When Gwen looked up at them again, her face was bare, stripped of the sweetness or judgment or embarrassed sadness it so often alternated between.

“Please,” Gwen said. “Think of my children.”

“What?” Whitney asked.

“You turn me in, you’re dooming them to grow up without a mother.” Her voice grew so quiet that the other women had to lean in to hear. “I just want to protect them.”

The others glanced at one another. Amara couldn’t stop a short, sharp laugh from coming out of her mouth.

“We’re all so obsessed with protecting our children, aren’t we?” Amara said. “That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. We want to paint a lovely picture that we hang over their window to block out how the world really works, to give them these perfect lives. And to do that, we think we need to keep ourselves perfect too. But no mother in the history of the world has been able to protect her child forever. The world barges in through the front door eventually. Or sometimes,” she said, glaring at Gwen, “you invite it in, because it knows exactly what lies you want to hear.” Gwen coughed again, drawing back farther into the closet as if she didn’t want them to see what she had become, bracing herself on another shoebox. Amara shook her head. “I wish so badly that I could be the perfect mother for Charlie. But since I’m not, I think I’d rather he know that, when I fucked up big-time, I tried to do the right thing, instead of lying to him that everything is all puppies and rainbows. I have to believe that the people who matter to me will understand that.”

She looked at Gwen, who had made Amara feel terrible in ways big and small. “I don’t want your children to grow up without a mother, Gwen,” she said. “That’s why I’m not going full Mama Bear on your ass right now, though I’d dearly love to rip your throat out with my teeth. But you also can’t pull ‘Motherhood’ as a literal ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card. You’re a psycho, and you sold out your own, and you have to pay for that.”

The other women shifted around her, and Amara looked them in the eye one by one. “The rest of you can go, if you need to, and try to distance yourself from this as much as possible,” she said. “But—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I’m calling the police.”

Chapter 42

For a moment, no one spoke. Whitney looked at Amara, standing straight and still with her new certainty, and didn’t know what to do. Gwen was right. If they all came forward, Grant would divorce her. He was used to getting what he wanted, so he wasn’t the type to try to work through such a huge betrayal. Even though she’d put so much distance between them, she thought now of losing all the beautiful little routines they’d built up over the years, of never again catching a glimpse of his face when he woke up in the morning (for a moment, with sleep clouding his eyes, she could see the vulnerable little boy he once had been), of knowing that he’d never look at her again like he had that night he met her parents. Whitney didn’t want to stop being a marvel, to go from being a precious thing to a ruined woman.

And more than that, if she stepped forward, Hope’s lucky life would come crashing down. She didn’t want Hope to lose a single opportunity, her chance at the best education, an ounce of her happiness. Oh, God, she realized, she was so desperate not to cede any of Hope’s privilege that she’d let other women’s children pay the price. Maybe Hope would hate Whitney for failing her, in the same way that Whitney had hated her own parents. Or maybe Whitney could impress upon her daughter the thing that she was only beginning to learn—that women didn’t have to be perfect to be worthy.

If she chose to stand with Amara, the entire narrative she’d built up around herself would disappear. She didn’t know who she’d be anymore. The problem with precious things was that they weren’t supposed to change, and people inevitably did. Blindly, trusting, entirely terrified, she stepped forward. “I’m there with you,” she said.

Meredith and Ellie looked at each other, then clasped hands and planted their feet.

“Let’s do it,” Vicki said.

“Call the police, then,” Gwen said in a dull voice. She stood up. “I’m going to wash the vomit off my face before they get here. At least allow me that dignity.” Shaking all over, she drew the bulky coat close around her and staggered past them all to the closet door.

“Is she actually going to wash her face?” Ellie asked.

“Of course not,” Amara said. “Vicki, dial nine-one-one.” They all ran to the bedroom door just in time to see Gwen flying down the stairs, her fur coat flapping open around her to reveal a shoebox in her hand. “Lord, if I didn’t hate her so much, I’d almost admire her persistence.”

“Gwen, stop!” Ellie called uselessly while Vicki began explaining the situation to a 911 dispatcher who seemed to have a lot of questions.

“Where does she think she’s going?” Whitney asked as Gwen stuffed the shoebox in the lower compartment of the stroller that Christopher had left by the front door in his rush to get Reagan and Rosie away from whatever strange situation was going to happen in his house.

“She’s got a lot of speed in her system right now, probably,” Claire said. “I don’t know if she’s making the most rational decisions.”

Amara waved her hand. “The police will catch up with her eventually.”

“Unless she tries something crazy and gets herself killed,” Whitney said.

“Let her run into traffic, for all I care,” Amara said as Gwen stuffed her feet into a pair of heels by the door. Gwen pulled the door open and tugged the stroller out after her too hard so that it rolled past her and skidded down the steps. The door slammed behind her, cutting off the view from the others.

“Unless she tries something crazy and gets Reagan killed,” Whitney said softly.

“Call Christopher and tell him not to let her take the kids from him,” Amara said.

“I don’t have his phone number,” Whitney said. “We always just wrote to each other through my Instagram.”

Amara stared at her for a moment. “I will never understand,” she said, and sighed. “Dammit, let’s go.” Then, as one, the women began to run.

Chapter 43

The women reentered the muggy August air just as Gwen turned the corner at the end of the block, heading toward the playground in the park. Sweat began trickling down Claire’s back as they sprinted, Amara huffing away beside her.

The pedestrians around them stopped what they were doing to stare at the chase, their expressions changing almost in slow motion as they struggled to register what was going on. Was some kind of danger approaching? Did they need to run too? Soon enough, though, they dismissed that possibility. One man held up his phone and started to take a video. Claire gave him the finger. “Where’s the fire?” someone shouted, laughing.