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to my feet.
    â€œCassie?” Sue looked puzzled. “Is everything all right?”
    â€œYeah, um, fine. Fine. Great, actually.” I reached, blindly, to grab my stuff and, in the process, managed to catch poor Ken’s coffee cup with my elbow.

6
You Oughta be Home with Me
    â€œCass.” I was heading down the street at record pace, and Randy was right behind me, still zipping her bag. “What’s up?”
    I did not want to be within hearing range of anyone from the school when we had this conversation. I mumbled, “Bad morning,” over my shoulder.
    â€œNo kidding.” Her heels clicked behind me as she took my arm, so I had no choice but to slow down. She took one look at my face and said, “What? What is it?”
    I gulped. “Rick. He, ah…” What was the right way to describe it? “Left me.” It sounded so surprising when I said it out loud that the shock of hearing it made me sit down, hard, on the steps of the Court Street office supply store.
    â€œCassie?” Randy’s voice seemed like it was coming from very far away. When I looked at her through the tears, with her white blond hair and white Elie Tahari coat, she almost looked like she was shimmering. Her face was white, too, like you read about in novels. “Are you serious?”
    â€œDead serious.”
    â€œOh my God.” She sat down on the steps next to me, apparently unconcerned about the fate of her coat. We both sat there, not saying anything, until: “I’m just…how could I not have known you guys were having problems?” Randy was my running partner. When you run with someone, they learn everything there is to know about you because talking distracts you from the agony.
    â€œBecause I didn’t either. Until last night when he came home and dumped me. No warning, nothing.” I closed my eyes. Closed, open, it didn’t matter. Either way, I could still see myself on my knees and Rick, as he said the words. “It was as much a surprise to me as it is to you.”
    Randy put her arms around me, and I started to cry again. She said, “Shit. I have to be at a deposition in an hour. Oh, Cass, I’m so sorry.”
    â€œI’m OK,” I said, even though we both knew I wasn’t.
    A blaring horn informed us that a truck driver wanted to back up onto the curb and unload office supplies. We ignored him. “What are you going to do now?”
    Planning even the next ten minutes seemed beyond me. “I don’t know.”
    â€œHave you called your mother?”
    The truck driver was yelling at us, out his window, to get out of the way.
    â€œNot yet.”
    Randy handed me a tissue. She knew my mother didn’t do mothering. I sniffled into the tissue. The truck driver revved his engine to back up. Randy pulled me down the steps and we stood, huddled, on the corner.
    â€œDo you want Josh to pick up the boys this afternoon?” She was one of the few women I knew fortunate enough to have a husband who worked from home.
    I hesitated, feeling like the routine of getting the boys home, listening to them bicker, feeding them, might be the only thing pulling me through the day. Without it there was nothing to keep me from falling to pieces. I decided to ignore the fact that this theory had backfired on me fairly spectacularly with the PTA meeting. “I think I need them with me.”
    Randy looked like she might cry too. “How are they doing?”
    â€œThey’re fine.” I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see her expression. “They don’t know yet. I’m waiting for the right time. I need to take it in before I can tell them.”
    She nodded. “Of course. It’s just so shocking. Of everyone I know, it never occurred to me that you two wouldn’t go the distance.”
    I sniffled some more. “Me too.”
    Â 
    Maria, the cleaning lady, was banging the breakfast dishes around in the