Claire put her arms around Amara, rocking her back and forth right there on the landing as, inside the brownstone, the laughter and chatter of the party guests carried on as normal. “Hey, no, you’re not,” Claire said. “You didn’t know.”

“But I did,” Amara said. “I mean, not all the way, but I thought maybe— No, I knew. I knew something was weird ever since that day in Whitney’s office when you walked in on me.”

She hadn’t been trying to find soap. Whitney kept her bathroom fully stocked. Claire probably thought she’d been looking for money, jewelry maybe, but that hadn’t been it at all. Charlie had been so ornery and difficult that day, crying from the moment he woke up at six A.M. till the moment they left the house to go to Whitney’s, that she’d completely forgotten to take her TrueMommy. Oops, she’d thought when she’d realized. But then midway through Gwen’s lecture on how to get Charlie to pull himself up, the pounding headache had started, and it had taken every ounce of her self-control to keep herself from screaming at Gwen to shut her big judgmental mouth. All throughout music, it had just gotten worse and worse, like a hippopotamus tap-dancing on her brain, even though Claire’s voice had been lovely, so warm and honeyed. It wasn’t so strange. People got headaches all the time. Her own mother suffered from migraines. Maybe it was a family curse finally coming to claim her.

She’d excused herself to go to the bathroom, thinking maybe she’d find some Tylenol in Whitney’s medicine cabinet. But then the door to Whitney’s office had been open, and Amara had remembered their first meeting in the coffee shop, when Whitney said that she planned to stash the Xanax that her doctor had given her away in some desk drawer. Why settle for Tylenol when she could have Xanax? The impulse seized her, and suddenly she was tearing through the desk, looking for pills, fingers scrabbling against receipts and gift bag materials. Then that noise from the doorway, Claire staring at her like a scared little deer, and she realized how crazy and out of control she was. She was stealing from her friend, stealing something that her friend was ashamed to even have in the first place, and this outsider had caught her doing it. What a fucking nightmare.

And sure, it was a little odd that this terrible headache happened on the day she forgot her TrueMommy. But if that meant anything beyond sheer coincidence, then everything was so much worse than it already was. So when all of Dr. Clark’s science sounded so reasonable, and all the other mothers were so enthusiastic, it was easy to believe that nothing was wrong with TrueMommy besides the price tag. All the times since, when she’d contemplated giving up the vitamins only to feel a sense of dread at the prospect, she’d ignored and explained away those too.

“I just couldn’t fucking admit it,” she said. “The closest I got was thinking that maybe they had a bit of caffeine in them or something, and that’s why I’d gotten a headache. But of course that wasn’t it. Of course.” She pounded her fist against the wood of the deck and then winced as a splinter embedded itself in her knuckle. She deserved it. She deserved to be hunted down by a pitchfork-wielding mob like the monster she was.

“Amara,” Claire said as Amara tried to pick the shard of wood out of her skin. “I am so, so sorry.” The strains of “Happy Birthday” began to float out from the house behind them.

“Thank you,” Amara said, giving up on the splinter removal and standing up. “Well, obviously, I’m going to stop taking them. And we’ve got to let the others know.”

“Now?” Claire said. “I am ready for action. Whatever you need.”

“No,” Amara said as the song wound down. Inside, they’d be cutting the cake and posing for pictures that Gwen was probably planning on putting into a beautifully designed album and decorating with a bunch of stickers and treasuring forever. “Gwen has been putting all of her energy into planning this party for months now. We can’t ruin it. Tonight.”

So she wiped her eyes, squeezed Claire’s hand one more time, and went back inside. In a corner, Daniel was trying to feed Charlie bites of cake without getting frosting all over the place. He was not succeeding. “Uh-oh,” Amara said, and scooped up a smear of frosting from Charlie’s cheek. “That’s one delicious baby.”

“There you are!” Daniel said, putting an arm around her. She nestled into him, put her nose against his neck, and breathed in his comforting aftershave. She wouldn’t tell him just yet either. She had to talk to the other mothers first, all those blissfully unaware women bustling around their own children and husbands. In the center of the room, a photographer snapped his fingers over his camera, trying to get Reagan to look his way for a picture. Gwen had put a ridiculous birthday headband on her daughter, with a golden cloth crown at a jaunty angle on the top, and Reagan kept trying to tear it off while Gwen kept putting it back on. Gwen looked up and met Amara’s eyes, then wrinkled her forehead in concern. Amara flashed back a smile and gave a thumbs-up.

When they got home and Daniel went to change Charlie’s diaper, she typed up a text to them all.

EMERGENCY PLAYGROUP MEETING, it read. Can you all do tomorrow afternoon? In the meantime, stop taking your TrueMommy.

Chapter 23

When Claire walked into Whitney’s the next day, everything was different.

No welcoming hostess swirled around to offer her water or wine or whatever she wanted. No calming eucalyptus scent wafted through the hallway. Instead, Claire caught a whiff of sweat, stinging and rotten.

Amara answered the door, her under-eye circles like purplish bruises. “Thanks for coming,” she said, her voice hollow. “I just told them.”

“How the hell did this happen?” Ellie shrieked from the living room, setting off a cacophony of baby crying, like car alarms.

“To put it mildly,” Amara continued, “things are not going well.”

“I brought you guys withdrawal supplies,” Claire said, holding up a plastic bag. “Some comfort food and plenty of legal painkillers.”

“You are an angel,” Amara said, grabbing a bottle of Tylenol from the top of the bag, spilling two capsules into her hand, and swallowing them with a grim determination, no water needed. “Come on in.”

In the living room, the furniture was all the same, everything still white and sleek, but it had gone askew, an upside-down version of what Claire had grown used to. Couch pillows and shoes littered the ground. The plates of carefully selected, healthful snacks that Whitney always set out were nowhere to be seen. Instead, Ellie and Meredith crouched over an open package of Oreos on the floor like vultures over roadkill, crumbs on their faces and speckling the rug around them. Gwen trembled in the corner, her eyes red and on the verge of spilling over with tears. Vicki rocked her baby by the window, calm and distant as always. In the center of it all, Whitney sat ramrod straight on her couch, extremely still and covered with a dull sheen of perspiration, staring inward as if she were willing herself not to vomit or scream.