Chapter One
Present
“Have fun, but don’t stay up too late.” I bend over and pull both of my girls into a tight hug.
“We won’t!” Abagail and Emily chime in unison.
“I love you.” After planting a kiss on each of their heads, I let go.
“Love you too,” Emily calls as they run from our front porch and hurry across the street.
A heaviness fills my chest at the thought of what I have to tell them as I watch them bound up our neighbor’s drive without a care in the world.
When my neighbor Morgan opens her front door and lets the girls inside, I wave.
“Thank you!” I call.
“No problem.” She returns my wave.
I wait until she closes her door to go back inside.
As the door clicks shut, I sink against the entryway wall and check to see if Matt replied to my last text.
Of course he hasn’t, I think after unlocking my screen.
I thrust the phone into my jeans pocket, chiding myself for getting my hopes up.
The girls and I are the last thing on his mind right now.
I move into my living room and contemplate opening a bottle of wine as I sag onto the couch. A knock sounds on the door. One of the girls must’ve forgotten something.
The knock sounds again after I stand. When I open the front door, Beth envelops me in a hug. Her heels make us nearly the same height.
“You okay?” she asks, pulling away.
My throat constricts as the events from the last seventy-two hours ricochet through my mind. Thank God Beth is here.
“Sorry—stupid question.” The top half of Beth’s dark hair is pinned back, revealing the razor-thin scar on her right temple. “Of course you’re not.”
She shuts the door behind her, then lifts a red wine bottle by the neck. “When I saw your text, I thought we might need this.”
As she moves past me, I see my makeup smeared on the shoulder of her trench coat. When we get to the living room that looks out to a street lined with homes that appear almost exactly like mine, only different colors, she gestures to the couch.
“You sit,” she says. “I’ll get the glasses.”
Her heels clack against the hardwood as I slump onto the suede sofa. When Beth returns holding two generously poured glasses of wine, I’m staring at the professionally taken family photograph on the wall, knowing I’ll need to take it down and replace it with one of just me and the girls.
“Thanks,” I say, tearing my eyes from the five-year-old photo taken when I was ten pounds lighter and Matt and I were still in love. Or at least I thought so. The girls were only four, standing between us wearing matching white dresses.
Bitterness rises to the back of my throat when I take a sip of wine, thinking how Matt left without telling them, leaving me to do the explaining.
Beth sinks into the cushions beside me. “Where are the twins?”
“Having a sleepover at the neighbor’s. I haven’t told them yet.”
Beth extends her arm over the back of the couch, tucking her ankle under her knee as she turns to face me. “So, he moved in with her?”
I nod. “He’s going to. Matt got an apartment in Renton, and she’s moving from Colorado so they can live together.”
Beth wrinkles her nose. “Wow. And she’s what? Twenty-six?”
I drop my gaze to my glass, annoyed that Beth is making me repeat the detail she already knows. “Twenty-three.”
“Yikes.” Beth winces, bringing her glass to her lips. “And this is the same woman Matt posted a photo with at his conference in Denver? The one you were worried he might’ve slept with?”
She’s hardly a woman, I think. She’s barely an adult. “Yep.”
“I thought you asked him about her, and he admitted they’d had a few drinks at the bar. But that he’d apologized and said it was nothing,” Beth says after taking a drink.
“Yeah, that’s what he said.” I run my finger around the rim of my glass, remembering that sickening moment when I found out.
A moment I know I’ll never forget. “I found an Instagram DM from her on Matt’s phone about a month ago—along with a topless selfie—and confronted him about it.
Once I got over the shock, I was livid.” I point to the doorway at the start of the hall.
“I made him sleep in the guest room ever since. He insisted he was telling the truth that they’d only had drinks together in Denver but that she’d reached out to him online after he got home.
” Matt also told me that they shared a connection he hasn’t felt with me in years, but it hurts too much to say it.
“He promised to stop messaging her.” I frown, meeting Beth’s eyes.
A warm flush of shame rises to my cheeks for being so stupid to think he was telling the truth. “But apparently, he didn’t.”
“You didn’t even tell me,” Beth says.
“I know. I wanted so badly to believe him and forget about it. Then last week Matt came home late, and we got in a huge fight. I accused him of being with her, but he denied it and told me she lives in Colorado.” I glance at the guest room.
“Last night he never came home at all. Then, this morning I noticed he’d taken half his clothes out of our closet, and I called his office.
He told me he was done—over the phone—and that he’d gotten an apartment, saying that Sydney is moving from Colorado to live with him.
” Saying her name makes my stomach curl.
“And . . .” I frown and pick a piece of lint off my black sweatpants.
“He said that he’ll be back next week to get the rest of his things.
” I exhale, resting the stem of my glass on my knee. “Guess I should’ve trusted my gut.”
“I’m so sorry, Palmer.”
My gaze locks with Beth’s. The somber look in her eyes reminds me of how she looked at me that day on our rafting trip twenty years ago, when we rejoined the others without Courtney.
I force the memory from my mind. “Let’s talk about something else.
I need to stop obsessing about it.” For the first time, I envy Beth’s having never gotten married.
Matt’s leaving is so painful, it feels like I’m being ripped in two.
Thinking about how I’m going to tell the girls makes me queasy.
“How was your first graduation as university president?”
Beth slips off her heels and rests her bare feet against the edge of the coffee table, the shine of her pink-polished toes reflecting the light from the ceiling fan.
“Oof. Well, the graduation itself was good, but so far managing college professors is a lot more work than managing college students. Now that the spring semester is finished, I spent all day schmoozing with a group of wealthy alumni at a fundraiser downtown.” Beth presses her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
“Feels like I spent the day dancing for tips.”
A half smile reaches my lips as I envision Beth, always the bookworm and rule follower, on a stripper pole.
Beth frowns, her gaze moving to our family portrait. “I never liked Matt, you know.”
I twist in my seat. “What? Yes, you did. You’re just saying that to make me feel better.” Beth had made quips about Matt over the years, but I never thought she’d meant anything by them. She’s always been a girl’s girl. And protective of me.
Beth shakes her head. “I’ve known he was an asshole for years. Remember that time we went on a double date when I was seeing that English professor?”
I rack my brain. “At the Italian restaurant?”
“Yes. You and I went to the bathroom, and I came back to the table first as the waitress brought the check. Matt was totally ogling her, not realizing I was standing right behind him, then made this crude comment to my date about her ass. How if he weren’t a married man, he’d get a piece of that.”
I recoil. “No. Matt?”
Beth presses her lips together and nods slowly. “Yes. Matt.”
“You never told me.”
Beth lays a hand on my knee. “I should have, and I’m sorry. I knew he’d deny it, and I didn’t want to cause problems between you two. Or you and me, for that matter. Look, I know his leaving is a shock, and it’s hard right now, but I honestly think you’ll be better off without him.”
I take a large gulp of wine, hoping she’s right.
“You should come,” Beth says. “On the sailing trip,” she adds when I don’t respond.
She didn’t need to clarify. I knew what she meant.
“I don’t know . . .” I’d been quick to say no when Gigi invited me last month to sail from Seattle to San Diego.
Gigi played up the trip like it was a tribute to Courtney, to memorialize her on the weekend that will mark twenty years since we came home without her.
But all Gigi cares about is growing her already huge TikTok following, and her sponsor who’s paying top dollar for the trip.
Gigi hasn’t called me in years, so I was surprised when she called last month with the invite.
Beth is the only one out of the group that I’ve stayed in close touch with.
The thought of seeing the others, and the memories it would dredge up, was more than I could stomach.
So, I used my parental responsibilities and work as an excuse not to go.
I swallow over the lump that forms in my throat at the thought of my job at the hospital, wondering how I’ll ever go back.
I turn to Beth. “I’m surprised you’re going. Plus, you hate boats. And you know Gigi only wants us to go to fuel her publicity of the trip. She knows the four of us all back together again will get a lot of coverage. How’d you even get the time off?”
“The board insisted I go.”
I nearly choke on my wine. I sit forward, clearing my throat. “What? Why?”
“Remember that article in the Times that came out last year right after the university announced me as their new president?”