I’d hope you’d at least give me the benefit of the doubt.”

“Of course I love you, Adam. It’s just very…weird and horrible, and I didn’t know what to ask, or how to talk about this, or…or…”

“Do you believe me?”

His voice is cold and sharp, and suddenly, that terror rears up again.

I don’t want things to change. I have cupcakes to make tomorrow, six dozen, because the girls are all in a different preschool class, and each class needs two dozen cupcakes. Also, I call my mother-in-law every Sunday morning to give her a grandchild report, and what would I say if Adam is cheating on me? And Jenny’s just moved, and there are going to be long, happy dinners and lovely spring evenings on the back patio, and Adam… Adam cried when the girls were born. Really cried. He loves me, and he loves our daughters, and he loves our life.

“Rachel, do you believe me?” he asks again, more loudly.

“Yes. I do.”

He closes his eyes and lets out a long breath. “Thank you.” Then he comes around the counter behind me and slides his arms around me from behind. Kisses my neck. “Baby, I love you. The picture is disgusting, but come on. Don’t be so dramatic next time. Not that there’ll be a next time, please God.”

“You’re right.” Two tears slide down my cheeks, and honestly, I don’t know how to feel. Relieved? Sick? Happy?

I was wrong. It was a mistake.

We go upstairs. We make love. It’s good. It’s us. We know what the other likes, what to say and when, what moves to employ, where to touch for the best effect. It occurs to me that I’m glad our birth control is condoms, and then I push that thought out of my head.

We’re okay. We’re still us. Adam and me and the girls…everything is the same.

It’s just that everything feels so different.

Chapter 5: Jenny

THE NEXT DAY, I have to go to the city for a fitting from a bride who’s so high-maintenance that asking her to come to Cambry-on-Hudson might well cause a brain aneurysm. The gown hangs in its blush-colored bag; I had a hundred of them ordered for Bliss, as well as special hangers that can hold up to twenty-five pounds, because some of these dresses are heavy. The bride, Kendall, is the kind who treats me like a servant, texting and complaining as I kneel at her side, pinning her last-minute changes and adjusting the seams since she’s lost ten pounds in the past two weeks out of sheer rage. To call her bridezilla would be unkind to Japan’s favorite monster.

But first, my sister.

Rachel texted me last night around ten, saying it was all a mistake, and she felt terrible for thinking Adam had cheated. I asked if I could call, but she said she was really tired.

I’m not sure I believe my brother-in-law, and I hate that I’m not sure.

When I first met Adam, Rachel was already overwhelmingly in love. Her first love, really, though she’d had a few boyfriends, always these rather nice, shy, geeky man-child types who wore Doctor Who T-shirts and spoke Klingon. But Adam was different, very sure of himself, and very charismatic. She glowed around him. They dated only a month or so before he proposed—asking for permission from Mom and me first, which won serious points with me and turned the event into an “I Miss Rob” occasion for Mom.

Adam cried when he saw Rachel in the church on their wedding day—it wasn’t just the dress, which, trust me, was amazing, a modified A-line satin and French lace with a sweetheart neckline and delicate capped sleeves. He kept his sense of humor through the infertility years, and he brought Rachel flowers twice a week all through her pregnancy.

He’s also a really good dad, though perhaps not as good as Rachel thinks he is… He’s a little too aware of the fact that he does more than some of his peers, but he’s content to let Rachel do the hard stuff, the getting-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-when-someone-has-the-pukes stuff, the grocery-shopping-with-all-three-of-them-at-once stuff. But he’s there, and he loves them, and he does contribute. And let’s face it. Rachel loves being a stay-at-home mom.

I call Rachel just before I leave the house. “Oh, hey,” she says. “Just a minute, okay? Charlotte, honey, I have to take this, okay? Can you please give that to Daddy? Thank you, sweetheart.” There’s a pause, and I hear a door close. “Hi,” she says.

“How are things today?” I ask.

“Well, I showed him the picture,” she whispers, “and he was really confused and then he got upset that I thought…you know. He has no idea who sent it. But he was really nice about it.”

“Nice about what?”

“About me thinking that maybe he…strayed.”

I press my lips together. “Hmm.”

“So we’re good. I think this is just a case of a mistaken phone number. I just feel really bad for what I thought.”

“Rach, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think your husband is having an affair when Private Number sends him a crotch shot,” I say. “I hope he got that.”

“No, no, he did,” Rachel says. “We’re past it. Actually, we’re just leaving for church, so I have to run, okay? Listen, I’m so sorry about yesterday. I really wanted to help you get settled. I just freaked out.”

“It’s really okay. You deserved to freak out.” I pause. “And I’m glad things aren’t what they seem.”

Except I smell a rat. Leo, a total stranger, smelled a rat. Yes, yes, there’s a chance Adam is telling the truth.

But my gut is telling me he’s not.

“He’s a great husband,” Rachel says. “And you know how the girls adore him.”

“Yeah. I do. You go, hon. I have to run down to the city with a dress.”

“Okay. Hey, tell your friend thanks for me. I’m so embarrassed.”

“My friend?”

“Leo.”

“Oh, right. Okay, have a good day. Talk to you later.”

If Adam is cheating on my sister, I will rip off his testicles. Through his throat.

I pick up the dress and my purse and head outside. Leo is lying on his lounge chair, eyes closed, dog by his side, bottle of beer in his hand. “Hi,” I say. “A little early for drinking, isn’t it?”

“It sure is, Mom,” he says, taking a swig without opening his eyes. The dog lifts his head and growls at me.

“My sister wanted me to say thanks.”

“She’s welcome.”

“And thank you from me, too. You were very nice.”

“No problem. I excel at catching women when they faint.” He scratches behind Loki’s ear, and the dog makes a guttural sound.

There’s something arresting about Leo’s face. Angular and a little thin, unshaven. Despite his easy words, there are two lines between his eyebrows. He looks up at me.

“No eye-fucking,” he says.

“Because you’re gay?” I suggest.

“Only where you’re concerned, darling.” He winks, and though I’ve just been rather brilliantly insulted, I can’t help a smile. “Are you going to the prom?” he asks, gesturing with the beer bottle at the dress bag.

“No.” Placing the dress carefully on the backseat, I secure the hanger onto the hook. “I’m a wedding dress designer.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“That’s a real job? I mean, they all kind of look alike, don’t they?”

“Have a nice day,” I say, waving. Well, my middle finger waves. Leo laughs, and there it is again, that warm pressure in my chest.

* * *

“I WANT YOU to take all the rosettes off,” Kendall says.

We’re in the living room of her parents’ Upper West Side apartment, and I’m kneeling at her feet, my pincushion strapped to my wrist, taking the dress down from a size 00 to microscopic. It looks like her bones are about to slice through her skin.

“Your wedding is in six days, Kendall,” I say. “It’s a little late to change the design completely.”

“Look, I hate them, okay? Just lop them off or something.”

Being a custom wedding dress designer means one thing—the bride gets what the bride wants. We start the process, which takes a year on average, with the bride emailing me pictures of wedding dresses she loves. But there’s a reason she’s not getting one of those, and it’s either that she’s a hard size to fit, or she wants something completely unique.

Kendall wanted something unique. She sent me thirty-nine pictures of dresses she loved, from a minidress to a ball gown with twelve-foot train. I made her seventeen sketches, then, when she finally settled on one—the one festooned with beautiful, creamy rosettes—I ended up making twenty-two alterations to that sketch. Then, when she said she was deliriously happy with the design, I made the pattern. Cut the dress out of muslin and had her come in for a fitting. She wanted the dress changed again; not a problem, but from then on, it would cost her. A lot.

Alas, money was no object. Seven muslin dresses and thousands of dollars later, she signed a contract saying yes, I could proceed with the actual dress. A sleeveless sheath dress with a crisscrossing tulle bodice, a belt made from Swarovski crystals that tied in the back with a long, floating tulle sash and a skirt that made her appear as if she were rising from a giant pile of white silk roses, each of the 278 flowers made by the hand of yours truly. It’s pretty. Of course it is.

All told, the dress will cost almost twenty grand.

“If I cut off the rosettes,” I say patiently, “I’ll have to make another skirt.”

She doesn’t bother looking up from her phone, which chimes with a text. “Oh, Christ, you gotta be kidding me! Mom? Mom!” the blushing bride roars. “Ma! Where the hell are you? Now Linley doesn’t want to be in the wedding, either! Those bitches! How dare they bail on me!”

One wonders.

A half hour later, it’s decided that yes, Kendall will get another skirt, made from tulle to match the bodice, and a full skirt with a sweep train that will trail out six feet behind her. I request payment in full plus aggravation pay—I call it an emergency alteration fee—and wait as her poor mother writes me out a check.

“You’ve been wonderful,” the mom says. “Kendall, hasn’t Jenny been wonderful?”

“What?” Kendall says, dragging her eyes off the phone. Her thumbs continue to tap out her message. “Who’s Jenny? Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

“She’ll make a beautiful bride,” I tell the mom.

“You’re very kind,” she says. “I’ll refer you to all my friends.”

“I really appreciate that.”

Granted, I’m used to badly behaved brides. It can be a stressful time. But believe it or not, even women like Kendall can morph into a sweetheart on the big day. Not always, but sometimes. And happily, most of my brides are much nicer.

The lobby doorman holds the door for me. I stash the dress back in the car and stretch my lower back.

The sky has cleared, the cherry trees are in bloom and I decide to take a walk through Central Park. I love the happy noise of the throngs—kids laughing and yelling, the blur of languages I don’t speak, a homeless man wishing everyone a blessed day, the thunk of bass music from an area where kids are doing backflips, entertaining the tourists.

The city has been my home since I was eighteen, and though I’ve only lived in COH a day, I feel as if I’ve been away for weeks.

Central Park is truly the crown jewel of the city, with its curving trails, the statues and flower beds awash in red tulips and yellow daffodils. People are out in droves—runners and parents and nannies and students. A lot of babies are being aired out today. I would pick that one, I think, eyeing a beautiful little boy with bushy black hair and enormous eyes. Or maybe that little girl in the purple windbreaker and red plaid skirt.

There’s a man sitting on a bench, reading. An actual book, too, not a phone. I can’t quite make out the title, but that doesn’t matter. He’s blond and wears glasses, and he has a scarf around his neck, but it’s not dreadfully self-conscious. He seems to be about forty. No wedding ring. Nice face.

I consider talking to him. What to say, though? “Hi! Want to father some kids?” seems a little blunt. I glance around, hoping for inspiration.

Oh.

I seem to have wandered all the way across the park to the East Side. Two blocks from my old place. Owen’s place, rather. Paging Dr. Freud…

I could visit them. You know…for self-torment purposes, in case my bride wasn’t difficult enough. I could ask to smell Natalia’s head. Maybe put her in my purse, which would easily fit a baby. I actually look to judge the baby-capacity of my bag. Yep. It could work. I’d make sure to move my sewing scissors first.

I turn around and face the scarf-wearing reader. “Hi. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t look up. New Yorkers.

“What are you reading?” I ask more loudly.

He raises his eyes to me. “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” he asks with a nice smile.

“I was just wondering what you were reading.”

He holds the book up. “Lord of the Rings. My third or fourth time, actually. I’m sort of a geek about it.”

My wedding dress looks like Arwen’s when she finally sees Aragorn again. (Yes, yes, I’m referencing the movie, not the book. Sue me.) My nieces are our tiny flower girls, and Rachel wears pale green as my matron of honor. Mom has a boyfriend and doesn’t sob about Dad. For a wedding gift, I give him a first-printing edition of LOTR, and—

And my fiancé’s boyfriend sits down and kisses him. “Hi, darling, sorry I’m late. Brought you a cappuccino, though.”

“Have a nice day,” I say, but they’re busy kissing.

It only takes me two minutes to get to Owen’s place. I still have the code to the building, but I buzz 15A just the same. “It’s Jenny,” I say, cringing a little.

“Jenny! How wonderful!” comes Ana-Sofia’s voice.

Five minutes later, I’m sitting in my former living room, holding my former husband’s child, accepting a cup of coffee from his current wife, who’s back in her regular clothes. It’s been thirteen days, after all. Why go through all that mushy belly stuff when you’re clearly on Darwin’s list of favorite children?

“Do you remember Jenny?” Owen asks, smiling down at his daughter. “She helped you into this world.”

“She’s incredibly beautiful,” I say honestly. Not a pore to be seen. Rosebud mouth, full, lovely cheeks. “She looks like—” you, I was about to say, but I clear my throat. “Like Ana-Sofia.” I smile at my replacement.

“Thank God for small favors,” Owen says, leaning over my shoulder to stroke his daughter’s cheek with one finger.

She doesn’t. She looks just like Owen, the same shock of black hair, the same sweet eyes, and I remember in a furnace-blast of embarrassment how I used to look at Owen when he was asleep and picture our children.

Funny how I didn’t think this was going to be so hard.

There’s a flash. Ana-Sofia has taken my picture. I imagine Ana-Sofia showing it to Natalia someday. There’s poor Aunt Jenny, just before she went crazy. We should visit her in the asylum this week. “I’ll send it to you, yes?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say. Who wouldn’t want a picture of her ex and his baby and her doleful self, after all? Maybe I’ll blow it up and hang it over my couch. “So I just wanted to stop by. I had a fitting a couple blocks from here, but I should head home. Still have lots of unpacking to do.”

“We can’t wait to see the new place,” Ana-Sofia says, taking the warm little baby from my arms. It’s all I can do not to grab the baby back. “And we’re so excited about the grand opening of Bliss!”

The thing is, she’s sincere. I want so much to hate her—to hate them both—but they’re just too fucking nice.

“I can’t wait, either,” I say in that oh-so-jolly voice I adopt around them. I wonder if there are any escort services in COH.

I should really get out of this friendship, I think as I walk back across the park to the garage where I parked. I know hanging around Owen and Ana-Sofia isn’t doing me any favors.

It’s just that when Owen broke my heart, he also begged me to stay friends with him, saying he couldn’t picture life without me, that ever since we’d met, I’d been incredibly important to him, and even if we weren’t working out (news to me), it would kill him if this was the end.

I’m still not sure if that was kind or incredibly selfish of him. I’ve been going with kind.

I moved out of our apartment the day after Owen told me he didn’t want to stay married, and it felt like I’d slept through the apocalypse. The air had seemed too heavy to breathe, and panic had flashed through me in razor-wire slices. How can I do this? How can I do this? How can we be apart? How can he not want me anymore? What the fuck went on here? Where was I when it all went to hell?

The only island on the horizon had been the idea that the following week, I’d be having lunch with him.

You may think I’m quite an ass for hanging around, hoping for a few kind words. I understand. I feel that way myself quite often. The thing is, there will be a lot of kind words. Let’s not even bring up the great food those two always have on hand.

Owen still asks about my work. He loves my sister and nieces and mother. He thinks I’m pretty and funny and smart. He admires my creativity. We have a similar sense of humor. Conversation comes easily, and since the day I met him, and even through our quickie divorce and his marriage, I have yet to go three days without hearing from him. Even when he’s been in a third-world country with Doctors Without Borders. Even now.

So. Being Owen’s ex-wife is still better than any relationship I’ve ever had, except for one—when I was his actual wife.

It’s not just his job—Dr. Perfect of the Great Hands and Compassionate Heart. It’s not just his looks, which sure don’t hurt. I always had a thing for Ken Wantanabe, after all.

It’s all those things and just how golden he is. How privileged I felt as the chosen one, Owen Takahashi’s wife.

In most marriages, lust and love become tempered by normalcy. If you hear your husband farting in the bathroom seconds before he emerges and asks if you want to fool around, you generally don’t want to fool around. You might, after a few minutes, but you have to forgive your husband for…well, for being human. For eating a bean burrito. After all, you ate the bean burrito, too.

You discover his irritating habits. He uses your shampoo and doesn’t mention when it’s gone. He leaves his workout clothes in a sweaty pile in the bathroom. When his parents visit, he runs out to the package store around the corner to buy his dad’s favorite beer, even though you reminded him yesterday to pick it up, and that errand takes him ten times as long as it should, and you have to text him twice to say Where the hell are you? Your mother wants to know why I’m not pregnant yet! and he doesn’t respond, claiming not to have received that text when he finally walks in the door.

Maybe he grunts at you when he comes in home from work, but he gets down on all fours and croons to the dog for ten minutes, using that special voice that sounds vaguely familiar because he used to use it for you.

Maybe he’s just boring, and you sit across the table from him night after night as he drones on and on about the tuna sandwich he had at lunch, amazed that this man is the reason you didn’t go into the Peace Corps.

Yeah. But it was never like that with Owen and me. I’m serious.

If he was sick, which hardly ever happened, he insisted on staying in the guest room—and using the guest bathroom. I’d make him soup and he’d accept it, but the man is a doctor, and the last thing he wanted to do was spread germs. A day or two later, he’d emerge, clean and showered, and he’d apologize for his downtime, and then make me dinner.

But if I was sick…oh, happy day! I loved being sick. And here’s a secret. In the five years Owen and I were married, I was never once sick. Just don’t tell him that.

I admit, I was feeling a little neglected one night. I’d made a really nice dinner, but he was late coming home from rebuilding children’s faces, so I could hardly complain, could I? As the risotto coagulated on the stove, I waited. He texted that he’d be half an hour late. After half an hour, he texted again. So sorry. Closer to 8. At 8:30 p.m., he came through the door. I pretended not to mind, but I’d had this fabulous call—Bride magazine was featuring one of my dresses on the cover, and I’d been saving the news all day long, because I wanted to tell him in person.

So I poured the wine and Owen and I sat down—I’d set the table beautifully—and we ate the now-gelatinous and slimy risotto, which Owen proclaimed delicious. He was late, he explained, because he’d had to rebuild a child’s nose in a particularly difficult surgery, and he’d wanted to stay until the little guy woke up from anesthesia, and then the little guy wanted to play Pokémon with Owen, and he just couldn’t say no, and the parents were crying with amazement that their son was once again so beautiful and would no longer have to endure the stares and cruelty of the unkind, and the horrible fire that took the kid’s nose could now be a memory and not a flashback every time the kid thought about, touched, saw or had someone look at his face.

The cover of Bride now seemed pretty unimportant.

“Is something wrong, darling?” Owen finally asked.

And because I couldn’t say I’m tired of you being so damn perfect, especially when I made risotto! I said, “No, no.” Pause. “I’m not feeling that great. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Oh, no! I’m sorry! And here I’ve been going on so long! What’s the matter, honey?”

I spewed out a few made-up symptoms—aches, some chills, a sore head—feeling perversely happy with my lie and my husband’s subsequent guilt and attention. He tucked me into bed, found a movie I loved, then went to clean up the kitchen. “I’m running out for a few minutes,” he called. “You need anything?”

“No,” I said, immediately peeved once again. Stupid hospital.

But he returned fifteen minutes later with a pint of the notoriously hard-to-find Ben & Jerry’s Peanut Brittle ice cream. My favorite. “I thought this might be the best medicine,” he said with that sweet smile. Then he lay on the bed next to me as I ate straight from the carton. Later, we held hands. There was no guest-room sleeping for me, no sir. Owen wanted to be close, in case I needed him. He stroked my hair as I fell asleep, told me he loved me.

And he did. But he never needed me. I didn’t complete him. He felt we both deserved more.

All those other marriages—those imperfect marriages with their smelly bathrooms—had something ours didn’t. That moment when you’ve had the worst day ever, and you come home, and you can’t go one more step without a long, hard hug from your spouse. Only they have the arms that will do. Only they really understand.

I don’t think Owen ever had a day when his life was in the shitter. When we met, he was already a star resident, on his way to greatness. And when I had a crappy day, when someone shot down my work, or when a buyer treated me like an assembly-line worker, when a bride had a tantrum because I had done exactly what she asked, I felt as if my complaints were petty and unimportant. After all, I still had my nose, didn’t I?

I told myself that it was good, keeping things in perspective. In order to have interesting things to talk about with my husband, the heroic saver of faces, the smiter of deformities, the changer of lives, I’d listen to TED Talks on my computer while I worked. I’d read important novels. Listen to NPR in order to have interesting things to contribute to our dinner conversations.

But I never let myself have regular feelings when I was with Owen. I was almost afraid to bitch about Marie, the mean and less-talented designer who trashed me to our coworkers after Vera told me my work was “glorious.” When a homeless man peed himself on the subway, and I only noticed because it leaked into my own seat, it was such a sad and horrifying occurrence that I wept as I gave him all the money in my wallet to the disapproving stares of my fellow riders. I cried all the way home and took a forty-five-minute shower. Threw that skirt in the trash and triple bagged it. It was one of my favorites.

But I didn’t tell Owen. He’d just returned from Sri Lanka, fixing faces marred by war, after all. My brush with the homeless man…pah. It was nothing compared to what Owen had seen. So I kept that, and all the other little vagaries and irritations of life, to myself.

There’s that saying—true love makes you a better person. I thought at the time that this was my evolution into a better person. What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t better; I was just less me. I wanted to vent about Marie and her petty little pecks. I wanted to be consoled about sitting in someone else’s urine.

But it was nothing compared to what Owen dealt with every day.

And so Owen and I had a very happy marriage, a seamless relationship of mutual affection, love, interesting conversations and enjoyable trips. When I felt the need to be human, I faked a mild virus, and Owen would attend to me as he might a patient, and I felt more special and loved than at any other time in our years together.

We were happy.

Except I saw it, that slow erosion of love. Of interest. Of that delight that Owen used to feel toward me, from the very first day we met, that incredibly flattering sense that Owen believed I was the most charming, adorable person he’d ever encountered. For a year, maybe two, I saw Owen’s love flickering, like electricity during a thunderstorm. He was never cruel, never impatient. He was simply leaving me, a surgical centimeter at a time.

I don’t think he was consciously aware of it, but I saw it, and I fought it, believe me. Tried to rock his world in bed, though sex had always been lovely and comfortable and intimate. After reading an article in Cosmo, I talked dirty to him one night as we were making love—dropped the f-bomb, as instructed. He pulled back and said, “What did you just say?” looking as stunned as if I’d just slit his throat.

I invited our friends over more frequently to show Owen that we were the couple to be, that we had this great life, of course we did, we were having a wine-tasting dinner! See? I tried to book a vacation, but Owen said he couldn’t take the time. I booked a weekend in Maine instead, so we could walk on the stony beaches and take a boat ride to the Cranberry Islands, so we could get sloppy eating lobster and laugh and hold hands and sleep late. But Owen had an emergency surgery that day—a little girl shot in the face—and he had to stay the entire weekend at the hospital.

So, in all honesty, I wasn’t all that surprised when he came home that fateful night and told me he wasn’t living the life he felt he was meant for. That though he loved me, he couldn’t help feeling a little…empty…lately. It wasn’t my fault, of course. It was just a feeling that his destiny lay elsewhere.

I knew it was coming. It didn’t make it any easier.

Is there anything more humiliating than begging someone to stay with you? To keep loving you? The answer is no. I begged anyway. For five solid hours, I begged and sobbed and shouted. He couldn’t leave me. He was everything to me. Please, everything should just go back to how it was when we were happy.

But he was resolute. “You’re my best friend,” he said, and there were tears in his eyes. “Jenny, I’m so, so sorry. I hate doing this, but I feel like I have to. The same way I knew I had to go to medical school, even though my dad wanted so much for me to be a lawyer. It’s not you. It’s just… I have to.”

It’s not you. The stupidest line in the history of lines.

I moved out the next day. Of course it was me.

Three months later, Owen proved that fact by meeting Ana-Sofia. We were having our weekly lunch, and he hadn’t said anything. I just knew. I could tell, because I recognized the look on his face; he used to look at me that way. “So you’ve met someone,” I said.

He hesitated.

“Please be honest, Owen.”

“Yes,” he said. “I think I have.”

A month later, he introduced me to Ana-Sofia, whose first words to me were, “Owen has sung your praises for so long! I’ve been dying to meet you.” She hugged me. I hugged her back.

And that’s how it’s been. I want to get away from them. I want to be close to them. I love them. I hate them. I feel hateful that I have to love them, and I guiltily love that I hate them. I vow to be busy the next time they call.

My phone rings as I pull up onto Magnolia Avenue. “Hi, it’s Ana-Sofia! Jenny, I’m so distracted, I completely forgot to ask you. I have tickets for the Alexander McQueen exhibit, and you were the first person I thought of! Would you like to go?”

That exhibit has been sold out for months. Of course she has tickets.

“Yeah, I’d love to,” I say. “Thanks, Ana!”

“Wonderful! I’ll email you details. Bye!”

I take a deep breath and get out of the car.

Leo is once again in the lounge chair. He seems sound asleep. I can tell he got up at some point, though, because he’s wearing a dark gray suit, white shirt, a striped tie. His arms are folded tight across his chest, and there’s a slight frown on his face. The wind, which has gotten nearly cold, ruffles his hair. Beside him is a bouquet of flowers.

He looks…sad. No, not sad. Lost, as if he forgot he was supposed to go to a party and just gave up, found this chair and hunkered down for the night. A well-dressed homeless man and his mangy dog.

I wonder if I should wake him.

Instead, I go inside, lugging Kendall’s dress with me. A second later, I come out again with the red plaid blanket Andreas gave me for Christmas—cashmere…it pays to have friends with exquisite taste—and open the gate.

Loki growls. I ignore him; he’s not terribly big, and he doesn’t look as if he could spring to his master’s defense without a trampoline. Indeed, his lip curls back, but the rest of him remains lying on his pillow bed.

Trying not to indulge in too much gooey tenderness—after all, I’ve known Leo for all of twenty-seven hours—I spread the blanket over him, then go back up the steps to my new home, put Pandora on Kelly Clarkson and start unpacking.

* * *

A FEW HOURS later, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Leo, holding my blanket in one hand, the bouquet of flowers in the other. “Is this yours?” he asks, lifting the blanket.

“Yes. You looked cold.”

“I was fine.”

“You’re welcome.” I give him a pointed look and take the blanket.

“Thank you.”

We look at each other for a minute. “Come on in,” I offer, and he does. “I was going to ask you to come up anyway. The living room light doesn’t work.” It’s a gorgeous fixture, authentic Victorian, I think, ivory with a leaf pattern embossed into it.

“What the hell are you listening to?”

“This? This is Toby Keith.” Leo stares at me like I’m an exhibit at the zoo. Right. He’s a pianist or a musician or a snob. “Who are the flowers for?”

“Oh. Uh, my mother. She didn’t like them.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“She decided she didn’t like orange.”

“Ah.” I wait for him to offer me the flowers. He doesn’t. “How about fixing that light, Leo?”

He sits on the couch, puts the flowers down and takes a bottle of beer out of his suit pocket, pops the top off with the opener on his key chain and sits back, putting his feet on the coffee table. “Have you tried changing the lightbulb?”

“Make yourself at home. And yes. It’s not the lightbulb.”

“Sounds like the switch is broken. Maybe a problem with the wiring. Good thing there’s a lot of natural light in here.”

“Still, it would be even better if the super would fix my light. I believe you are the super, Leo?”

“I am. But I’m not that good at fixing stuff. I got this job because of my looks.” He smiles.

“Well, then, since you’re inept, would you call an electrician for me?” I ask.

“I’ll make it my life’s new mission. Can it wait till tomorrow, or are baby sea otters dying because your light won’t go on?”

I sigh with exaggerated patience. “It can wait till tomorrow.”

He takes another drink. It’s an IPA, which I quite like.

“Bring me a beer next time,” I say.

“Buy your own beer.” He smiles as he says it, and damn, he’s just too adorable. “How’s your sister?”

Right. I sigh and sit down. “She’s… I don’t know.” I grab a throw pillow and smoosh it against my stomach. Rachel had texted me a picture of the girls earlier, all of them on the slide at the park. No note. “She says she’s good.”

“But she’s not good?” Leo says.

I pause. He was awfully nice last night. Caught Rachel, scooped her up in his arms and set her on this very couch. As I was saying, “Rachel? Rach? Rachel!” in a panicked voice, he got a damp dishcloth and put it on her forehead, then stuck around to see if she was okay. I guess he has a right to ask.

“It seems her husband has no idea who sent it,” I say.

“Ah. It was all a mistake, then?”

“That’s what we’re going with.”

He shrugs, a Gallic gesture that belies his very Irish name, a shrug that says, Ah, poor kid, people are stupid, whatcha gonna do. “She seems sweet.”

“She is.” I pause, not wholly comfortable with the topic. “So why the suit, Leo? Do you have a date? Those flowers aren’t really for your mom, are they?”

“Yes, they were. I don’t date. I’m strictly for recreational purposes.”

I feel an eye-roll coming on. “Then were you giving a performance?”

“Nope.”

“Shall I keep guessing, or does your dog need you and you really should be leaving?”

“I visit my mom every Sunday.”

“You sure you’re not gay?”

He laughs. “You’re all right, Jane.”

“Jenny.”

“Whatever.” He looks around my apartment. “So you like the apartment?”

“Sure. It’s beautiful. Bigger than what I’m used to. And Cambry’s my hometown, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you grow up around here?”

He looks at me carefully, taking another drink from his beer bottle. “Iowa.”

“A corn-fed Midwestern boy, huh?”

“That’s me.” He takes another pull of beer. “So what did you do today? You’re a wedding planner?”

“We need to work on your listening skills,” I say. “I’m a wedding dress designer. I just opened Bliss here in town.” This fails to elicit any reaction. “I had a fitting in the city for a very irritating bride, and then I took a walk in Central Park, and then I went to see my, uh, friends.”

He gives me an incredulous look. “Not the ex-husband and his lovely wife?”

“How did you—Yes.” He cocks an eyebrow. “And their beautiful new baby,” I add.

“Are you shitting me?”

“Not that it’s your business, but we’ve stayed friends.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Yes, we have. Your dog growled at me, by the way. While I was covering you with your blankie.”

“You put Mother Teresa to shame. Back to the ex… Why would you stay friends? Isn’t that torture?”

“Are you married, Leo?”

“Do I look married?”

“Divorced? Separated? Are you a therapist? In other words, do you know anything about me or Owen or Ana-Sofia or marriage and divorce? Huh? Do you?”

“No on all fronts, and Ana-Sofia, sweet. That is a smokin’ hot name. Is she beautiful?”

“Some people find her attractive.”

He smiles. Just a little, but it works.

“Yeah, she’s gorgeous,” I admit. “As for why we stayed friends, maybe he was so devastated by our breakup that he couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing me anymore. Maybe we still share a very special bond and despite marriage not working out, we want to stay in each other’s lives. Maybe I really admire and respect his—”

“Stop, stop, I can’t stand any more.” Leo gets up and glances at the ceiling. “Call someone about that light. I just moved here myself and don’t know anyone. Oh, and could you have him stop down at my place? My toaster doesn’t work unless I plug it in the hallway.”

I look at him for a second. “You blew a fuse. That’s probably why my light won’t go on.”

“Ah. Fascinating.”

“Where’s the fuse box?”

“What’s a fuse box?”

“Are you serious? How did you get this job?”

“I already told you. Good looks and charm.”

“I can’t wait to meet the charm part. Come on, I’ll show you what a fuse box is, pretty boy. Take me to your cellar. Do you know where that is?”

We go out my front door, through the gate, where I earn another snarl from Loki. “That dog is really good-looking and charming,” I say.

“He’s old. Be respectful. The cellar’s through here.” He lets me into his apartment, into a tiny foyer, which opens into a large living room. There’s an upright piano topped with piles of paper and music books. It’s too dark to see anything else.

“This way,” he says, pointing toward the small, sleek kitchen. He opens the cellar door, and we go down. It occurs to me that I’m going into a dark place with a stranger, and even as I think the thought, I know this guy is no threat to me at all.

“You’re surprisingly quiet,” Leo says, clicking on a light.

“I’m assessing the odds of you murdering me down here.”

“And?”

“I hereby deem you harmless.”

“How emasculating,” he says. “What are you looking for again?”

“This, my son. Behold the fuse box,” I say, pointing to the gray box on the wall. I flip open the panel and, sure enough, a switch is over to the right instead of the left. I push it back. “Modern technology. Show me your toaster.”

His toaster is plugged into the same outlet as the coffeepot, which is on the same circuit as the microwave. “Just move the toaster in over there and you should be fine,” I tell him. “This is an old house. You might get an electrician in here to update the amperage.”

“Did you learn all this in wedding school?”

He’s tall. The kitchen light makes his hair gleam with copper, and the line of his jaw is sharp and strong.

“The eye-fucking, Jane. It has to stop.” But he smiles as he says it.

“So you teach down here?” I ask, stepping back. Since he made himself at home upstairs, I do the same, flipping on a light and wandering through the living room. A gray couch and red chair complement the red-and-blue Oriental rug. There’s a bookcase filled with tomes about the great composers. A bust of Beethoven glares at me next to a photo of a lake surrounded by pine trees.

The place is very, very neat and, aside from Beethoven, oddly devoid of personality, which isn’t what I’d expect from Leo, not that I know him well, obviously. But still. I’d expect sloppy and welcoming, not sterile and…well, sterile. It looks like a model home, aside from the sheet music.

“So you just teach piano, or do you play anywhere?” I ask.

“I just teach. Sometimes I compose a score for something.”

“Like a movie?”

He smiles. “No, nothing that complicated. Audio books, mostly.”

“Neat. Did you go to school for music?”

“Yep. Juilliard.”

“Really? Wow, Leo. Very impressive. Why don’t you perform anywhere? You must be great.”

“In the world of concert pianists, I’m probably a B minus.”

“In the world of humans, I bet you’re great.”

“What do you know? You listen to country music.” Another smile.

“How narrow-minded of you. Taylor Swift is a musical genius.”

“Stevie Wonder is a musical genius, Jane. Taylor Swift is a woman still bemoaning what happened to her in high school.”

“It’s Jenny. My name is Jenny. So you do listen to Taylor Swift.”

“I don’t. But I don’t live in a cave, either.”

“No, this is a very nice place. Very tidy.” I reach out to touch a key on the piano. “Can you play me something?”

“Sure,” he says. He leans over the keys and taps out a few notes. “And that was ‘Lightly Row.’ Any more requests?”

“How about ‘Paparazzi’ by Lady Gaga?”

“Get out,” he says, leaning against the piano. There’s that smile again. He slides his hands into his pockets. “Thanks for fixing my toaster.”

“I didn’t touch your toaster.”

“Well, you can touch my toaster anytime you want, Jenny Tate.”

So. He does know my name. And he’s flirting. And he’s tall and lanky and his face is really fun to look at, all angular planes and wide smile and lovely crinkles around his eyes.

His smile drops.

“Don’t get any ideas, missy,” he says.

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like, ‘Hey, my husband married someone else and has a new baby and I’m still single but there’s an incredibly hot guy who lives downstairs, so why not?’ I’m for recreation only.”

“I’m not thinking those things, but bravo on your excellent self-esteem.”

He goes to the foyer, opens the door and waits for me to follow, which I do. “You’re thinking all those things. It’s written all over your face.”

“You know, Leo, in the day and a half we’ve known each other, I don’t remember pinning you to the ground and forcing myself on you—”

“Yeah, I hope I’d remember that, too.”

“—but I’m really not interested in you. Besides, you have all those moms and thirtysomethings who are dying to learn piano, as the kids are calling it these days. So go recreate with them, pal.”

A smile tugs at his mouth. “You want to have dinner this week?”

I open my mouth, close it, then open it again. “On a date?”

He throws his hands in the air. “What did I just say? No, not on a date.”

“For recreation?”

“For dinner.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to eat, or I’ll die,” he says. “Never mind. It’s a bad idea. The offer’s been revoked. Bye, Jenny. See you around.”

He smiles as he closes the door, gently, in my face.

It’s only when I get back to my apartment that I realize he left the flowers on my coffee table.

Chapter 6: Rachel

MY MOOD OVER the next few days is shiny and hard and relentless. Nothing can get me down—not Charlotte putting a meatball in her diaper, not Rose’s tantrum at the grocery store when I wouldn’t let her swim with the lobsters, not Grace stonily telling me she loves Aunt Jenny more. I’m so, so relieved about Adam, and filled with energy. The house has never been cleaner. The girls and I weeded the flower beds—well, they played with shovels while I weeded. I baked and froze eight loaves of banana bread.

It’s only at night that my stomach aches.

On Monday, I take the girls to nursery school for their four hours of doing exactly what we do at home—reading, singing, crafts, snacks—and then go over to Jenny’s to help her unpack and organize and clean. She asks how I am; I tell her I’m great, and we leave it at that. I invite Mom to have lunch on Tuesday, and the girls are sweet and affectionate with her. I listen to her stories about Dad—I even encourage them, nodding and smiling as if I’ve never heard them before. When she leaves and the girls are still asleep, I bake so much that when the girls wake up, I put them in the minivan and drop off cupcakes for Jenny, another batch for her nice building super—though why a two-family house needs a super is a mystery—and three dozen for the homeless shelter.

On Wednesday, we have Mommy and Me swimming, and when we’re in the pool, Clarice Vanderberger tells me I sure am in a good mood. I smile and say yes, what’s not to be happy about, gorgeous weather we’re having. Then I slosh over to Grace, who’s a little too good of a swimmer and seems to be in love with Melissa, the swimming instructor, and resentful of the fact that Melissa is helping Rose.

“Can you believe Jared Brewster is actually going ahead and marrying that woman?” Elle Birkman asks me as her son laps pool water. God knows what kind of chemicals and germs and bodily fluids are in the pool, but she doesn’t tell him to stop.

“Mama! Mama! Mama! Watch!” Rose orders as she dips her chin in the water as Melissa holds her. “Face in, Mama!”

“Honey, that’s so good!” I say. “Oh, Charlotte, honey, don’t drink the water. It’s only for swimming.”

“Hunter’s drinking it!” Charlotte says. Grace tugs my hand.

“Hunter, honey, it’s yucky.”

Elle doesn’t chime in. “I mean, men will be men, but he doesn’t have to marry her,” she says instead. “Has he talked to you about it? It’s hard to believe he’ll go through with it.”

Jared is my oldest friend. Jenny and I have always been so close that it was hard for me to find another person I liked as much, but Jared was special. The Brewsters lived up the hill from us, so technically, we were neighbors, though his house was really posh; they even had a live-in housekeeper. He was that rarest of boys—clean, for one, and nice, the type who’d ask you if you’d read a book or seen a TV show, then listen as you answered. Riding the school bus cemented our friendship; we sat together every day from kindergarten through eighth grade. He went to Phillips Exeter Academy for high school, but even then, we stayed in touch. Mom used to ask if we were dating—and pray that we were—but we weren’t. It wasn’t like that. But he’s kind and nice and funny and comfortable as flannel pajamas. In addition to being my oldest friend, he’s Adam’s coworker at Brewster, Buckley and Bowman, or Triple B, as they call it.

So I’m not about to gossip behind his back.

“You guys talking about Jared?” Claudia calls from the other side of the pool, unfettered by loyalty.

“Yes,” Elle says at the same time I say no. Grace yanks on my hand again, and Elle tows Hunter through the water to Claudia’s side of the pool for a better gossip partner.

In the changing room as I wrestle my damp daughters back into their little dresses, Elle strips off her suit to make sure everyone—including the kids—is treated to a view of her new breasts. Claudia rolls her eyes, and I smile back. Personally, I thought the “before” pair was more attractive, but Elle insisted that Hunter had ruined her body.

The body looks pretty great to me.

She has a bikini wax.

So did the woman in the picture.

In fact, Elle’s body is pretty damn perfect. No stretch marks… She had a C-section two weeks before her due date. The Hollywood, she called it. The scar is barely visible. Her ass is round and high, her stomach perfectly toned.

I’m suddenly cold.

Is it possible that Elle sent the picture?

“Mommy, wrong foot, wrong foot, wrong foot!” Rose yells cheerfully. She loves the echo in here. She’s right, though. I switch feet and have better luck getting her little sneaker on.

Adam doesn’t even like Elle. Says she’s a climber. But maybe he does like her. I don’t know why I’m thinking about it. That picture was sent by mistake.

My stomach doesn’t feel so good.

“Okay, girls, sit tight. Mommy’s going to get dressed, too.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them, Rachel,” says Kathleen Rhodes. She has two sets of twins, ages seven and four—another in-vitro mom—and she’s been really kind and helpful, loaning me books on getting your baby to sleep through the night, inviting us to playdates. Not many people want three kids in addition to their own. Kathleen doesn’t mind a bit.

“Thanks,” I say.

I pull the curtain behind me in the changing room and peel off my wet suit. It’s a retro-style one-piece, red with white polka dots and wide shoulder straps. I liked it when I bought it, but now it seems matronly.

Well. I am a matron, after all.

I look at my reflection in the mirror. Unlike the mirrors in Nordstrom or Bergdorf, it’s not a magical mirror, making me look taller and more slender than I really am.

For the most part, I love my body. I’m proud of what it did, percolating three babies at once, nursing them afterward. There’s a little pooch of skin that no amount of crunches has been able to vanquish, but I’m the same size as I was in college. My breasts fared pretty well, too. Granted, they’re not what they were when I was twenty, but they’re hardly embarrassments. In fact, Kathleen once said she envied how I bounced back from pregnancy. Told me it took her four years. She still carries some extra weight, but she carries it well.

Adam has always been complimentary…though now that I think of it, maybe not as much lately.

My body is a mother’s body. It’s hopefully a MILF’s body, but it’s a mother’s body, no doubt. My stretch marks, once a lurid red, have faded to tiny silvery marks, like a small school of fish. I can feel them more than I can really see them. On the rare occasions that I get to take a nice long bath, I find myself stroking them as I read.

I’m average. That’s the word for it. This is an average body. It’s not bad. For a nearly forty-year-old mother of triplets, it’s really good.

But it’s not Elle’s body.

“Elle works out with a personal trainer five days a week,” Kathleen tells me ten minutes later when I admit my insecurity. We’re hunched over, buckling the kids in their car seats. Our cars, both minivans, are side by side. “Do you want to stick your kids in day care so you can go to the gym? Or drink kale shakes for breakfast?”

“No,” I said. “I definitely don’t.”

“And you’re fucking gorgeous, Rachel,” she says. I’ve always been both shocked and impressed by her potty mouth. “Edward, if you bite me again, you won’t have any dessert until Christmas.” She turns back to me. “You okay, Rach?”

“Oh, sure,” I say, sliding the door shut. “I just… I don’t know. I guess I’m at the age where I’m getting…”

“Invisible?”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but there it is. Very few men look at a woman wrangling three toddlers. And I don’t have time to look at them. “Yeah. Invisible.”

“I know how you feel. The other day, this guy at the deli—you know, Gold’s? The short guy with earrings?” I nod. “Well, he handed me my baloney and said, ‘Here you go, beautiful,’ and I was so fucking grateful! I mean, I used to get that all the time. All the time. And now, nothing. It takes longer and longer to pull off even not bad. Beautiful left on my thirty-fifth birthday. So I wanted to kiss this guy and buy him a car.” She hands Edward a juice box, gives one to Niall and closes the door. “Enjoy it while you still have it. You want to get coffee?”

“Maybe next week,” I tell her. “I think I’ll drop by Adam’s office for lunch.”

I call our babysitter from the car. “Hi, Donna, it’s Rachel Carver.”

“Donna! Donna!” Charlotte shouts happily, and the other girls pick up the chant.

I smile. “I know this is last-minute, but I was wondering if you were free to babysit the girls today.”

“I’d love to,” she says instantly. “When do you want me to come by?”

“Twenty minutes?” I suggest.

Donna Ignaciato is every mother’s dream—a retired widow who lives down the street, loves children and was deprived of her grandchildren when her son moved to Oregon last year. She’s the kind of grandmother my mom is not—hands-on, affectionate, completely at home, the kind of babysitter who will take the laundry out of the dryer and fold it, and leave the girls cleaner and happier than when you left. I haven’t used her much—just when Jenny hasn’t been free, because she loves to spend time with the girls. My mom isn’t the babysitting type. “All of them?” she said when I asked her to watch the kids this past winter. “At the same time?”

“No, Lenore,” Adam said. “We want you to lock two of them in the cellar, and just rotate them out.” I smiled, and Mom whipped out her ultimate guilt answer.

“If your father was alive, we could do it together, but…”

I let her off the hook, as I always do. It’s sort of my job—the softer, more understanding sister. Besides, I’d worry constantly if Mom was in charge.

When Donna gets to the house, the girls swarm her, and I go upstairs and shower. Blow-dry my hair, put on makeup, dress carefully in a pink-and-black-checked dress and pink cardigan, the dangly silver earrings Adam gave me for Christmas, and the trifold, heart-shaped locket that has a picture of each of my girls. A bracelet. Black heels—but low, because it’s daytime. Perfume, even.

Five days ago, I accused my husband of having an affair. And while it’s understandable why I thought what I did—and though he’s very generously let it go—damage has been done.

“You’re pretty, Mama,” Grace says when I come downstairs. She kisses my knee, and I stroke her silky hair.

“I should be back around three,” I tell Donna, who’s already cutting up apple slices for a snack. “Girls, listen to Donna, and have fun, okay? Give Mama kisses!”

I stop at the gourmet shop that’s just around the corner from Jenny’s shop. Maybe I’ll drop by after my lunch, if I have time.

“Can I help you?” the girl asks, and I order Adam’s favorite sandwich, a turkey-and-avocado-and-bacon panini. Broccoli salad. Two green teas. Three chocolate cookies. For myself, a green salad. That pooch of skin is all too clear in my mind.

Brewster, Buckley and Bowman, Attorneys at Law, is in a dignified old building overlooking the Hudson River. It’s on the same block as my father’s old office, which always gives me a pang; I loved visiting him at work, seeing him in his dentist whites.

I go into the venerable lobby of Triple B, which has been around for seventy years and employs more than forty lawyers. They handle everything from divorce to taxes to criminal defense. Adam’s specialty is corporate law; boring to the outsider, but quite interesting once you understand what he does. Well. I have to think so. I’m married to the guy.

“Rachel!” the receptionist exclaims when I go into the office. “It’s been too long. You here to see Adam?”

“I brought him lunch,” I say, feeling the start of a blush. You’d think I wouldn’t feel shy; I’ve been coming here for years.

“I’ll just buzz him and let him know you’re here,” Lydia says. “In case he’s with a client.”

“Thank you very much,” I say. I flash another smile, gripping the handles of the deli bag more tightly.

“You don’t have to be so shy, you know,” Lydia says.

Oh, okay. I’ll stop, then. All I was waiting for was you to say that. I know she means well. I smile—awkwardly—and let my eyes slide away.

“Hey!” A man comes into the foyer. “How are you, Rach?”

“Hi, Jared,” I say, feeling a genuine smile start.

“Bringing the luckiest guy in the world some lunch?”

“I am indeed. How’s Kimber?”

“She’s great. Want to see a picture? We went to Provincetown last weekend. Had a blast.”

“Sure.” Got to love a guy who whips out his phone to show off pictures of his fiancée.

He shows me seven pictures of his beloved. I’ve met Kimber a few times, and she’s quite a beauty, though I admit to being surprised the first time I saw her. Her hair is dyed a pinkish red that was never intended to be thought of as natural, she has a full-sleeve tattoo on one arm and wears brilliant peacock colors for eye shadow and liner. “You can just feel how happy she is in these pictures,” I say.

Jared grins. “Thanks, Rach. Listen, I have to run. Got a lunch that’s so boring, I might actually stab myself in the eye just to keep from falling asleep. Hey, let’s have dinner, the four of us, okay?”

“That’d be great.”

“Give the girls a kiss for me,” he says.

“Adam will see you now,” Lydia says.

“Lydia! Did you make her wait? Honestly. Rach, just go down to his office next time. You’re his wife. You have rights.” Jared gives me a mock-serious look, then leaves.

Dinner with him and Kimber would be nice, I think as I make my way down the hall to Adam’s small but lovely office. It’s so nice to see Jared smitten. In the past, he’d always dated country-club types, and I can’t remember one relationship lasting even a year. With Kimber, he met her and it was the thunderbolt, as he said.

Same with Adam and me.

“Babe!” Adam says as I go in.

“Hi. I brought lunch,” I say, going behind his desk to kiss him on the cheek.

“Oh. Wow, that’s so nice of you. Um…well, uh, no, it’s fine.”

“Did you have plans?”

“No, no. I mean, yeah, I was going to grab something with another lawyer, but it’s fine. Just let me send him a text.” His thumbs fly, his phone cheeps and he stands up. “Close the door so we can have some privacy, okay? What did you bring me?”

“Turkey and avocado.”

“’Atta girl.” He smiles at me and gets up.

Adam’s office has a little couch and chair, in addition to his desk, and we sit there as I unpack our lunch. He checks his phone, then slides it into his pocket.

Sometimes I feel like whipping that thing out a window. My cheeks hurt, which means I’ve been clenching my teeth.

“How are the girls?” he asks. “Are they with your sister?”

“No, with Donna,” I say. “Jenny’s working.”

“Right. But does she have regular hours and stuff?”

He’s never really understood how much work Jenny has had to do to get where she is, or how much time goes into making a wedding dress. He’s a guy, after all.

“She does. Regular hours and then some.” I take a bite of salad.

Then Adam’s door opens, and in comes Emmanuelle St. Pierre, one of Adam’s coworkers. “So where were we?” she says.

Then she sees me and freezes for the briefest second.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Adam, I thought we were having lunch today. Did I have the wrong day?”

Just let me send him a text.

Him.

And so I know. I know.

Adam is cheating on me with her.

“Emmanuelle, you remember my wife, right? Rachel, you’ve met Emmanuelle, I think. The holiday party at the club?”

I’ve seen your vagina, I want to say.

“Um, mmm-hmm,” I mumble, because my mouth is full of unchewed arugula.

You fucking slut, is my next thought, but then again, of course she’s a fucking slut; she couldn’t be a slut without fucking, could she?

“Emmanuelle and I are working on a case together,” Adam says.

“Really,” I say, swallowing the mouthful of roughage without chewing. Really, Adam? Because you do corporate tax law, and she’s a criminal defense attorney, and even your stupid little housewife knows that you would not work on a case together.

“Adam, I didn’t mean to interrupt your little…picnic,” she says, and her eyes run over me, making me feel childish in my pink sweater, silly with my “trying to be artistic” earrings, like a failure in my little wifey-goes-out-to-lunch dress. She’s wearing a sleeveless black turtleneck dress, Armani, maybe. Jenny would know in a heartbeat. Her glossy, dark red hair is pulled into an unforgiving twist. Tiny gold hoop earrings. A wide, hammered gold ring on her right forefinger. No other jewelry. Black ankle boots with thin, thin heels that must be four inches high. Red soles. Those are… What’s that name? Christian Louboutin, right. Ridiculously expensive.

These details are razor-sharp, slicing through my brain with barely any blood spilled.

I’m wearing a heart necklace. As if I’m in third grade or something.

No. There are pictures of my children inside there. I’m a mother. Emmanuelle is not a mother, no sir.

Not yet.

“I guess I’ll talk to you later, Adam,” Emmanuelle says easily. “Nice to see you again, Rachel.” Then she’s gone. The smell of her perfume lingers like radiation.

Adam exhales. “So. What else have you got planned for today?” His face is studiously bland.

“You fucking liar,” I say, and then I throw his iced tea in his face and walk out of his office.

* * *

THE UPSIDE OF having three toddlers is they don’t leave you much time for thinking. I make the girls supper, read them poems as they eat, then finish their macaroni and cheese, because that stuff is delicious. I let them have a longer bath than usual, and read them extra stories and play Animal Kisses, in which they close their eyes while I woof, meow or moo softly in their hair till they guess which animal I am, or giggle so hard they can’t. For once, they’re all smiling and sweet when I give out their final hugs. No one gets out of bed, no one asks for water, no one cries.

Clearly, I’m the world’s most amazing mother.

I go downstairs, pour what has to be a ten-ounce glass of wine and sit on the couch and wait.

The look on his face, his wet, green-tea-drenched face, was almost funny.

Oily black anger twists and rises inside me. I try to dilute it with a few swallows of wine, but it stays.

I can’t be too angry about this. Well, of course, I can be… I am. But I can’t make decisions in anger. There are five of us to consider, not two.

Jenny has left two messages for me. Does she sense something? I haven’t answered.

Adam has not contacted me. That terror I felt last weekend shudders back to life.

Does he want to leave me?

An image of my daughters in the future flashes in horrible clarity: all three resentful, whiny, confused at having to go spend a weekend with Daddy—and Emmanuelle. They’ll become horrible teenagers, piercings and tattoos, and I’ll find condoms in Rose’s backpack, get a call from the school that Grace beat someone up, that Charlotte sold pot to her classmates. I’m already furious at Adam for doing this to our girls.

Furious, and terrified.

And then there’d be me. Divorced. Alone. I picture myself trying to date again—me, forty, with a cesarean scar and a pooch of skin made by another man’s babies. Me, shy at best, socially terrified at worst, making conversation in the bar in the Holiday Inn while the Yankees are on, a sticky tabletop and a glass of cheap wine, uncomfortable vinyl seats.

Adam comes home at 8:07 p.m. Our girls have always been the early-to-bed types, so I’m sure he’s lurked somewhere—the office, a bar, his whore’s house—until he’s sure they’re asleep. He might be a cheating douche bag, but he doesn’t want the girls to hear us fight.

He comes into the living room, looks at me, sighs and pours himself a scotch. “So I guess we have to talk,” he says, and my eyes fill with traitorous tears, because I love his voice, and now I have to listen to him tell me that I’m right. This living room will never be the same again. It will always be the place where he told me he cheated.

He sits down across from me. I can see the stain from the green tea on his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“How long?” I ask.

“About three months.”

Three months? Holy Jesus! It’s late April now, so most of April, all of March, all of February.

He gave me the locket on Valentine’s Day.

“Tell me everything,” I say, and my voice is choked and brittle.

He sighs, as if I’m exhausting him, the asshole, and starts talking. He didn’t plan it. It just happened. She came on to him. He couldn’t help himself. He’s a guy, and when a beautiful woman comes on to a guy, it’s hard to say no. He loves me. He doesn’t want a divorce. He’s sorry.

And the thing is, I knew. I knew when I saw that picture. I knew when he took me upstairs for sex. I knew before Jenny told me.

Stupid, stupid me.

“Why didn’t you end it?” I ask. My real question is Why would you ever look somewhere else? What am I lacking that made you whip out your dick—my God, my language is deteriorating by the second—and stick it where it didn’t belong?

I can’t look at him. I hate his face. If I look at him now, I might swing that empty wine bottle right at him.

“I did end it,” he says, but there’s too long of a pause.

“Don’t lie to me, Adam,” I say calmly. “You’ve already cheated on me. You lied to me when I showed you that picture, and you’re lying now. Why haven’t you ended it?” There. I manage to look at his face. My own feels as if a swarm of bees is under my skin buzzing and stinging, full of venom.

He shrugs again, not looking at me. “The sex is amazing.”

The room spins.

“Look, you asked,” Adam says, and yes, that’s accusation in his voice. You’re the one who made me tell you! “Rach, I love you. I do, you know that. And I love our life. But Emmanuelle… I don’t know. She’s very aggressive. I turned her down at first, I did!”

Does he want me to praise him? Give him a sticker? Write his name on the kitchen blackboard, like I do when one of the girls does something especially sweet or helpful?

“And then one day she came into my office to talk about a case, and she crossed her legs, and she wasn’t wearing panties, and I couldn’t help myself. It was—”

“Shut up, Adam. Shut the fuck up.”

I’m quite sure today is the first day Adam has ever heard me use the F word. He stops talking.

“I told you if you ever cheated on me, I’d divorce you,” I say calmly.

“I don’t want a divorce. Think of the girls, Rachel.”

“I always think of the girls,” I hiss, the fury writhing in my stomach. “All I do is think of the girls. Were you thinking of the girls when you fucked another woman? Hmm? Is that what a great father does?”

“Look. I’m sorry. I really am, Rachel. I was weak. But I don’t want to lose you.”

How I would love to tell him to piss off right now. That there’s no going back from this. That he can talk to my lawyer.

But just the thought of a divorce makes cold fear shoot through my legs. I don’t want a divorce! No adored husband coming through the door every night, no father in the house for the girls, no “Baby Beluga” sung at bedtime. We’d have to separate our things, all our lovely things that have made our house so welcoming and happy. All the pictures of the girls; he’d obviously get to take some with him.

How could I live without things the way they are now?

My rage has been snuffed out by icy-cold terror.

“When you knew I saw the picture,” I whisper, “did you tell her things had to end?”

“No,” he admits. “I haven’t yet.”

The big question is waiting in the back of my throat like bile. “Do you love her?”

He hesitates. “I… No. Not like I love you. But yes, there are…feelings.”

Oh, God.

My temples throb, and I have to force my teeth apart.

I get up to leave. I’ll sleep in the guest room, take a long bath in the tub, maybe get another bottle of wine. Watch Game of Thrones and…and…

I stumble before I even make it out of the living room.

Adam’s arms are around me. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” His voice is rough with tears. “Please don’t make any decisions now. I love you. I love our family. Let’s not throw that away. I made a mistake. I’ll fix this. We can get counseling, or go on vacation, whatever you want. But please don’t leave me. I couldn’t live without you.”

I love him so much. I hate him so much. He picked me—out of all the women who would’ve loved to have been Adam Carver’s wife, he wanted me. We made this beautiful family, this happy life—well, obviously not happy enough that he kept it in his pants, did he?

“I’m going to bed,” I whisper. “I don’t know what I want right now. Except to be alone.”

“Sleep in,” he says. “I’ll get the girls to school tomorrow. I’ll go in late.”

I can’t bear to look at his eyes anymore. Those beautiful caramel eyes that lied so well.

Feeling more tired than I’ve ever felt in my life, I climb the stairs, holding the railing with both hands. Past the picture of my parents on their wedding day. Past the photo of Jenny and me when we were little, dressed in frilly Easter dresses. Past the picture of Adam, smiling hugely, his eyes wet as he holds three little burritos with pink caps.

Past our wedding photo. Me, in that stunning, amazing dress Jenny made for me, looking more beautiful than I ever knew I could, smiling at Adam with such adoration and…and…gratitude that it makes me sick.

Without thinking, I take the photo off the wall and toss it down the stairs behind me, the sound of glass shattering on tile bright and clear.

“Rachel.” His voice is hard and sharp.

I look down the stairs.

“Before you break anything else, just…just make sure you know what you want. Think about our life together, and what life would be like apart.” His voice softens. “Our marriage is worth fighting for. I screwed up, I admit that. But it would be smart to go slowly here.”

I turn around again and go into the guest room and close the door.

It seems I’ve just been warned.

Chapter 7: Jenny

“OH, GOD,” ANDREAS says. “Look at the hordes. This is awful.” Though he threatens weekly to quit, I don’t think he will, despite the reverse commute to the city. Who else would let him work on his novel during work hours?

“Hordes are good, Andreas,” I say patiently, looking at the line that snakes down the block. “This is great. It’s our grand opening. Smile. Be happy. And do not open that door until the stroke of twelve, okay?” It’s Sunday, the sun is shining, and the streets of Cambry-on-Hudson are filled with people strolling around, having brunch—yes—shopping. Outside my shop is a huge tin bucket filled with early peonies, bought from the florist across the street. A chalkboard sign says “Bliss: Open House today from 12-5. Come in, look around and enjoy!”

My mother is the first person in line. This does make my shoulders droop a little. But no, no. While my mother will talk endlessly about her wedding to Dad, she at least does it in a highly romantic manner. It could be good for business. Still, it would’ve been nice if she hadn’t worn sweats. She looks a teeny bit homeless. Sneakers, too. Her hair is messy. It’s all part of the “I’m A Widow” package, lest there be any doubt that her life was ruined when Dad died.

As ever, a cold needle pricks my heart.

Well. I have too much to do to rehash the past.

Andreas pops the champagne at the little bar I’ve set up for today. Pink champagne and pale pink-frosted cupcakes from Cottage Confections, the fabulous cake shop conveniently located four doors down. Kim, the owner, and I became instant friends as soon as she welcomed me to the downtown with six chocolate cupcakes. We’ll be referring each other lots. Andreas arranges the napkins, sets out a beautiful notebook so people can write down their emails.

To advertise my skills, the showroom is furnished with dress forms adorned with finished gowns in each of the classic shapes—A-line, mini, modified A-line, trumpet, mermaid, sheath, tea-length and, most popular of all these days, ball gown. The forms stand around Bliss like a beautiful army, shimmering in the pinkish lights of the store, the crystals from the ball gown catching the light and casting tiny rainbows, the satin of the tea-length glowing.

I fluff the cathedral train on the Grace Kelly–inspired dress, fingering the silk mikado. Bliss is not the type of shop that has ready-to-wear dresses. I’m not a salesperson; I’m a designer. But I do keep a few dresses on hand for the women who want to play dress-up.

Another section of the showroom features accessories—veils, belts, headpieces, gloves, garters. I’ll have to make sure my nieces don’t get into too much trouble over there. They tend to view my workplace as their personal playland.

Hung on the brick walls are a huge selling tool—pictures of my brides in their dresses, each one a black-and-white photo, hung at precise intervals. One picture is bigger than the others: Rachel, wearing the most beautiful dress I’ve ever made.

The back half of the shop is where the work really happens. Of course, there’s the dressing room with its apricot-painted walls and dais with three-way mirror, as well as a couch and three upholstered chairs, a coffee table with a photo album of my work. That’s where I’ll do consultations and fittings, where the bride shows me pictures of dresses she likes, where I’ll ask all the questions they love to answer—what’s your vision for the day, do you have a theme, how do you want to look.

The workroom is across the hall, where Andreas and I painstakingly organized thousands of fabric samples: satin, silk, chiffon, organza, charmeuse, lace—I have more than a hundred samples of lace—and yards and yards of muslin, since I make a mock-up of every dress before cutting the dress fabric itself. In the center of the room is a huge oak table—my work space, complete with four different sewing machines.

Shelves hold tape measures and scissors and thousands of straight pins, dozens of types of appliques, lengths of crystal and beading and accents. I never understood how a designer could be unorganized. It makes me cringe on Project Runway when someone loses their fabric.

I love my job. I love weddings, all types. Me, I opted for a quickie wedding on the beach in Provincetown, a weekend when Owen and I seemed to be the only straight couple tying the knot. Rachel and Adam came, Mom, Owen’s wonderful parents, Andreas and his boyfriend, a few friends from New York. We had lunch at a waterfront inn at the tip of P-town, and the sun shone, and we drank and laughed and ate. My dress was a flowing empire-waist sheath with a pale violet sash that fluttered in the wind, and Owen wore a navy blue suit with a lavender tie.

And look at us now.

The one thing I hate about the wedding industry is that it focuses so much on the one day. People become obsessed with details, enraged with those they love, worn out from planning a few hours of a day that may not mean that much in the grand scheme of things. Even as I’m designing a dress that will cost thousands and thousands of dollars, I’ve always tried to work that message in. Don’t forget that after this day comes thousands of other days. Be careful. Cherish each other. Don’t blow it.

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