“Margaret? How are you? It’s Brooke Alter.” The pounding in her chest made it hard to speak.

“Brooke! Good to hear from you! How is everything?”

It was clearly not a weighted question—Margaret was just making small talk—but Brooke panicked for a second. Did she mean how was everything with Julian? With the Chateau girl situation? With all the media conjecture about their marriage? Or was she just being polite and using a basic figure of speech?

“Oh, everything’s great. You know,” she said, immediately feeling ridiculous. “How are you?”

“Well, we’re managing. I’ve been interviewing to fill your spot, and I have to say it again, Brooke, I’m sorry about what happened.”

Brooke felt a glimmer of hope. Was she saying that so Brooke would ask for her job back? Because Brooke would beg for it back, do anything, anything at all to prove herself to Margaret. But no, she had to be sensible: if they were willing to hire her back right now, she wouldn’t have fired her in the first place. Just act normal. Say what you called to say and hang up the phone.

“Margaret, I know I’m hardly in any place to ask you a favor, but . . . I was wondering if you would keep me in mind for any opportunities that come across your radar? Not at NYU, of course, but should you hear of anything else . . .”

There was a brief pause. “All right, Brooke. I’ll certainly keep my eyes open for you.”

“I would appreciate it so much! I’m very eager to resume working, and I promise you—and would promise any future employer—that my husband’s career will not be a problem anymore.”

Although she might have been curious, Margaret didn’t ask any follow-up questions. They made small talk for another minute or two before hanging up, and Brooke breathed a huge sigh of relief. Dreaded Item Number One: complete.

Dreaded Item Number Two—a call to Julian’s mother to discuss the travel details of Trent’s wedding next weekend—wasn’t going to be quite as easy. Her mother-in-law had taken to calling Brooke nearly every day since the Grammys to offer long and unsolicited monologues on how to be a supportive and forgiving wife. They usually included examples of Julian’s father’s trespasses (ranging in seriousness from flirting with his entire reception and nursing staff to leaving her alone many weekends a year to go on golfing trips with his buddies and do “god knows what” else), and they always highlighted Elizabeth Alter’s abundance of patience and understanding of the male species. The clichés along the lines of “boys will be boys” and “behind every successful man there is a woman” were starting to feel not just repetitive but downright oppressive. On the bright side, Brooke wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that Julian’s mother cared one way or another if they stayed married, got divorced, or both simply vanished altogether. Thankfully, she got her mother-in-law’s voice mail and was able to leave a message asking her to e-mail their travel plans since Brooke wouldn’t be available to talk the rest of the day.

She was about to cross the next item off her list when her phone rang.

“Neha! Hi, sweetheart! How are you?”

“Brooke? Hi! I’ve got some great news: Rohan and I are definitely moving back to New York. By this summer!”

“No way. That is such great news! Did Rohan get an offer from a New York firm?” Brooke’s mind had already begun cycling through all the exciting possibilities: what they’d name the company, how they’d recruit their first clients, all the different ideas she’d had for getting the word out. And now, it was one step closer to happening.

“Actually, I’m the one who got the offer. It’s so crazy, but a friend of mine just signed on to cover for a staff nutritionist who’s on a yearlong maternity leave. Well, my friend can’t work right now since she’s taking care of her sick mother, so she asked me if I’d be interested. Guess who it’s for?”

Brooke cycled through a list of celebrities, just certain Neha was going to say Gwyneth or Heidi or Giselle, already in mourning for the business that wasn’t going to be. “I don’t know. Who?”

“The New York Jets! Can you believe it? I’m going to be the team nutritional adviser for the 2010 to 2011 season. I have less than zero knowledge about the nutritional needs of three-hundred-pound linebackers, but I guess I’ll have to learn.”

“Oh, Neha, that’s incredible! What an amazing opportunity,” she said, and meant it. Brooke had to admit that if something like that came up, she’d ditch everything else in a heartbeat.

“Yeah, I’m pretty excited. And you should see Rohan. The second I told him, he was like, ‘Tickets!’ He’s already got the whole schedule printed and hanging on our fridge.”

Brooke laughed. “I’m envisioning little five-foot-three you walking through the locker room with a clipboard and a bullhorn, batting Big Macs and tubs of KFC out of their mammoth hands.”

“I know, right? Like, ‘Excuse me, Mr.-NFL-All-Star-I-make-eighty-trillion-dollars-a-year, but I’m going to have to ask you to cut back on the high-fructose corn syrup.’ It’s going to be awesome!”

When Brooke hung up the phone a few minutes later, she couldn’t help but feel that everyone’s career was on track except her own. They weren’t going to be starting a company together after all. Her phone rang again immediately. Certain it was Neha calling back to give her one more detail, Brooke picked up the call and said, “What, exactly, is your plan for when one of them hits on you?”

She heard the sound of a throat clearing and then a male voice asked, “Is this Brooke Alter?”

For just a moment—and for no good reason whatsoever—she was convinced it was someone calling to say Julian had been in a terrible accident, or was sick, or . . .

“Brooke, this is Art Mitchell calling from Last Night magazine. I was wondering if you had any comment about the piece in ‘Page Six’ this morning?”

She wanted to scream, but thankfully she was able to calm herself enough to close the phone and power it off. Her hands were shaking when she set it down on the coffee table. No one but her immediate family and closest friends had her new private number. How had this happened?

There wasn’t any time to think about it, though, since she’d already grabbed her laptop and pounded in the web address for “Page Six.” And there it was, at the very top of the page, taking up almost her entire computer screen. Two pictures: one of her crying the day before at Cookshop with Nola, clearly wiping tears away with her napkin, and the other of Julian, stepping out of a limo somewhere—judging from the old-fashioned taxi in the background, probably London—leaving an extremely attractive young woman behind in the backseat. The caption under her photo read, “Brooke Alter mourns the end of her marriage over a girls’ brunch yesterday,” and there was a circle drawn around her tear-wiping hand, presumably indicating the absence of a wedding band. It continued: “‘They are definitely over,’ a source very close to Mrs. Alter says. ‘She’s even going alone to a family wedding next weekend.’” The caption accompanying Julian’s photo was no less charming. “Scandal can’t slow him down! Alter takes the party to London after his wife throws him out of their Manhattan apartment.”