“Rewind a second. White Trash Whitney?” Amara asked.

“Oh. Yes. My mother was a dental hygienist and my dad bounced between construction jobs and day drinking at our kitchen table, and they were always fighting about money, and for a while, that was my secret shame.” She gave a rueful laugh and scooped a piece of paper that Hope had found on the ground out of her hands right before she put it into her mouth. “Seems pretty tame in comparison to what I’ve got to be ashamed of now.”

“Wait,” Amara said. “What’s wrong with being a dental hygienist?”

“I don’t know,” Whitney said. “Nothing! Anyway, I don’t expect you to ever want to see me again, but before you run out of here, I have to tell you how much I’ve always admired you, and how sorry I am.”

Amara crossed her arms. “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to Gwen.”

“I’ve tried. She won’t return any of my calls. But I do have to apologize to you, because I didn’t just hurt Gwen. I screwed up playgroup. I screwed it up for us all, right when we all needed one another the most.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t forgive you,” Amara said. Whitney looked down at the ground and nodded. “But I guess I know a little bit about screwing up too.”

They stood in silence for a moment, the air heavy with their regret. “How is Gwen?” Whitney asked.

“How do you think?” Amara snapped, and then bit her lip. “No, I don’t really know, actually. We text every so often to check in about how we’re handling all the TrueMommy stuff, and it sounds like she and Christopher are working through things, but she hasn’t really wanted to see anyone.” She shook her head. “The best part of my day is the moment I wake up, those couple of seconds before I remember everything that happened. It’s been really fucking hard the last couple of months, carrying it all around and not being able to talk about it with anybody.”

“I know,” Whitney said, and reached out to grasp Amara’s hand. Amara let her own hand relax into the warmth of Whitney’s palm, and they stayed there like that until another late-arriving mother came barreling down the hallway, dragging a little boy by the hand, saying in a not-at-all-nice tone of voice, “Come on, Jason, come on!”

Poor tardy Jason disappeared after his mother into the Sunshine Den, and a snippet of song trailed out into the hallway after them. Whitney grimaced at the guitar guy’s hoarse, grasping voice, the assistant’s hollow sunny tone. “Claire was so much better, wasn’t she?”

Amara felt a twinge, like she’d stumbled across a letter from an old lover. “Yeah, she was perfect for us, in her own strange way.”

“Is it true, what you said at the photo shoot, about her being in that famous band?” Whitney asked, and Amara nodded. “I guess I never really asked her much about her life outside the job. And then I screwed her out of that job. Literally.”

“Yeah, in retrospect, telling everybody her private business at the photo shoot was not my finest moment either,” Amara said. Again, they looked at each other in silence. “Shit,” Amara said. “I’ve got to go see Claire.”

Chapter 35

Claire spent much of June and July out of town, thanks, in a weird twist of fate, to Gwen.

About a week and a half after everything blew up, Gwen called to ask if she could take Claire out for tea. They met at a little café over on First Avenue, and Gwen insisted on paying for Claire’s pot of Earl Grey. Reagan napped in the stroller beside their table. Gwen brushed off Claire’s tentative attempt to ask if she was doing okay with a brisk shrug of her shoulders. “I’d rather not talk about it. I’ve been thinking about myself too much lately. I want to help you,” she said. “You’re an important part of our lives, after all. You’ve been so instrumental in Reagan’s development.”

“Gwen! Great pun,” Claire said.

“Sorry?” Gwen asked.

“‘Instrumental’?” Claire said as Gwen tilted her head and furrowed her forehead. “’Cause I’m a musician?”

“Oh, my goodness!” Gwen said, and gave a brief laugh. “But really, what are you thinking of doing now?”

It was strange, Claire thought, to spend time alone with Gwen. She had never done it before for more than a minute or two. Unlike Amara and Whitney, and even Ellie and Meredith at times, Gwen had never sought her out one-on-one for conversation, never developed a special rapport with her, never patted the empty seat next to her as an indication that Claire should sit. Now that they were trapped across a table from each other, Claire found something disconcerting in Gwen’s gaze, a hint of off-putting intensity in her smile. It was grief, Claire decided, the grief of a woman who had invested all her energy in raising a perfect family only to have it blow up in her face. There must have been total, obliterating sadness underneath Gwen’s surface even as she tried to carry on, and that was what was making Claire feel uncomfortable. God, the poor woman. Claire swallowed her tea and tried to relax.

“Well, I was thinking of looking into other playgroups or maybe some early-childhood-education places like Gymboree,” she said.

“Claire, I don’t mean to overstep here, but I think you can do so much more,” Gwen said, pouring a packet of stevia into her own tea, then delicately stirring it in. (Did this café even have stevia, or had Gwen brought this all the way from home?) “I know you don’t want to sing to children. It’s a bit embarrassing for you, isn’t it? I looked up your old band, and honestly, I think you’re much more talented than they are. You just need the right resources, a patron of sorts. So, here.” She pulled her classic Chanel bag up onto her lap, reached in, and took out a check, which she handed to Claire. “I know it’s probably not enough to make any real difference.”

Claire blinked a few times as she looked at Gwen’s neat handwriting, how it spelled out both her name and what must have been an error, an extra zero that Gwen couldn’t possibly have intended to add, turning a check meant to be for four hundred dollars into four thousand dollars. “I thought it might help you get away for the summer,” Gwen was saying. “Rent out your place here, take yourself on an artist’s retreat and write some songs, and then maybe there will be some left over to start recording. At least you won’t have to work any day jobs for a while.” She pulled out of her purse a paper with pictures of a rental apartment, covered in notes. “I found this well-reviewed rental place online, and they’re willing to give special artist rates if you book the whole summer. They’re holding it for you for the next twenty-four hours. I think you should take it.”

“Gwen,” Claire said. “Thank you so much.” She was having trouble wrapping her head around this unexpected gift. She wanted it. Oh, God, she wanted it. Her mind flashed to an image of her returning from a triumphant summer away, ready to go with music far superior to anything that Vagabond was doing now (and also, improbably, two inches taller and with bigger boobs). But, maybe because she couldn’t quite believe this good fortune was happening to her, something seemed off. “I can’t take this. It’s too generous.”