Chapter 3 #2
"She used to text him on weekends. Work stuff, supposedly.
He'd be on his phone at Ava's soccer games, at dinner, in bed.
I asked him about it once, and he said I was being paranoid.
That Diana was like a little sister to him.
" She laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.
"I found out later they'd been sleeping together for two years.
Two years. While I was making her a Christmas gift basket.
While she was coming to our Fourth of July barbecue and telling me how lucky Richard was to have me. "
"The worst part?" She closed her eyes briefly. "I threw him a surprise party for his forty-fifth birthday last spring. Invited everyone from the office. Diana stood in my kitchen, drank my wine, handed him a gift she'd clearly spent too much time picking out. Six weeks later, he moved out."
The table went quiet.
"The divorce isn't even final yet. His lawyers keep delaying, finding reasons to push back the court date.
Meanwhile I'm living off savings, waiting for a settlement that his attorney is trying to gut.
He wants to argue that the business was his, that my contribution was minimal.
" Her voice hardened. "Twenty years of minimal contribution. "
"You'll get what you're owed," Meredith said.
"Maybe. My lawyer says we have a strong case. But strong cases take time, and time costs money, and I've got about three months of savings left before I have to make some very hard decisions."
She hadn't told Brittany or Ava. Hadn't found a way to say it without making everything worse than it already was.
"I keep thinking I'll figure it out before I have to say anything," she said. "But I'm running out of time."
Lori put a hand on her shoulder. Nobody said anything for a long moment.
"At least you knew why," Lori said finally. "I spent a year thinking it was my fault."
The words hit hard. Lori had told them about the engagement, about Tessa. But not this.
Lori drained the rest of her wine and set the glass down with a thud. "Kevin said he needed to 'work on himself.' That's how he put it, back when things started to go wrong. Work on himself."
She'd believed him. Why wouldn't she? He was her husband.
"He started coming home later. Said he was doing extra sessions.
Then he started criticizing everything—the way I cooked, the way I parented, the fact that I didn't have hobbies outside the house.
" She ran a finger around the rim of her empty glass.
"He told me I was too negative. That I didn't support his growth.
That I was holding him back from becoming the person he was meant to be. "
Jen made a sound of disgust.
"I went to therapy," Lori said. "Tried to figure out what I was doing wrong.
How to be less negative. How to support his journey, or whatever he called it.
" A bitter laugh escaped her. "Meanwhile, Tessa was posting workout videos on Instagram.
And if you looked carefully—which I did, later, after I knew—Kevin was in the background of at least a dozen of them.
Stretching. Spotting her. Once, his hand on her lower back. "
"Before the divorce was even final?" Olivia asked.
"Before he even asked for one. Those videos were from when we were still trying. When I was reading self-help books and making his favorite dinners and wondering why nothing I did was ever enough."
She reached for the bottle and refilled her glass.
"I didn't know about her. Not until after the papers were signed, after the house was sold, after I'd spent a year thinking maybe the divorce was my fault.
" She took a breath. "Then I saw a photo on Kevin's Instagram.
Him and Tessa on some hiking trail, her hand on his chest, both of them glowing.
The caption said Two years with this one. "
Two years. The math wasn't hard.
"He was already gone," Lori said. "I just didn't know it yet."
And now Ethan had to stand up at the wedding. Be a groomsman. Smile for photos next to a woman who had been sleeping with his father while his parents were still married.
"The groomsman thing was Tessa's idea," Lori added. "She wants the 'blended family' photo op. Told Kevin it would show everyone they're all moving forward together. Like she's not the reason we fell apart."
"Ethan hasn't said yes. He hasn't said no. He just... stopped talking. Stopped coming out of his room, stopped answering Kevin's calls. He was already angry about the divorce, and now this."
Meredith leaned forward. "Can you tell him he doesn't have to do it?"
"I want to. Every day I want to." Lori pressed her fingers to her temples.
"But if I do, I'm the bitter ex-wife. I'm the reason he doesn't have a relationship with his dad.
Kevin's already told Ethan that I poisoned him against the idea.
That I can't let go. That I'm the toxic one.
" She paused. "I can't be that mother. I won't."
She stared at the ceiling for a moment, composing herself.
"So I just watch him disappear. Watch him carry all this anger he doesn't know what to do with. And I can't fix it because anything I say gets twisted into proof that I'm the problem."
Olivia had been listening through Carrie and Lori's confessions, arms crossed, staring at the table. But now she spoke.
Dan. The emotional affair. The texts. The counseling. They'd heard the outline at the beach. Not what she'd actually seen.
"February," she said. "A Tuesday. I came home from work early because I had a headache. Dan was in the shower. His phone was on the kitchen counter, and it lit up with a text."
The name said Rachel. A coworker. Olivia had met her once at a holiday party. Nice enough. Forgettable.
"The text said: I wish I could talk to you right now."
Olivia had picked up the phone. She didn't mean to. She just did.
"There were hundreds of messages. Months of them." Her voice caught. "Not sexual. That was the thing. No photos, no explicit language. Just... intimacy."
Inside jokes. Complaints about their days. Conversations Dan should have been having with her.
You're the only one who gets it. I hate that we can't just be together. I think about you constantly.
"He didn't sleep with her," Olivia said. "At least he says he didn't. But he was hers. Emotionally, completely hers."
The confrontation. The tears. Dan swearing it was over, he'd made a mistake, he'd do anything. Couples counseling. Date nights. The whole playbook.
"And I'm supposed to forgive him," Olivia said. "Because he didn't technically cross the line."
She stopped there. No one moved.
"But I might."
No one knew what to say to that.
"There's someone," Olivia said. "His name is Michael.
I joined a hiking group a few months ago, just to get out of the house.
To have something that was mine." She looked toward the window, the dark ocean beyond.
"We started carpooling to the trailheads.
Just logistics at first. Then we'd grab coffee after. Then the coffee turned into lunch."
It had started as venting. He was divorced, understood what it was like to feel alone inside a marriage. He listened to her. Really listened. Something Dan hadn't done in years.
"I haven't done anything. We haven't..." She stopped. "It's not like that. But I think about him. I check my phone for his texts. I get dressed more carefully on hiking days. I..."
She couldn't finish.
"I'm standing on the line," she said. "And I don't know which way I'm going to fall."
"Whatever you decide," Jen said, "you're not doing it alone."
The others murmured agreement.
Carrie leaned forward, elbows on the table. Maybe to lighten the mood, maybe because it felt like her turn.
"Okay," she said to Jen. "Your turn. What's your damage?"
Jen gave a short laugh. "My damage. Where do I start?
" She pushed up the sleeves of her blouse, revealing the tattoos she'd started collecting in her thirties.
A line of poetry on her left forearm, a small moth on her wrist, a half-sleeve of wildflowers she was still adding to.
Her bleached-blond hair fell in a shaggy, layered cut that grazed her shoulders, a style that looked effortless but probably wasn't. Angular face, sharp cheekbones, silver rings stacked on her fingers.
She was the one who'd never looked like the rest of them, even back at Rowan—always a little more interesting, a little harder to pin down.
"No affair. No divorce." She shrugged. "Just twenty years of waiting for something that never showed up."
She'd told them about deleting the apps. Said she was done looking. David, too—three years in her early thirties, the one who'd wanted to get married. But she'd never said why she ended it.
"I panicked." She touched the moth tattoo on her wrist. "Told myself he wasn't right, that something was missing, that I needed more time to figure out what I wanted." She paused. "So I ended it. Moved to a new city. Threw myself into work."
"What happened to him?" Olivia asked.
"Married someone else within two years. Three kids now.
Looks happy in every photo I've ever accidentally seen.
" Jen exhaled. "I spent a long time telling myself I made the right call.
That I would've been miserable. But honestly?
I think I was just scared. And by the time I figured that out, it was too late. "
She let it sit.
"Last month I went out with a guy who seemed perfect on paper.
Divorced, no kids, runs his own architecture firm.
Great texts. We met for dinner, and within ten minutes he's telling me how refreshing I am.
" She made air quotes. "He said he doesn't usually date women his own age.
That most of them are too bitter, too desperate, too much baggage. But I seemed different."
"Unbelievable," Lori muttered.
"It gets better. He asked me—over appetizers—why I'd never been married. Said there must be something wrong with me if I'd made it to forty-five without anyone locking it down." A dry laugh. "Locking it down. Like I'm a car that keeps failing inspection."
"Please tell me you walked out," Carrie said.
"I should have. Instead I sat through the whole dinner because I'd already ordered the salmon and I was hungry." She rolled her eyes. "He texted the next day saying he had a great time and asking when he could see me again. No self-awareness. None."
"And before that?" Meredith asked.
"Before that was the guy who cried about his ex-wife for two hours.
Before that was the one who asked if I'd ever considered freezing my eggs, 'just in case.
' Before that was the investment banker who spent the whole dinner on his phone and then got offended when I didn't want a second date.
" She picked at the edge of her napkin. "I kept thinking: next year.
Next app. Next city. Next version of myself.
And then I turned forty-five and realized I'd spent my whole adult life in a waiting room. "
"For what?" Lori asked.
"For my life to start."
She shrugged, playing it off, but she wasn't fooling anyone.
"So I deleted the apps. I decided I'm done waiting. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, I have a book to write and a cat who tolerates me."
Olivia looked up. "How's the book going?"
Jen's mouth twitched.
"It's going," she said.
That was all. But they'd known her long enough to hear what she wasn't saying.
Eyes turned to Meredith.
She'd been the listener all night. The one asking the hard questions, absorbing everyone else's confessions. Now it was her turn.
"What about you?" Carrie said.
Meredith reached for her wine. "I'm fine. Tom's fine. We're fine."
A beat. Meredith smoothed the napkin in her lap, buying time.
The retirement plan. Him home all the time. She'd touched on it at the beach. But they were waiting for more.
"We've been married for twenty-three years. And I love him. I do." Her voice was steady, but there was something she wasn't letting all the way out. "But we've always had space. Work, kids, separate rhythms. I don't know what we are without that."
"And that scares you," Jen said.
"No. I don't know. Maybe."
She looked down at her hands. Put the mask back on.
"It's not like what you're all dealing with. It's fine. I'm being dramatic."
The others didn't push. They knew her. She wasn't ready to go further.
But she'd said more than she meant to. And Meredith knew it, even as she signaled for the check.
The promenade had emptied out, the dinner crowds thinned to couples and the occasional group of teenagers with places to be.
They spilled out of La Finestra arm in arm, heels in hands by the second block. The night air had cooled, touched with the faint char of someone's grill. The ocean was right there beyond the dunes, dark and steady, the sound of the waves a constant underneath everything else.
Someone laughed at nothing. Someone else joined.
"We're disasters," Carrie said.
"Complete disasters," Lori agreed.
"We're fine," Jen said.
"We're not fine," Olivia countered.
"We're something," Meredith said.
They walked. Past the ice cream shops with their late-night lines and the quiet houses, the ocean somewhere beyond them, audible but unseen.
The house came into view at the end of 59th Street. Lit up from inside, every window bright. Voices carried through the screens. Lily's laugh, the muffled thump of music, Max yelling something that might have been "That doesn't count!"
They paused where the sidewalk met the yard. Looked at each other.
Then they went inside, peeling off one by one. Someone headed for the kitchen for water. Someone else for the bathroom. Someone straight upstairs to bed, heels still in hand, not bothering to say goodnight.