“Right? Seriously, thank God for the wellness industry. TrueMommy and acupuncture are my baseline, but I’ve just started with these collagen-protein shakes too. The combination is everything.”

Gwen smiled and lowered her voice. “I believe it. Honestly, though, sometimes I think there’s something stronger in these vitamins than just oil of lemongrass.”

Angie let out a belly laugh. “Honey, you know what? If there is, sign me up for a double dose.”

Gwen filed this away, rounding her list up to an even thirty.

She’d planned and planned and planned. There was always that unexpected element, though, the fly in the ointment. And this particular fly had been, crazily enough, Claire. Claire, who came in sweet and wounded and disheveled and grew on them all slowly like moss. Claire, who had gotten just close enough to all of them that she cared, but who felt none of the shame and worry and urge for secrecy that came from having actually taken the TrueMommy herself and having a child to worry about to boot. Gwen hadn’t realized that the Claire situation was happening until it was too late. Claire had truly surprised her. That was why Gwen had had to blow the whole playgroup up. For once, Christopher had given her exactly what she needed, coming home last night penitent and pathetic, confessing everything from his time in the Windom with Whitney to his run-in with Claire in the bar in a near-religious rush, like Gwen was his priest instead of his wife, begging her to forgive him yet again. All Gwen had to do after that was go to the photo shoot and push people’s buttons accordingly.

It worried her that Claire might take her playgroup-musician skills elsewhere and insinuate herself with more mothers like the righteous little snake she was. Gwen would have to keep an eye on her, see if she could find something else to present like a glittering jewel—something that would take Claire far away from the world of New York playgroups until Gwen could wind down TrueMommy, get a divorce, and take her children to the Connecticut house for good.

Chapter 32

The weekend after the playgroup blowup, Whitney finally went to visit Joanna. She took the train out to Rahway, with a red velvet cake from the bakery by Joanna’s old apartment on her lap. She left Hope at home with Grant, who was still blissfully unaware of everything that had transpired. She didn’t think any of the playgroup women would take it upon themselves to tell him about Christopher, but still she held her breath and tried to decide if she wanted to tell him herself. The weight of everything she’d kept from him hung heavy around her. She’d become a completely different person from the woman he’d danced with at their wedding.

Joanna and her son lived in a brown brick duplex a ten-minute walk from the train station, with a small yard surrounded by a chain-link fence. Joanna, dressed in blue jeans and an oversized sweater, her straight black hair showing a few strands of gray, let Whitney in warily, accepting the cake with muted thanks rather than the touched surprise Whitney had let herself imagine.

Joanna put water on for coffee and cleared some clutter off the kitchen table. They sat and made small talk while Joanna’s child napped in his playpen. The duplex had a nice number of windows, but it didn’t get good light, dwarfed by the buildings on either side of it. Joanna had largely left the white walls bare. Still, she’d arranged a few pots of herbs on the windowsill, and Whitney gestured to them with a smile. “I like how you’ve decorated.” If Whitney squinted, it looked like a cozy home, perhaps a little bohemian. Not the sad divorcée’s quarters she and the other mothers had imagined and feared.

“How’s the playgroup?” Joanna asked.

“Oh,” Whitney said. “Well, we actually stopped meeting.”

“Ah,” Joanna said, and made a clicking noise with her mouth as if she’d managed to put a puzzle together. “So that’s why you came to stare at the zoo animal.”

“Excuse me?”

“You all had a tiff, and now you’re looking for an easy way to feel better about yourself.”

“I wanted to check up on how you were doing.”

“Six months after the fact,” Joanna said.

“I’ve been meaning to come, but you know how it is with a baby—”

“Or is it that you’re worried your husband might leave you for another woman too, and you want to take some notes?” Joanna asked, relentless, harsh.

Over the past forty-eight hours, Whitney had largely been in shock at everything that she’d brought upon herself, numb except for a dull sense of dread. But now she put her head down on the cool wooden table, unable to stop the sobs from overcoming her. “I’m sorry,” she choked out.

Joanna sighed and patted Whitney’s shoulder a little roughly. Then she pushed back from the table and began to bustle around her kitchen. She cut them each a slice of cake and brought the plates over to the table, along with a box of tissues.

“I guess I just wanted to know,” Whitney said when she’d calmed herself enough to be able to speak again, “if it has gotten better. I mean, are you happier now?”

Joanna stared at her for a minute. “Am I happier than I was in the literal moment that I curled up on the floor of the canned beans aisle in Fairway? Of course. Am I happier now than I was when I had a beautiful New York City apartment and a doting husband and my whole future bright ahead of me?” She gave a harsh laugh, nearly a bark. “What do you think?” She toyed with a bite of cake on her fork, pursing her lips. “My advice is to hold on to him if you can.”

Chapter 33

Fragmented, the moms threw themselves into summertime.

Amara took Charlie to every outdoor activity for children that she could find, plowing through her exhaustion like it was a cornfield and she was a motherfucking tractor trailer. If there was a craft fair or a kid’s festival anywhere in Manhattan, she and Charlie attended it. He was going to be the most well-rounded, well-cared-for baby in the whole damn city. She went to the zoo with him so much, she even got tired of looking at penguins, a thing that had previously seemed unimaginable. (They were penguins, for fuck’s sake! How could you get tired of looking at penguins unless you were a heartless, screwed-up person?) She bought The Foolproof Guide to a Happy, Healthy Toddler and practically memorized it, the old, familiar anxiety that Charlie wasn’t hitting all his check marks coming right back. A creeping strangeness began to grow between her and Daniel every time her shame and rage and despair from the whole TrueMommy incident overwhelmed her and she wanted to tell him exactly what was wrong, but bit her tongue instead. (Which happened approximately twenty million times a day.) It didn’t help that when she’d told him about the playgroup’s demise thanks to Whitney’s affair with Gwen’s husband, he’d shaken his head and said, “Yikes, it’s scary how you can have no idea what your partner’s doing,” and then, jokingly, looked into her eyes with a solemn stare and said, “Anything you need to tell me?” She met moms on the playground and chatted with them and then never saw them again. Often, they asked for her number and sent her effusive texts asking her to get together. The texts always made Amara think of Claire (these women used so many more exclamation points than Claire would’ve, and they made her laugh so much less), so Amara never responded. She was the playground-mom equivalent of a charming Tinder ghoster, getting the women all excited about their connection and then leaving them sad and confused. She wore herself and Charlie out during the day, because if she was exhausted at night, it meant less time trying to hide things from Daniel.