“Okay,” Claire said. “I promise.”

Amara stepped back and let out a long breath. “All right, then. Thank you. I’ll see you at a playgroup tomorrow.” She stopped and shook her head. “No, there’s no way I’m making it out of the house for that. I’ll see you at the photo shoot Thursday.”

“See you then,” Claire said.

Chapter 25

Amara tossed and turned the entire night. Awful nightmares flashed through her head, a sequence of dreams in which Charlie died because of her negligence. The blanket in his crib smothered him while she danced and laughed like an idiot alone in the living room. He fell off the balcony at playgroup while she drank a glass of wine inside. He choked on a grape, he stuck his finger in an outlet, he toppled a chest of drawers on top of himself, all while she did nothing, nothing, nothing.

Each time a dream woke her up, she crept out of bed. She moved through the apartment, which was as silent and full of dread as a log cabin in the woods, and went to his nursery. She stood above his crib and watched him breathe, the palpitations of her heart booming out into the peaceful room. As she listened to it beat, she became aware too of her own mortality in a way that she’d never been before. There was so much danger in the outside world, within her own body. An accidental overdose, a car crash, a sudden malfunction of her cells could whisk her away from Charlie in a flash, leaving him wounded for the rest of his life, one of those motherless children who was always searching for something he’d never be able to have.

She normally woke up in the morning when Daniel’s alarm went off, but on Tuesday, Daniel had to poke her awake right before he left for work. He handed her a mug of coffee with a fresh swirl of milk disappearing into it. “Someone was restless last night,” he said. “You feeling okay?”

She looked up at his kind, concerned face, and a bolt of rage passed through her. Not at Daniel, but at the injustice of it all. Why was there no fucking TrueDaddy? The answer was clear. Because men wouldn’t fall for it. Not that they were smarter—Amara firmly believed she could trounce the average man in a battle of wits—but because they weren’t primed from birth like women were, told that they could be anything they wanted to be while handicapped at every turn by invisible forces, told that they were more than just their looks while also culturally programmed to believe that their value was tied to their desirability. Men aged into silver foxes while women aged into obsolescence. And when you added in children, oh, that was when everything really went to shit. Because even though fathers stamped children with their last names, the world didn’t ask as much of them. No one really expected fathers to consider giving up their careers to put their children first, to stop managing a company and start managing a household. Women had to grapple with a choice that men never did while remaining uncomplaining and generous so that they didn’t nag their husbands straight into the arms of less complicated lovers. And now moms weren’t even allowed to acknowledge how much work it all was anymore. Modern women of privilege had to claim that their manic exercise routines were about strength, not a body ideal; that their beauty regimens were all natural, designed for emotional balance and skin health, rather than for looking nubile for as long as possible. No wonder they were easy targets. TrueMommy was the same old patriarchal bullshit dressed up as empowerment, and Amara had fallen for it like a fucking idiot.

Daniel kissed her forehead. “Oh, you’re sweaty!”

Despite what all the women had said at playgroup, she should tell him the truth. They were partners, after all. They’d taken vows to support each other for better and for worse, and getting accidentally hooked on Mommy Speed definitely qualified as “worse.” Whitney had said “no husbands,” but Whitney’s husband was pompous, selfish Grant. Daniel was different.

Oh, but he was so fucking good. He would take care of her and get her all the help she needed, but he’d also never be content to let her and the other women ride out their shame and recovery in private. He’d hop on the Claire train—The “You’ve Got a Responsibility” Express—and ride it all over the country, barnstorming and shouting until every mother in the land knew the dangers of TrueMommy.

He put his palm against her face, checking for a fever, looking at her with his furrowed brow and pure love in his face. There was another reason she didn’t want to tell him. She’d fallen in love with him for so many reasons, but chief among them was how much he respected her. He trusted her judgment. He came to her with quandaries and asked for her advice. He’d never been one of those men who’d run from her ambition, from her forceful opinions, even though plenty of other guys had. Where past boyfriends had tried to diminish her, Daniel had stood right by her side, holding a microphone to her mouth.

But how could he respect her in the same way after this, after she’d endangered the beautiful little jewel of a boy they’d made together?

She’d been a bad mother. And that, it seemed, was the worst thing a woman could possibly be. A prostitute who moonlighted as a contract killer could be redeemed if she was doing it all so that she could tuck her child into a warm bed every night. But a woman could be charming, immensely intelligent, ambitious, strong, and head-turningly gorgeous, and if she screwed up her parenting, the world deemed her a piece of shit.

Would the thought “Unfit mother, unfit mother” ring in Daniel’s head whenever he looked at her? Would something between them be irrevocably broken? She couldn’t let that happen.

Maybe, over the course of even the best marriages, you acquired a collection of secrets that you walled off in a little section of your heart where your partner would never be allowed to go. And you did everything you could to keep the walled-off section small, to keep the secrets from slipping out of it and pervading all that was good and open and free in the rest of your heart, and you just made it work.

She put her hand on top of his and smiled up at him. “I think I have a little bug or something,” she said. “But I’ll be fine.”

Chapter 26

On Tuesday, no one wanted to leave the house and come to playgroup, so Whitney canceled it for the first time since it had started. They’d just wait until Thursday, when they had to do the coffee-table-book photography shoot, which they’d agreed not to cancel, because that would be a very clear indication that things were decidedly not fine. Without the chatter of the other women, her apartment alternated between stifling and cavernous. Hope was being difficult, tugging Whitney’s hair, knocking over everything in sight like a cyclone given human form. And all Whitney wanted was bread, but she didn’t keep it in the house.

She took Hope to Central Park, to the little playground not far from their apartment. An ice-cream truck had set up shop in the street nearby, blaring its incessant jingle over and over again, pausing in between repetitions just long enough that each time Whitney thought maybe it wouldn’t start again. But it always did. She bought a cone and nearly swallowed it whole, then ate two street hot dogs. She hadn’t eaten processed meats and crappy refined sugar like that in years. The binge turned her stomach to an anchor, weighing her to the park bench as Hope sat on the ground in front of her and pulled grass out by its roots.