Chapter 1
NO WIVES ALLOWED
I bought the dress three weeks ago from a rack at Nordstrom Rack, which is the kind of place you shop when your husband is a named partner at a law firm but you haven’t felt entitled to the real Nordstrom in years.
It’s black, because everything I own is black.
But it has this neckline—a deep V that does something kind to my chest and my collarbone, and when I tried it on in the dressing room I thought, oh. Yes.
I’m wearing it now. Hair blown out. Mascara. Lip gloss. The whole production. Because tonight I’m going to suggest dinner—a restaurant, the two of us, menus and cloth napkins and a reason to look each other in the eye for more than the three seconds it takes to hand off our daughter at bedtime.
It’s been four months since we’ve been out together. I counted.
The garage door groans open. His car pulls in, the engine dies, the heavy door thuds into the house. I smooth the front of the dress and wait.
Jermaine comes around the corner into the kitchen and sets his briefcase on the island without looking up. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I lean against the counter, trying to look like I haven’t been standing here rehearsing. “So I was thinking—Mulvaney’s tonight? They have that new tasting menu, and my mom said she can stay late with Tabitha.”
“Oh.” He glances up. His eyes move over me—not slow, not appreciating. Fast. An inventory he didn’t ask for. “I actually had a brutal week. Depositions ran long, the Hargrove filing is a mess. Raincheck?”
“Sure. No problem,” I say, trying to hide the disappointment that has tears pricking the corners of my eyes.
He opens the fridge, cracks a sparkling water, takes a long drink. “Oh—so the reunion is coming up. My twentieth. Should be a good time.”
Something in my chest lifts. “That sounds amazing. I’d love to meet your college friends. When is it?”
He closes the fridge. Leans against the counter across from me, and there’s a pause—just a beat too long, the kind I’ve learned to feel in my teeth.
“It’s more of a guys’ thing, babe. Just the old crew getting together, drinking too much, telling the same dumb stories. Wives aren’t coming.”
“Are you sure? Because I don’t mind—“
“Honestly, you’d be bored.” He says it with this half-smile, like he’s doing me a favor. “You don’t know any of these people. A whole weekend of inside jokes and bad beer. Trust me.”
“What if we made a weekend out of it? I could explore the town while you’re at the events, and then we’d have the nights—“
“Mar.” He says my name the way he says it when he wants me to stop talking. “It’s just not that kind of thing. I’ll be back Sunday. It’s not a big deal. You should get together with one of your friends.”
I swallow the rest of what I was going to say. It sits in my throat—the weekend I’d already half-planned, the restaurant I’d already looked up near the venue, the new dress I would have bought if he’d said yes. All of it dissolving like sugar in water.
“Okay.” I smile. “Have fun.”
“I will.” He says it easily, already moving on, already done with the conversation I’m going to replay in my head for the rest of the night.
He takes his sparkling water and his briefcase and heads toward the stairs without looking back.
Doesn’t say anything about the dress. Doesn’t mention my hair, my makeup, the fact that I’m standing in our kitchen looking like a woman who had somewhere to be.
I stand there for a while after he goes upstairs.
Then I go to our bedroom, unzip the dress, and hang it back in the closet. Pull on my old Sacramento State sweatshirt and a pair of joggers. Wash off the mascara. Take my hair down.
Tabitha and I eat leftover pasta at the island. She tells me about a ladybug she found at recess, and I lean my chin on my hand and give her every ounce of attention I have, because she is the one person in this house who looks at me like I’m worth giving time to.
Friday. Jermaine comes downstairs with the leather weekender I gave him two birthdays ago, jeans and a polo, looking younger than he does in his suits. For a half-second I see the version of him I married—the one who used to put his hand on the small of my back in parking lots.
Tabitha runs to him.
“Be good for Mommy, bug.” He crouches down and kisses her forehead, both cheeks, the tip of her nose.
She giggles and wraps her arms around his neck, and he holds her like she’s the most important thing in the world, and she is, but so am I, and he hasn’t held me like that in so long I can’t remember what it feels like.
He stands. Grabs the bag. Heads for the door.
“Have fun,” I say, because that’s what wives say.
He lifts a hand without turning around. The door closes.
The deadbolt clicks. The garage door groans open and then shut, and the sound of his engine fades until the house is just me and Tabitha and the quiet that rushes in when the person who’s supposed to love you leaves without kissing you goodbye.
“Mama?” Tabitha tugs my hand. “Movie night?”
I pick her up. Bury my nose in her hair. Strawberry shampoo and graham crackers.
“Moana?”
“Moana!”
“Moana it is.”
“I vote for the new Glen Powell one.”
“You vote for anything with Glen Powell.”
“Because I have taste and a pulse.” Liv tosses a piece of popcorn into her mouth from the opposite end of the couch, bare feet tucked under a throw pillow. “Put it on.”
This is our thing—every time Jermaine travels, Liv shows up with grocery-store wine and Trader Joe’s popcorn and we watch whatever fun movie we can find on streaming.
The standing date that keeps me from spending the whole weekend talking exclusively to a five-year-old about which Disney princess has the best hair.
Tabitha’s already down—bath, story, the twelve-minute negotiation about whether she needed water, a different stuffed animal, one more hug. Now it’s just us.
I queue up the movie. Pour the wine. For a while it’s good. Normal. Liv keeps doing commentary that’s better than the actual dialogue, and the knot between my shoulder blades loosens for the first time all week.
Then Liv goes quiet.
I glance over. She’s staring at her phone, and her thumb has stopped moving. Liv’s thumb never stops moving.
“Uh... Mara?”
My stomach drops before I even know why. Something in her voice makes me think that whatever she’s looking at is not going to make me happy.
“What?”
She sits up. Looks at me, looks at the phone, back at me. “Okay. Don’t freak out.”
“Liv. What.”
She turns the screen toward me.
It takes a second. An Instagram story—someone I don’t follow, a friend of a friend. A crowded bar. College pennants on the walls, neon beer signs, sticky-looking tables. A reunion.
And in the center of the frame, my husband. His arm around a woman.
The room spins enough that I have to put my wine glass down because my hand isn’t steady anymore.
She’s blonde. Slim. White tank top and a smile so wide and so comfortable that there’s nothing new about it. She’s leaning into him with her hand flat against his chest, and he’s leaning back into her, and they look like two people who have always done this. Who never stopped.
The caption reads: just like old times ??
“That’s—“ Liv starts.
“I know who that is.”
I take the phone from her. My fingers are tingling—the kind of numb you get right before you feel too much. I expand the photo. His hand on her waist. Her fingers spread against his shirt. The angle of his jaw, tilted down toward her like she’s the only person in that packed room.
He has never looked at me like that. Not once. Not in a photo, not at a party, not in our kitchen when I was wearing a new black dress and asking if he wanted to go to dinner.
“Mara—“
“Hold on.” My voice sounds like it’s coming from a different room. I tap the woman’s tag. Her profile loads—mostly private, but the profile picture is clear enough, and I know the name. I’ve known it for years.
Jermaine’s college girlfriend.
I screenshot the story. My thumb is doing the thinking now, moving faster than the rest of me, and some part of my brain that isn’t busy falling apart is already building a case.
“Is that who I think it is?” Liv has moved closer on the couch. I can feel the heat of her next to me.
“Yeah.” I go to the comments. And there it is—she’s commented on the post. Of course she has.
Best weekend ever. Can’t wait for next time ????
Something rips. That’s the only word for what happens inside my chest—a tearing sensation, hot and ragged, like a seam that was already weak finally giving way. My eyes burn and I blink hard, fast, because I will not cry about this. Not yet. Not until I understand exactly what I’m crying about.
I screenshot the comment.
“Mara.” Liv’s hand is on my arm. “Talk to me.”
“He said partners weren’t coming.” My voice is shaking now, and I hate it. “He said I’d be bored.”
“I know.”
“He said it was a guys’ thing, Liv. He looked me in the face and said it was a guys’ thing, and I took off my dress and put on sweats and heated up leftover pasta and watched Moana with my daughter while he—“ My throat closes.
I press my palm flat against my sternum, hard, like I can hold myself together from the outside.
“Breathe,” Liv says. “Just breathe.”
“I’m breathing.” I’m not. I’m pulling air in shallow little sips that don’t reach the bottom of my lungs, and my hands are shaking, and the photo is still on the screen—his arm, her waist, that smile, just like old times—and I want to throw the phone across the room and I want to stare at it forever and I want to call him right now and scream until my voice gives out.
I don’t do any of those things.
I close my eyes. Count to five. Open them.
“What do you want to do?” Liv asks. She’s watching me the way you watch someone standing on a ledge—very still, very focused.
“His laptop.” The words come out fast, hard. “He has a personal laptop. It’s in his office upstairs. He never logs out of anything—email, everything. I want to see it. Right now.”
Liv grabs my arm. “Mara. Stop.”
“Why? He’s two hundred miles away with his tongue down some woman’s—“
“Exactly. He’s gone all weekend. The laptop isn’t going anywhere.
” She holds my gaze, steady, the way she does when she’s the only sober person in the room.
“You’re shaking. You’ve had wine. If there’s something on that laptop, you need to find it with clear eyes and a full charge, not at midnight on your third glass of Pinot. ”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re about to go full crime documentary and I love that about you, but not tonight.” She pulls me back down onto the couch. “Tomorrow. First thing. I’ll stay over—I’ll sleep in the guest room, and when you wake up, I’m already here. We do this right.”
I stare at her. Every nerve in my body is screaming to go upstairs, to open that laptop, to find whatever’s there and hold it in my hands like a grenade. But Liv’s right. She’s always right about the things I don’t want to hear.
“Fine.” I sit back. My jaw aches from clenching it. “But first thing.”
“First thing. Coffee and crime.” Something shifts behind her eyes—best friend clicking into something sharper, something with teeth. “Tonight, we get drunk.”
“It’s a Friday, Liv.”
“And your husband is at a reunion with his college girlfriend. I think the occasion calls for it.”
She pours. I drink. We don’t watch the movie. The TV throws flickering light across the living room while Liv keeps my wine glass full and my phone out of my hands, and every time I reach for it she smacks my wrist and says “tomorrow” like it’s a threat.
Before we go upstairs, I check the post one more time. The comment is gone. Deleted. She must have realized it was visible, or someone warned her, or Jermaine saw the post and panicked.
It doesn’t matter. I have the screenshot.
Liv takes the guest room. I lie in my bed—our bed, mine and Jermaine’s, the California king he picked out because he likes to sleep with space between us—and stare at the ceiling and feel the heat behind my eyes and the tremor in my hands and the terrible, clarifying weight of a woman who has just learned something she can never unlearn.
His laptop is in the office down the hall.
Tomorrow.