Molly hits Send before she can agonize over it a second longer. She’s about to put her phone away when she sees a notification for a new voicemail, a call she must’ve missed during the baby shower. She doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s a 917 area code. New York. She hits Play.
Molly, hi, it’s Bella. Sorry to bother you on the weekend. I’m calling because … well, I sent you an email, did you see it? I know it’s been forever—legitimately years—but the other day I walked by that place on Bleecker, the little French bistro where we met for lunch when I first signed you. Remember it was the middle of a snowstorm, and we drank all that red wine? Well, I thought of that, and it made me smile. Anyway, I’d really love to catch up so, just call me? When you can? We should talk.
Molly blinks, chews her bottom lip. She pictures Bella in one of her crisp, starchy button-downs, horn-rimmed glasses, raven hair piled on top of her head. She did get Bella’s email, two weeks ago, and never responded. Molly feels a twinge of guilt, but not enough to do anything about it. Certainly not enough to actually consider calling her back. She chucks her phone into her bag, tries to forget the voicemail and the person who left it. Molly can’t think of Bella without thinking of Jake, and she can’t handle that, especially not when she has a class to teach.
There are only six students signed up for Vinyasa flow, which isn’t too surprising. Sundays at Yoga Tree are never particularly busy, especially when the weather is nice like today.
Three of the students are Molly’s regulars, two are drop-ins who look familiar, and the sixth is a woman she doesn’t recognize. The woman is slender and tanned, lying on her mat in black Lululemons and an olive-green sports bra. She looks to be in her late twenties or maybe early thirties, Molly thinks, observing her silver belly button ring, which rises and falls on the woman’s flat stomach as she breathes. Something about her reminds Molly of Nina—her coloring, maybe, her slightly edgy style. Molly doesn’t love teaching yoga—certainly not the way she used to, and she often complains to Hunter about how tired it makes her—but today, suddenly, she is glad to be there. She’s grateful for the thing that dragged her away from Meredith Duffy’s house and for the warm, cozy skylit studio with its patchouli scent and attentive, willing practitioners.
The new woman has risen to a seated position, watching Molly, her spine perfectly stacked and straight. Molly looks at her midsection again and thinks that her own stomach used to look like that, before she had a baby. It’s never quite gotten back to what it was, even though Stella is five now. But Molly doesn’t feel bitter or judgmental, and the woman grins at her with full, wide lips.
Molly begins the practice without much effort. Teaching comes easily to her at this point; the sequence she has chosen to teach that day—hamstrings and hips—spills out from memory. She’s always very present when she teaches yoga—she has to be; she can’t miss a beat—and she doesn’t let her mind turn to other thoughts until her students are lying like corpses in Savasana. Sometimes, at the end of class, she presses each student’s shoulders and pulls their necks up to straighten their spines, massaging their temples with essential oils. But today she’s not in the mood to touch anyone; she sits and breathes on her own before cuing them out of Savasana to end the practice.
“Namaste,” she says calmly. During her yoga teacher training in Brooklyn years earlier, Molly learned the meaning of namaste in Sanskrit: I bow to the depth of your soul. She remembers being so affected by this when she was a twenty-three-year-old teacher in training, convinced it was the most honorable utterance in existence. She’d even been close to getting the Sanskrit translation tattooed below her collarbone—thank God Nina had talked her out of that one. Now, the word feels meaningless most of the time she hears herself say it. This thought makes her feel cynical and old.
After class, Molly perches herself behind the front desk as her students gather their belongings and leave the studio. She chats briefly with her regulars—Meg’s hips have been tight and she loved the sequence; David, a friend of Hunter’s, asks how Stella is doing and what their plans are for Memorial Day weekend. The woman with the belly button ring lingers, carefully zipping her yoga mat back into its case, then checking her phone.
“That was a really great class,” she says suddenly, catching Molly off guard. She approaches the desk, and Molly sees up close how beautiful she is, though she doesn’t actually look like Nina. The apples of her cheeks are flushed from the workout, and her eyes are a striking green. She pulls her dark, glossy hair into a ponytail and smiles, revealing straight white teeth. Molly notices the fine lines on her forehead and around her eye creases, and decides she must be at least thirty.