Thirteen Months Ago
Like clockwork, the American flags had gone up in Eastbrook the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, along with red-white-and-blue bunting and twinkling fairy lights that seemed to blink in sync with the emerging fireflies.
The neighborhood pool was opening, and it was the unofficial start to summer.
Tori stood at her kitchen window, fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long gone cold, staring into the Allards’ lush backyard.
She wasn’t ready for summer, and nothing in her gray house suggested it was imminent.
No brightly colored Adirondack chairs in the front, no firepit.
No ironic pink flamingo statue or cutesy flag like her next-door neighbor’s that read HELLO, SUMMER!
above a drawing of a vintage bicycle overflowing with sunflowers.
Behind her, the soft clink of a spoon against ceramic came from the breakfast table, where Autumn was feeding Leo slow spoonfuls of oatmeal and humming “Yankee Doodle” under her breath.
The nanny was a godsend—kind, patient, somehow able to get a three-year-old dressed and out the door without a meltdown.
Still, Tori was sure she could sense the neighbors’ judgment in the air.
Oh, I saw your nanny at the park again with Leo.
Must be hard to miss out on these precious days.
It had been three weeks since that awful night she made that clumsy pass, and she was paranoid that news of it had spread through Eastbrook.
“Put it out of your mind, girlfriend!” Cyrus had implored her. “People can be cray-cray!”
But Tori often found herself replaying that moment in her head, touching Daniel’s sleeve, calling him sexy, leaning in to kiss him. Then a crash of hot shame would course through her body as she experienced his rejection anew. “A man like me? With someone like you?” The way he had laughed at her.
It was a sick, sadistic ritual, but one she seemed unable to resist, no matter how many times Cyrus told her she was a queen.
Behind her, Leo giggled, and Autumn said something that made him laugh harder. Tori didn’t turn. She just peered out the back window, feeling the quiet rejection, the way the whole neighborhood seemed to have decided she was something to avoid.
The coffeepot beeped as it shut itself off. Tori poured the rest of her mug down the drain. She didn’t have any patients today—she had planned on going into the office to do some much-needed catching up on paperwork. But an idea was forming in her head. She spun around.
“Hey, Autumn, how would you like the day off?”
An hour later, Tori had bundled Leo into his stroller and was out the door.
She didn’t bother to say goodbye to Autumn, who had disappeared down to the basement.
She had been worried that having a stranger living in the house might make her feel self-conscious, but instead it was reassuring to know that she was not all alone.
Except in the mornings and evenings, she barely saw Autumn, although they communicated throughout the day via text.
Tori drove out of the neighborhood and down Massachusetts Avenue into Washington, glad to be leaving Eastbrook in her rearview mirror. The leafed-out trees were a brilliant green against the bright blue sky.
She had to circle the National Cathedral a few times before she found a parking spot.
Their annual Flower Mart was set to open at ten, but the grounds were already packed.
Tori tucked Leo into his stroller and pushed him up the grand driveway, stopping for a moment to take in the majesty of the enormous church.
Before her parents split up when she was eight, her little family had regularly attended a small redbrick Presbyterian church that intimidated her with its hushed stillness and cold pews.
She had been shocked when, after her dad left, her mother dismissed religion as if it had been last year’s trend, like UGGs or low-rise jeans.
But the National Cathedral awed her.
“Look at the gargoyles.” Bending down next to Leo, she pointed above at the small stone monsters perched high.
Tori hesitated on the edge of the market as people pushed past her.
Her tummy clenched in anxiety as the festival beckoned with the hum of shoppers chatting and the scent of cinnamon from a nearby food truck.
She grabbed her phone and whispered into it.
After a moment, Cyrus’s familiar voice spoke to her.
“Babes, the fact that you’re even questioning whether to go to a market shows tremendous growth in self-awareness!
Most people with shopping challenges don’t even pause to consider the risk beforehand. So pat yourself on the back—you rock!”
Soothed, she pushed Leo’s stroller forward. She’d have to reenter the modern consumer world at some point. This would be a test, she decided. She’d look, admire, but not spend a penny.
She turned down a row, lured by a table of handcrafted chocolates that cost thirty dollars.
She was admiring a box that had pictures of cherry blossoms and other Washington motifs stamped on it when something caught her eye.
She looked up to see him in front of a corner booth, catty-corner from where she was, standing in front of a mirror.
Daniel was wiggling, a strained look on his face, as Jo adjusted a two-tone red tie adorned with an embroidered S.
For Stanford. She knew it was where their son, Van, was heading in the fall.
She had seen the sticker on the back of Jo’s BMW. PROUD STANFORD MOM.
Tori could hardly breathe. She was afraid that any movement would draw Daniel’s attention, or worse—Jo’s.
She watched as the two of them laughed together and Daniel leaned in for a kiss. It was real affection. Tori balled her hands into fists, a strange sense of injustice hitting her. Had he lied to her that night when he complained about Jo? Or was this public act he was performing the lie?
The therapist in her knew it shouldn’t matter, but for some reason it did. At that moment he looked up and caught her staring at him. His smile vanished as his nostrils flared.
Before she could back the stroller out, Daniel was across the path and towering over her.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded in a husky voice. “Are you following me?”
“What? Of course not.” Tori felt herself shrink smaller under his rage.
“I’ve seen you, you know, driving by me in your car while I’m out running.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. It was true she had passed him on her way to her office in the mornings, but that was just her normal route out of the neighborhood.
“I’m n-not,” she stammered. “That’s just a coincidence.”
Jo was beside him now, her mouth a thin slash of bright red. “What is going on? Are you stalking my husband?”
“No, I’m not!” Tori glanced to her left at a group of three blond women in their sixties openly gawking at them. She needed to get out of here. Her breath was shallow, and she was scared she might have a panic attack. She began to maneuver the stroller, but the wife stepped in front of her.
“I know everything,” she said. “What you tried to do. Daniel told me how he came over to help you and you threw yourself at him. Pathetic.” Jo wrapped a manicured hand around her husband’s bicep.
She leaned close to Tori and said in a low voice, “I feel sorry for you. I really do. Going after other women’s husbands?
If I knew what kind of woman you were, I would never have rented to you.
If you have any issue with the house, contact me.
Not Daniel. Got it? He is off-limits to you. ”
Tori yanked the stroller around, accidentally banging one of the blond women’s shins.
The woman howled in pain, and Leo let out a cry of alarm.
Tori rushed away, ignoring the chaos, sweaty and hot with embarrassment, through the crowds and off the cathedral grounds.
She hurried back to her car and strapped in a now-wailing Leo.
Tori trembled as she climbed into the driver’s seat, feeling smaller and stupider than she ever had in her life.
Rationally, she knew her rushing out of there was over the top.
Yet she felt naked and humiliated, as if they had seen through her facade of being a good mother and successful professional, straight to the awful truth.
She was trash. Worthless. “You’re not fooling anyone,” her mother had said when Tori told her the news that she had been admitted to a small college in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
“You’re not better’n the rest of us. Don’t forget that. ”
It didn’t matter that she had a college degree, a beautiful son, a nice wardrobe, a good job. There was some kind of stain on her that people could see.