“I’m ahead of schedule on my commission, so I knocked off early to hang with the kiddos. Come, I’ll make you a spritzer.”
“We actually need to get going.” Claire doesn’t hear me as she makes her way to the kitchen.
My pulse pounds in my temples, the flattened arches of my feet, my shallow breath. My skin prickles in anticipation until I spot Jasper seated on the floor, inspecting a puzzle piece, while Summer bangs a tub of Play-Doh against the floor, trying to force it open.
“Jasp, honey?” I try to stay calm, but my voice cracks, betraying me. “Sweetie, we have to get going.”
Jasper ignores me as he trades the puzzle for one of those sensory switchboards. Although every fiber in me resists, I step farther inside the familiar house.
“Jasper, come.” When he still doesn’t move, I waddle over and lift him off the floor as he writhes in protest. A ligament—loose from pregnancy—pulls as I try to contain him. I stifle the burning throb as I manage to half drag him toward the door.
Claire pokes her head out of the kitchen, holding two wineglasses, some sort of juice elixir for me and a dark red for her.
“Everything okay?” Claire asks.
“Perfect. Marvelous. Swell.”Swell? I don’t think I’ve ever saidswellin my life. I force a smile at my best friend, who frowns, knowing something’s up. “We’ll see you soon,” I add, not waiting for her to respond.
Once we’re secure in our own house, I try to go about my normal routine, willing myself not to peer over at Claire’s. As I measure a cup of rice and run it beneath the faucet, I involuntarily glance outside. Dan’s home. He and Claire are in their living room, slow dancing to music I can’t hear. Summer plays on the floor beside them. Sensing he’s being watched, Dan finds me across the way. His gaze remains fixed on me as he tilts his head to kiss Claire’s temple. It sends a shiver through me. I quickly shut the water off and spin away from them, trying to calm myself. I have no idea why he would have bought Regina my earrings, if it’s some jab at Claire, if he simply didn’t know where else to buy his girlfriend jewelry with his wife’s money. The fear quickly calcifies into anger. Whatever the reason, he’s involved my son.
The moment Gabe gets home, he knows something’s wrong. The house reeks of burnt coconut that I’d been toasting to put over the rice. The rice on the stove, also neglected, is now mush.
“T.? Sorry I’m late. Stacey scheduled a late retrieval,” he calls as he walks in through the door from the garage, confronted by the charred stench. “Is everything okay?”
He stops at the entry to the kitchen, relieved when he discovers it’s just dinner in peril. He stares at me, waiting for me to explain what’s happened. The fact that Regina had my earrings won’t change anything for Gabe. The fact that Dan bought them for her will only make him more insistent that I need to mind my own business.
Before I can decide what to tell him, Gabe’s phone lights up with a text, then another and another. Gabe flares his nostrils, tightens his jaw—an expression that means it’s Aram, Gabe’s embryologist.
“Let me see what he wants.” Gabe dashes upstairs.
While Gabe’s upstairs, I make one final attempt to brown coconut flakes, setting two timers and not taking my eyes off the toaster oven, even when Jasper grabs at my pants, nearly pulling them down.
“Mama, Mama, Mama,” Jasper calls, refusing to be ignored.
“What, baby?” I ask, lifting him to my hip. Once there, he has nothing more to report. He just wanted my attention. There’s so much I can intuit, but his connection to Regina isn’t one of those things.
A man pushing his bike skirts my periphery, and I glance outside, more out of habit than interest. On the corner, the woman who paints most days packs up her easel and palette. What does she capture in her renderings of the canals?
“Dede. Dede.” Jasper guffaws, pointing to Judy at our gate, who’s making a bizarre monkey gesture that Jasper finds hilarious. Judy nods goodbye, then continues her walk, on to the frat house and the house after that until she reaches the end of our island. It would make me feel safe, someone constantly on watch, if it were anyone other than Judy.
Suddenly, the alarm blazes, the kitchen fills with smoke. Gabe thunders downstairs and runs past me to open the French doors, then stands on his tiptoes, waving a towel under the smoke alarm. The coconut. I’ve burned it again.
We eat the pasty rice without the coconut, and it’s obvious that something’s missing.
“So,” Gabe says, “are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
I drop my fork to my plate, acid pricking my chest even though I haven’t eaten more than a bite. I have to tell him. He’ll be hurt that I broke my promise to move on, a promise I only tacitly made. Still, he deserves to know. I need him to know. I need us to deliberate together like we always do, to decide as a team what to do about Dan Huntsman.
“I went to see Maya today.” He stares blankly at me, the name not immediately familiar to him. “At Ezra Linsky’s.”
“Did you talk to her about a new line?” His excitement is enough to break my heart. He’s so proud of me. My sweet, supportive husband. I picked a good one.
“She—” I can’t disappoint him. I search for the right words. “Her son died.”
Gabe inches his left hand toward mine. I expect to find shock on his face, horror at his worst fear realized. He smiles, close-lipped and sympathetic, ready to console me while remaining unfazed himself. Gabe’s a doctor. He’s trained to distance himself from other people’s tragedies. Also, he doesn’t know Maya.
“She’s our age. My age,” I correct, our constant joke. Right now, it isn’t funny. It’s devastating. “Her son couldn’t have been more than four.”
“Do you know what happened?”
