Deb balled a fist and held it in front of her mouth, pretended to cough the word obsessive.
“You don’t need that to know whether he did it,” Janine said. “He did. And he got off scot-free.”
Lena had been in her forties—a baby—when the accident happened, but she had acted like her life was over. What second acts might have been possible if she’d had a different mindset? If she hadn’t entombed herself in the silence?
Suddenly breathless and itchy, she walked away from the discussion and over to Deb’s kitchen window. She switched the latch, cranked it open, inhaled the cool air.
“Move over.”
Lena shifted over to make room for Annie, who settled next to her.
“Deb and Priya just told me I’m an awful parent,” she said. “And bad at my job. And they’re one hundred percent right.”
“They don’t really believe that,” Lena said loyally.
“I used to feel balanced,” Annie said. “All I do is worry now, search through Laurel’s pockets. I never find anything, yet I can’t stop. What’s the cure for constant worry?”
“Having fun?”
“Right,” Annie said. “We’re not dead yet. Let’s do something frivolous. Like … we could go to that new wine bar everyone’s talking about?”
“We can do better than that,” Lena said.
“Yeah, that’s lame. We could—I don’t know, there’s that spa in the mountains that everyone talks about? River Rock something?” Annie’s voice was skeptical. “I hate strangers touching me, though.”
“Think bigger,” Lena said.
If you looked at it one way, she was as much of a victim as anyone else. Starting with that last party, Lena’s whole life had been stolen from her, due to events beyond her control.
“Bigger than the spa?” Annie turned to face Lena, one eyebrow arched. “You don’t seem like the Vegas type, Lena.”
Lena could see it as if it were already happening right there on her patio: Candles lining the stone wall. A table piled with food. The jangle of pop music. Kids running and laughing and dancing in the purple dusk, Laurel in the center, twirling around on the dance floor.
“What then?” Annie said. “I can tell you have something specific in mind.”
Lena breathed in the cool night air. Her pulse sped up like something illegal had hit her bloodstream. The Perleys needed fun.
Don’t pretend this is for them, Rachel scoffed.
Damn the guilt. Lena had sacrificed enough.
“I’m throwing Laurel a graduation party,” Lena said.
APRIL
To: “The Best Book Club in the World”
From: [email protected]
Bonjour! Bring a smock and your creativity to this month’s meeting, ladies!
The book: THE ARTIST’S LOVER
Suzanne Valadon. Her face may be recognizable, but her story has remained largely untold. The subject of Toulouse-Lautrec’s THE HANGOVER and, for a time, his lover, Suzanne was ahead of her time, a single mother, an artist in her own right, a rule breaker to rival them all.*
THE ARTIST’S LOVER, a “meticulously researched,” “lyrical” “tour through artist colony France,” tells Suzanne’s story, through her eyes.
April in Paris, ladies! Who can resist? Be there （MY house again, hooray!） or be square!!!
*She painted male nudes, y’all!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Any interest?
Jen’s former colleague from the Bay Area had emailed her a link to a registration form for an academic conference in Atlanta. Five days in June. International Ethology and Animal Aggression.
She was interested.
Jen from Before would’ve been on the conference’s faculty, putting final touches on her paper. Jen from Now could barely picture how to pack for five days, but was still grateful to feel that new-school-supply rush of excitement while reading about the various panels.
Someone was making a ruckus in the kitchen. Drawers and cabinets opened and slammed shut. “Everything okay in there?” she shouted.
“Just me,” Colin said. “Looking for popcorn.” He leaned in the doorway to the dining room.
“In the garage,” Jen said. “Nice shirt.”
She’d offered him first dibs on a bag of Paul’s clothes heading to donation. In true hipster fashion, he’d swooned over everything—the stained pink seersucker suit and the ugly bold-print shirts. He wore the worst one now—a spectacularly loud red button-down stamped with fish and pineapples, which Jen remembered from a costume party years ago.