Chapter 2
Olivia
Olivia took a long shower after stashing the marinating chicken in the fridge. Bennett had practically shooed her upstairs.
Damn, it wasn’t even lunchtime and she was already tired.
Back in October, when Bennett fast-balled the New Year’s plans at her, she hadn’t known what to say, since “Hell, no!” wouldn’t
have gone over well. She’d hoped the plans would just kind of dissolve on their own. Phelps wasn’t exactly famous for this
follow-through. Something will come up, she reassured herself. There will be some drama or another and Phelps will cancel. It wasn’t an unrealistic expectation, considering the volatile lives of her husband’s high school friends. Four years ago,
the party was canceled last minute because Doug, who was supposed to host, was in jail for intent to deal. Three years ago,
there had been a half-hearted attempt to organize something, but then Phelps’s dad had a heart attack and Will’s kids caught
the flu . . .
When the official paper invitation—no simple email for Phelps—arrived at the beginning of December, she nearly freaked out.
She was the one to bring in the mail, and for half a second, she actually considered burying it in the recycling bin .
. . but that was ridiculous. Gilded paper invite or not, Bennett knew the party was on, and shredding and burying the over-the-top card would accomplish nothing except draw attention to the very thing Olivia had been so desperately hiding.
As she lathered her hair with shampoo, she reminded herself it had been five years. Five whole years of relative stability,
during which they’d had two more kids and bought a house. She and Bennett were doing fine. Anyway, it’s not like they’d had
no contact with the old crowd since the last party. Bennett spent a couple weekends a year with Phelps and checked in with
Doug on the phone every so often, and even though Olivia hadn’t seen any of them in person, she followed them all on Facebook
and heard the updates through Bennett. Maybe the party would be fine. Fine was a word Olivia often used. In the absence of things being “great” or “awesome” as Bennett liked to say, she could mostly
honestly say they were “fine.”
She liked her life and worked hard to cultivate gratitude, since it didn’t spring effusively up from her like it seemed to
for Bennett. She practiced the habit of murmuring five things she was thankful for over her morning coffee—an agnostic’s version
of prayer, she supposed.
Yes, everything was fine . . . except for how her organs felt crowded inside her body, like her bones were tightening, squeezing
them into smaller and smaller spaces, like she couldn’t take a full breath. She massaged the shampoo deep into her scalp.
She’d always been “wound tight,” as her father said—approvingly, meaning she was conscientious—but recently, it didn’t feel
so good.
She could hear Bennett whistling through the cracked bathroom door of their pitched-roof master suite in the old attic space of their small Chicago bungalow.
Normally, it would annoy her that he’d told her to go relax and then came upstairs after her .
. . but right now, the feeling in her chest wasn’t annoyance.
It was envy. Of the ease Bennett had in his body, the charming confidence with which he interacted with everyone.
If only Olivia could be more like that. Someone who knew what to say at parties.
Someone who didn’t feel stiff and awkward and out of place everywhere she went.
It was partly how she’d been raised, she always thought. They were a serious family, especially after Emily died, and as a
teenager, Olivia was more used to going to the Lyric or a performance at the Goodman with her parents than attending drunken
parties with her peers. She wasn’t opposed to drunken parties—it’s just, she could never find her rhythm. Her limbs felt too
long, her mouth too pinched, her efforts at conversation too stilted.
In the end, she had learned the painful truth that it was better to keep things to herself, insecurities included. That people
liked her better that way. That her allure was in her silence.
“Aaah!” she yelped as she realized she wasn’t alone.
“Sorry! Just me!” said Bennett. He was naked. He slid open the shower door. “Mind if I join you?”
“Uh . . .” she said, heart still pounding.
“A little tense?” He reached forward and massaged her wet shoulders.
“You scared the shit out of me,” she said with a laugh, shaking off his hands and leaning her head back to rinse out the shampoo.
She knew he was upstairs, but hadn’t heard him come in. “I thought you were cleaning up. Watching the kids.”
“I finished the dishes. And the kids are all in front of the screen. I figured I’d steal ten minutes up here with you . . .”
Bennett squirted bodywash into his palm while Olivia let the hot water run through her hair.
A desperate feeling clenched her. She wasn’t one to make last-minute decisions. She wasn’t one to cancel plans. She was the
steady one who did what was expected and played to her strengths. And yet . . .
“I just . . . Thinking about New Year’s tonight . . .” she said. Her heartbeat felt hot inside her, hotter than the water on her skin. The words tumbled out. Her last desperate reach. “Maybe I could stay home with the kids? Catch up on some projects for work? Save the favor with my parents?”
Bennett was silent for a minute. Then, he laughed bitterly. “You’re that desperate to bow out?”
Ugh—the disappointment in Bennett’s tone was so unfairly outsized. Would it be that tragic for Olivia to miss? They hadn’t even
done one of these parties in half a decade!
“I’m not desperate,” she said. “I’m just . . . tired. You know I can barely make it to ten o’clock most nights. Wouldn’t you have more fun . . .
without me?”
“Olivia . . .” Bennett’s tone turned cajoling, but she could hear the layer of frustration just underneath. “I thought we
had a plan. I thought you were even a little excited, finally. Come on. What happened to you, me, and the air mattress?”
“I . . .” She shrugged, trying to show Bennett this was all so casual, as if her heart wasn’t racing so fast it was making
her breathless. “It’s just, aren’t they more your friends? You guys have that high school bond. I’m just . . . one of the
partners.”
“You were a bridesmaid for Hellie!” spouted Bennett. He was angry now. “You held Bunny’s hair back when she puked that one
year! Remember? Jenn gave you birth plan advice when we had Norah!”
“I know,” she said, a surge of emotion moving up her throat. “I’m sorry, you’re right. Sorry.” Tears were slipping out. She
closed her eyes and let them mingle with the shower water.
“I just don’t—” Bennett’s voice, which started out pissed off, took a sudden turn toward tender. “Are you crying?”
“I don’t know. Sorry. Just hormones, probably.”
Just memories of the years before that fateful, final New Year’s party.
Just memories of simpler times when, drama notwithstanding, she’d counted herself lucky to be included in such a tight group as the one her husband had formed in his turbulent Marquette High School days.
Bennett, Doug, Will, and Phelps truly had something special.
Olivia didn’t know of any other group of friends who had seen each other through so much over so many years, through broken leases and totaled cars, drugs and breakups and cross-country moves.
Olivia had never had friends like that, and even though in the early years she always felt like an add-on to the core that was the OG Four, she was happy to bask in the glory of a bond that strong. But then . . .
“Hey. C’mere,” murmured Bennett as he drew Olivia into an embrace. The water beat down on her back. She held still and let
herself be hugged. “We’re okay, right? We’re okay.”
These days, more often than not, Olivia’s body felt saturated with touch from the kids and their very physical needs. But
right now, her husband’s wet, firm body felt good. She sank her face into his shoulder and felt the tears come faster.
What would she give to go back? What price would she pay? What limb would she sacrifice?
“Rosie and Alex—the testing—” said Olivia in a small voice. “I have all the paperwork somewhere in my email. I’ll schedule
something for January.”
Bennett sighed. “Thank you. I know you do a lot. For all of us. It’s not like I don’t notice it.”
She gave a single nod.
It was massively stressful for Olivia to imagine these results coming in. What if her kids had that genetic abnormality too?
How would she ever tell her sweet children that there was something built into their bodies that could kill them like it had
killed their aunt Emily when she was only nine?
But there was another fear laced into that, wasn’t there?
Olivia and Bennett had three precious children. One of them had been born in October 2015, nine months after that final New
Year’s party. One of her children had dark hair instead of blond. Brown eyes instead of blue.
“Looks exactly like my ancestor John Rutherford Rhodes,” Bennett had observed, always the history buff, squinting at a black-and-white photograph from the ancestry tome he had helped his uncle compile, glancing between baby Rosie and the bearded serious man in the hat. “Doesn’t she?”
“Oh, my God, you’re right!” Olivia had said, flush with relief, giddy with it, even though there was no fucking resemblance at all. “A dead ringer.”
She loved her children. But every time she looked at them, she had a stomach-twisting fear that, one day, Bennett would wake
up from the golden stupor of happiness she’d tricked him into.
Because one of Olivia’s children was not like the others.