* * *

—

Whitney deleted her social media and went out of town. She found a three-room cottage on the North Fork of Long Island, setting up shop there with Hope for June and July. Grant came out on the weekends to join them, and they talked about buying a place like it for future summers. “It would have to have more bedrooms,” he said, “for more children,” and she smiled and made a noise that was neither agreement nor dissent. For Whitney, it was a crash course in loneliness. She took Hope for long, aimless walks every day, as seagulls arced above them and waves foamed at her feet. As she put one foot in front of the other, Whitney whispered apologies to her daughter for all of her myriad failings. She concentrated on finding Hope one perfect shell, wanting to make her smile and reach her little hands out in awe. So many things gave Hope awe—the grainy feel of sand beneath her toes, the little hermit crabs scuttling about in tide pools—and Whitney felt that she was rediscovering the world through her daughter’s eyes. It was almost magical, even though she didn’t deserve magic. After the first week, in which she tried over and over again to apologize to Gwen without getting any responses to her voice mails and e-mails, she turned off her phone and only looked at it when she and Grant needed to coordinate something. She stopped putting on makeup each morning and bought herself some mom jeans. They were really damn comfortable. After days of not talking to other adults, she longed for and dreaded the weekends in equal measure, craving the noise that Grant would bring, uneasy about actually being around him. She learned anew each facet of her daughter’s face, counted the fine brown hairs on her head. She dreamed of Christopher at night, but also of the playgroup women, seeing their smiles turn to sneers as they learned the truth about her.

* * *

—

Ellie got a babysitter and went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting without telling her husband, and Meredith did too. Ellie liked that you got to stand up and talk about how you were feeling for as long as you wanted, and everyone had to listen respectfully to you. She actually thought that the meeting was kind of fun, and Meredith did too. Ellie went to the gym a lot. Meredith went somewhat less often.

* * *

—

Vicki just kept doing her Vicki thing.

* * *

—

And they might have all continued on like that as their children grew and changed except for the fact that, on a sweltering Saturday morning in early August, Amara and Whitney went to the same children’s music class.

Chapter 34

Another day, another free event that Amara could take Charlie to. This time it was a trial music class at a new kids’ space on Madison and Seventy-Seventh, some just-opened franchise that had flooded the neighborhood with flyers announcing their special music event, where the walls were decorated with suns and hearts, where all the employees spoke in such cheery, high-pitched voices that she was surprised dogs all over the neighborhood weren’t howling, and where they were desperately trying to lure parents into signing their kids up for the fall “semester,” as if it were a university for toddlers. Amara pictured them giving Charlie a diploma at the end of it all. Perhaps some apple-cheeked three-year-old would be crowned valedictorian, and all the adults would have to come sit and listen while the tot stood on a stage and babbled about trains.

The front desk girl pointed Amara down the hall, directing her to follow the crowd and leave Charlie’s stroller outside the door labeled “Theater.” Amara took off her shoes as requested and plunked herself down on an ABC rug while a heavily bearded man tuned his guitar and his assistant, a bright-eyed girl who had clearly moved to New York to do musical theater, went around demanding high fives from all the babies. Charlie did not want to oblige, twisting away from the girl’s eager face, and the girl remained crouched down in front of Amara for far too long, trying to get him to touch her hand, until Amara had to say, “He takes a little while to warm up.”

“Oh, no! That hurts my feelings!” the girl said, making a fake pouty face, and moved on to the next kid. Amara looked around in vain for someone with whom she could exchange caustic eye rolls.

The walls here were all painted bright purple, with accents of neon green. Why would anyone do such a thing?

Finally, the guy finished tuning his guitar, and strummed a power chord. “WHO’S READY TO ROCK OUT??” he bellowed, and the crowd of parents around Amara whoo-ed like they were at a Foo Fighters concert. The assistant girl stuck out her tongue and waggled it—transforming for a moment into a forgotten member of KISS—and then went back to her show tunes smile, clapping her hands as she and the guitar guy began to sing a shitty hello song about sunshine. (Oh the sun is out and it’s shining bright, like the faces you see on your left and right!) Amara swayed half-heartedly.

Behind her, the door to the classroom opened—a late arrival. Amara turned her head briefly, catching a flash of thick, wavy hair, and two long, muscled legs sticking out of some baggy jeans shorts as the mother coaxed in a toddling baby. It wasn’t until the newcomer had settled down on her own spot on the alphabet rug that Amara really looked at her and realized it was Whitney. Whitney recognized Amara at the same moment, shock coming over her face.

Well. That was the end of this music class. No great loss. If Amara wanted someone to screech at her about sunshine, she could always call Daniel’s mother down in Florida. She got to her feet and scooped Charlie up, then strode out the door to the hallway, where she’d left her stroller. She struggled to buckle him in, noting with a strange detachment that her hands were shaking.

As she fastened the final strap, the door opened behind her, and Whitney ran out, Hope in tow. “Amara, wait,” she said. Amara angled Charlie’s stroller away from her and began to push. “Please, Amara, don’t run away!”

“Oh, I’m not running away,” Amara hurled back. “I’m just going to get Daniel. I thought perhaps you might like to fuck him too?”

Whitney let out a breath like she’d had the wind knocked out of her, then nodded. “I deserve that,” she said, her voice steady and low. The hallway around them smelled like cleaning fluid. Noises of a happy class echoed from the other side of the theater door. Hope settled herself down on the floor and began to pull at the carpet. “Or worse than that. Please, let me explain.”

“Is your excuse that you’re one of those people who takes Ambien and then goes out and drives a car while still asleep, except instead of driving a car, you were screwing your friend’s husband and lying about it to all your other friends?”

“No,” Whitney said, biting her lip.

“Then it’s probably not good enough.”

“I know that. I know nothing I say can ever make it better, okay?” Whitney said, sighing. She looked different. Tanner, and a little wilder. Less coiffed. There were some new lines on her face, or maybe it was just that she wasn’t wearing much makeup at all, like she had become the kind of person who casually dabbed her lips with ChapStick instead of searching for the proper, muted shade of lipstick. “I’ve tried to excuse it to myself a million times by saying that it was because Grant and I were not in a good place or that I had so much pent-up excess energy because of the TrueMommy or that I hadn’t felt really desired for so long and Christopher came onto me so strong that I couldn’t resist. Or that because I was little White Trash Whitney trying to belong in this rich, perfect world, it was only inevitable that I’d screw it up in the worst and most predictable way that I could. And all of those things are probably true, but also, none of them matters. The truth is just that sometimes you think you’re a good person, and then little by little, you justify your way into being a bad one.”