“Okay, I won’t,” Claire said, but the other women looked at one another, unconvinced. She’d marched into the apartment today like a savior, and now she’d become a threat.

“Oh, I know!” Ellie said. “Tell us something incriminating so that we have dirt on you too. Then, if you tell, we tell.” Meredith nodded and leaned forward like she always did when juicy gossip came up at playgroup, but this time, she had no hint of excitement on her face, just worry.

“I don’t really know if there is anything,” Claire said. “I probably drink too much?”

“So do we all,” Ellie said. “That doesn’t count.”

Claire caught Amara’s eye, and she knew that Amara was thinking about Vagabond and Marcus and Quinton’s cancer scare, about everything that Claire had revealed to her that day in her apartment. Amara swallowed. Then she shook her head.

“Come on,” Amara said. “Let’s not be ridiculous. We can trust Claire.”

“Okay,” Whitney said. “Then it’s settled.”

Chapter 24

Amara and Claire walked out of Whitney’s building together in silence. In his stroller, Charlie was quiet, almost contemplative, with his bow lips turned down. Claire felt contemplative too and deeply unnerved. Across the street in Central Park, the daffodils bloomed and shook in the breeze.

“It is strange about Vicki,” Amara said, and cleared her throat. “That she was the only one still breastfeeding when we started taking TrueMommy and the only one who ended up with placebos.”

“What do you mean?” Claire asked.

Amara furrowed her forehead as if staring at a complicated jigsaw. “Well, it seems like the TrueMommy people didn’t want to give her something that might get into her breast milk and hurt her baby, right?”

“Yeah,” Claire said. She stopped walking and chewed on the sleeve of her hoodie. “Yeah, that’s got to be the reason.”

Amara’s words came more urgently now. “But I don’t think she breastfed in front of Dr. Clark, so how did TrueMommy know?”

“Holy shit,” Claire said as the two women stared at each other. “What are you saying?”

Amara thought for a second and then shook her head, all her energy draining away. “Nothing. I’m being ridiculous. She must have put it on the form.” She rubbed her eyes, her face more drawn than Claire had ever seen it. “You could submit a form each month if you wanted to, to tell them what issues you were having so they could specifically ‘curate’ a vitamin mix for you, which of course they probably never did.”

“Yeah, but is Vicki the type to fill out a form? It’s Vicki.” Claire paused. “It’s convenient too that the flighty one who forgot to take the pills regularly is the only one who ended up with the placebos.”

“Well, Dr. Clark probably realized she was flighty from meeting her. It’s hard not to. So let’s just forget it.” Amara turned to keep walking, but Claire tugged at her shoulder

“Really, though, how did TrueMommy know?” Claire asked.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Amara said, her voice tightening in frustration. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“This might sound a little crazy,” Claire said. “But is it possible that someone who knows you guys could be connected somehow? Feeding TrueMommy information or something?”

“You think someone targeted us personally?” Amara asked, her jaw clenching. “Like who?”

“I don’t know! Someone who’s jealous of you, maybe.” Claire gasped. “Like Joanna. From what you told me, she’s not exactly the most stable person in the world, and—”

“Claire,” Amara said. “Are you a conspiracy theorist? One of those ‘nine-eleven was an inside job’ people? Do you believe that the government killed JFK and faked the moon landing and that Beyoncé is part of the Illuminati?”

“. . . No.”

“Well, that’s what you sound like right now. Maybe poor, depressed Joanna pushed drugs on us, because she’s jealous of our playgroup? You don’t even know Joanna. She’d never do something like that. This is clearly a fucked-up scam targeting rich mothers with online presences, and we all fell for it, and that’s that.”

“You’re the one who brought up that something seemed fishy—”

“Yeah, and then I realized that I was being nuts! This isn’t a game, some fun little mystery to solve. It’s my life, and it’s really, really bad.”

“I know.” Claire reached for Amara’s hand, but Amara pulled it away. “I’m sorry. It’s just, if it is targeting other mothers . . . you can’t be okay with this secret pact you guys made in there. You’re not all starring in I Know What You Did Last Summer: Mommy Edition. What about your responsibility to the women out there who are still falling for it?”

“My responsibility right now is to my child. I’ve been failing him for months, and starting now I need to do whatever I can to protect him.”

Claire threw up her hands. “I don’t understand you sometimes! You’re so freaking smart and amazing, but you just give up on things like this, like your job, so you can maintain some kind of status quo—”

“You don’t understand,” Amara snapped, “because you aren’t a mother! All right? You don’t understand what it’s like to worry every single minute that you’re doing something to hurt your child, who is the most precious thing to you in the entire world, and then to realize that while you were reading and rereading your baby books, all along you were actually doing something that none of those books ever mentioned, something that could fucking ruin him and his future.” She spoke slowly and deliberately, every word like a tiny poison dart. “Don’t lecture me about responsibility, Claire. You’ve never had a real responsibility in your life. Grow up already.”

The poison darts hit their marks. Claire cleared her throat. “Wow. Okay,” she said.

Amara sighed. “Oh, Lord. I didn’t mean that. Obviously, I’m extra irritable right now.”

“Classic withdrawal temper,” Claire said. “And I didn’t mean to lecture you.”

“It’s fine. I think I just need to get home,” Amara said. “I shouldn’t have brought this up in the first place. Can you please promise me that you’ll leave it alone?” Claire hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Amara’s eyes narrowed. She leaned forward. “Hey, I vouched for you back there. I made the decision to trust you because you’re my friend and I care for you, and now I need you to prove that I was right to do that. Promise me, Claire.”