Cleo begged off dinner because she had other plans. She made sure that Lucas was settled and knew how to get to the coffee shop (“oh my God, Mooooooom,” he’d whined before he slipped under his sheets for a nap), then hailed an Uber outside the hotel.

She pressed her forehead against the car window as they wound through the wide, beautiful streets of Broadmoor, the spaces of her memory plugged with nostalgia. She thanked the driver and stood outside MaryAnne’s house and stared up at the cloud-streaked sky and remembered how braided they’d been, the two of them, their own peas in a pod, until Cleo detonated it. And for that, she owed MaryAnne an apology. Cleo couldn’t know if she’d ruined MaryAnne’s life, if her decision to sabotage her essay or undermine her for the school paper position or any of that stuff had thrown her off her anointed course, if instead of being president of her country club she’d be mayor or serving in Congress alongside Cleo. Life happens, Cleo thought. You make a million decisions in the moment that may change your trajectory. And sometimes you get lucky, like when Cleo got Lucas, and sometimes you don’t, like when MaryAnne chose to listen to Cleo’s truly terrible advice to write her internship essay about her dead dog or when Cleo gave in to her petty jealousy of MaryAnne’s blue-blood connections and offered her that advice to begin with and wrecked their friendship. The point of life wasn’t to go back and litigate all those mistakes. The point, Cleo supposed, was to do better.

So here she was. At MaryAnne Newman’s literal doorstep. Trying to do better.

She rapped the brass knocker against the red door three times, then stepped back and waited. A Range Rover was in the driveway, so she figured MaryAnne was home, and if not, Cleo knew she’d be at the club. But before she had to reassess, however, she heard footsteps, and then the door swung open, and then her old ex-friend stood in front of her, speechless.

“Hi, MaryAnne,” Cleo said. “I’m back.”

“What are you . . . ?” MaryAnne was dressed down in yoga pants and a tank top, with a messy bun atop her head. She looked more like Cleo remembered her than when she was made-up and tailored at the club. MaryAnne peered over Cleo’s shoulder. “Are you filming me again? Is that what this is?”

“No, could I, can I . . . would it be OK if I came in?”

MaryAnne took a second long look around the front yard, as if she couldn’t take Cleo at her word, which, frankly, was fair. “Fine,” she huffed. “But I was working out, so you have, like, a minute.”

MaryAnne had redone the house since her parents lived there. Their walls used to be bright yellow and the wood a rich mahogany. Now it was all crisp white, even the couches, even the rugs. But the bones were the same, the high beams and the arched doorways, and Cleo felt as if she were stepping back in time. She realized how it must feel to MaryAnne—to never, literally, have left home. Not that staying home was a wrong decision for plenty of people—Cleo wasn’t judging. But for MaryAnne, with her ambitions, maybe it had been, and Cleo could see why MaryAnne blamed her, though we all make our choices, and even with Cleo’s misdeed, MaryAnne chose to stay. She couldn’t hold Cleo accountable for that. The world was pretty vast, and even if it had been the harder path, MaryAnne could have gone anywhere, done anything.

MaryAnne sat at her kitchen table and stared; then, because she was a debutante even all these years later, she exhaled and said, “I suppose I should offer you some lemonade.”

“I’ll get it,” Cleo said, and MaryAnne didn’t protest, so Cleo found the glasses exactly where she knew they would be, and she found the pitcher in the refrigerator, and then she grabbed two coasters because she knew that MaryAnne wouldn’t want rings left behind, and then, finally, she sat across from her old friend to drink some lemonade.

“I owe you an apology,” Cleo said. “A real one. I was a true asshole, and I justified that to myself for a long time, but it really doesn’t make me any less of an asshole.”

MaryAnne bristled, and Cleo didn’t know what she had said that was untrue. She was determined to be honest, and she felt that she was.

“I don’t . . . I don’t really like that language in the house,” MaryAnne said.

“Oh, well then, I apologize for that too.”

MaryAnne wrinkled her nose like she thought Cleo was being snide, which she wasn’t.

“MaryAnne, I am here without agenda. I think . . . You know, for a long time it was only me. Then it was Lucas and me. And that’s just how it’s always been.” Cleo thought of those two girls who had approached her at the Central Park fun run, best friends who never wanted to be apart, and how she told them that at some point they might have to choose themselves. And then she thought of Mariann, the kind nurse who admitted Lucas into the ER, who told her that no woman was an island. “For a long time, I just thought that I had to . . . pick me. I thought that was strength. And all I wanted to be was seen as formidable. But what I didn’t know is that out there on my own, I was actually making myself less formidable. No one can do anything in this life alone. Asking for help when you need it—that’s the real strength. So is apologizing when you’ve really stepped in shit.” Cleo stopped and worried that she’d screwed it up again. “Sorry, crap, not shit.”

MaryAnne took a deep breath, then a long sip of lemonade.

“I don’t know why I’m OK with shit but not asshole,” she said finally. “Do people even consider shit a swear word these days? Esme says it on the phone to her friends, like, every other sentence, even when I make her put her allowance in the swear jar.” She paused. “Maybe I need to lighten up a little.”

“I guess we kind of are who we are, even all these years later.” Cleo grinned, and then they both fell silent.

“I’m sorry I took out that ad,” MaryAnne said.

“You don’t have to—”

“I’m not sorry for writing the op-ed, but the ad was a little too far. Well, actually, I’m sorry for the op-ed too—bringing Lucas into it was wrong. I hate that I did it,” she said. “This wasn’t just about you. My husband leaving me for a woman in his office, Esme needing me less and less.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to redefine yourself after so many years of knowing who you were. Maybe we aren’t always who we are. Or can’t be. Or shouldn’t be.”

“Well, God knows I understand that,” Cleo said. “I think we used to think we’d have it all figured out as adults. Didn’t we used to think that? We were in such a rush to be grown-ups.”

MaryAnne nodded, then shook her head.

“We didn’t know shit,” she said, and Cleo couldn’t help but laugh. Then she quieted.

“Do you really think I’m a bad person?” Cleo asked. She realized that maybe that was also why she’d come. She thought it was to apologize, but it was also for penance.

“For a long time I did,” MaryAnne answered. And it was honest, so Cleo didn’t protest. “But I suppose that life is long, and sometimes it is a really stinking slog.” She shook the ice in her lemonade. “And maybe it would be nice to believe that people can change. Because if I don’t or we can’t, then what’s the point of any of this anyway?”

Then the two former best friends sat in MaryAnne Newman’s kitchen, and they drank their lemonades in silence, but together.

It was better, they each thought privately, than drinking them apart.

It wasn’t that everything was smooth for the rest of that late afternoon with MaryAnne. You don’t make up for two decades of pain and betrayal over a glass of lemonade and with a simple apology. They made inconsequential small talk and gossiped about Oliver and Gaby, of course. Soon MaryAnne noticed the time, and Cleo stood to go.

At the door, Cleo didn’t know if she should hug MaryAnne, so instead she said: “Hey, listen, you know our kids are . . . dating or something?”

“Esme says she prefers not to label it.”

“Right, what does that mean?” Cleo said.

MaryAnne rolled her eyes and laughed.

“Well, I was thinking. I’m running for president—”

“You are?” MaryAnne gasped. “I mean, you really are?”

“I’m going to.” Cleo nodded. “We’ll announce it next week.”

MaryAnne held her hands to her cheeks like she couldn’t believe it.

“MaryAnne, I thought you were pretty aware that this was in the mix,” Cleo said. “Wasn’t that the point of the op-ed that started this whole thing?”