come by and pick you up for dinner at eight. Try to pull it together by then. No one wants to spend a night with a weepy woman. Put on some makeup. It will make you feel better.â With that he grabbed his sport coat and exited out the back door, into the driveway that abutted the patio at the back of their house.
The words shouldâve stung. They shouldâve ripped her soul out so that she was wearing it around her neck like a scarf. But they didnât. If she had felt anything for him anymore, his words wouldâve caused her to hide under her duvet for days and come out only for showers and glasses of water so that she didnât dehydrate and die. But she didnât. The only things she felt these days were empty and alone.
That fucking club, she thought as she watched him back his Jeep out of the driveway. Sheâd never understand the draw of this menâs club, which of course was by design, as women werenât allowed on the premises. It wasnât the fact that the club excluded women that bothered her, it was the fact that it was where men went to get away from them. The only places she could go to get away from Reed were the grocery store or the dry cleaner, and neither of them provided much solace or helped her deal with her problems. Where was she supposed to go?
She ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, pushing in the silver button next to the doorknob to lock it. She stared at herself in the mirror, rested her hands on the ledge of the sink, and exhaled deeply enough to make her entire upper body cave in. What happened to you? she asked herself. What the hell happened to you?
When she looked up, she glanced out the window, past the flowers that lined her front walk, past the lamppost with the bulb that burned out weeks ago that she hadnât gotten around to fixing, to the woman standing at the curb in front of her house. Her breath caught and she felt her insides churn in shock as the woman approached her front door. Cara wondered if her eyes were betraying her, or her grief was causing her to conjure ghosts. All sheâd been doing lately was thinking about why Jane really pulled away. More important, sheâd done a lot of thinking about how sheâd not only let her go, but encouraged it, because she knew Reed didnât like her. She suddenly remembered what her mother had said to her, asking her to reconcile with her friends, as if knowing this was going to happen. It was no apparition. For some reason that she couldnât understand, Jane was about to ring her doorbell.
seven
J ane glanced around the immaculate grounds of her friendâs suburban home. The bays and harbors of the North Shore of Long Island were packed with boats and yachts, old money families mingling with financiers and lawyers who looked after the old money and became rich from it themselves. Caraâs house was exactly as Jane remembered it from years agoâa large brick colonial that was both classic and comfortable-looking. White shutters encased large windows across the entire façade in perfect symmetry on either side of the red front door. Hedges ran along the perimeter of the property to separate the house from the neighbors, something that Jane had a hard time understanding. No matter how large a Manhattan apartment is, youâre still sharing walls with your neighbors. So hedges for a property that was already acres wide seemed redundant. Jane paused at the bottom of the walkway that led from the sidewalk to the front door as she watched the cab pull away and head back to the concrete jungle that was intent on eating her alive. She felt herself struggle to take her first step, knowing she wouldnât be welcomed with open arms, and worse, knowing that she didnât deserve to be. She listened to the birds in the trees and watched the kids down the block riding their bicycles in wobbly circles in the road, and didnât miss the irony that Cara was living
The words shouldâve stung. They shouldâve ripped her soul out so that she was wearing it around her neck like a scarf. But they didnât. If she had felt anything for him anymore, his words wouldâve caused her to hide under her duvet for days and come out only for showers and glasses of water so that she didnât dehydrate and die. But she didnât. The only things she felt these days were empty and alone.
That fucking club, she thought as she watched him back his Jeep out of the driveway. Sheâd never understand the draw of this menâs club, which of course was by design, as women werenât allowed on the premises. It wasnât the fact that the club excluded women that bothered her, it was the fact that it was where men went to get away from them. The only places she could go to get away from Reed were the grocery store or the dry cleaner, and neither of them provided much solace or helped her deal with her problems. Where was she supposed to go?
She ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, pushing in the silver button next to the doorknob to lock it. She stared at herself in the mirror, rested her hands on the ledge of the sink, and exhaled deeply enough to make her entire upper body cave in. What happened to you? she asked herself. What the hell happened to you?
When she looked up, she glanced out the window, past the flowers that lined her front walk, past the lamppost with the bulb that burned out weeks ago that she hadnât gotten around to fixing, to the woman standing at the curb in front of her house. Her breath caught and she felt her insides churn in shock as the woman approached her front door. Cara wondered if her eyes were betraying her, or her grief was causing her to conjure ghosts. All sheâd been doing lately was thinking about why Jane really pulled away. More important, sheâd done a lot of thinking about how sheâd not only let her go, but encouraged it, because she knew Reed didnât like her. She suddenly remembered what her mother had said to her, asking her to reconcile with her friends, as if knowing this was going to happen. It was no apparition. For some reason that she couldnât understand, Jane was about to ring her doorbell.
seven
J ane glanced around the immaculate grounds of her friendâs suburban home. The bays and harbors of the North Shore of Long Island were packed with boats and yachts, old money families mingling with financiers and lawyers who looked after the old money and became rich from it themselves. Caraâs house was exactly as Jane remembered it from years agoâa large brick colonial that was both classic and comfortable-looking. White shutters encased large windows across the entire façade in perfect symmetry on either side of the red front door. Hedges ran along the perimeter of the property to separate the house from the neighbors, something that Jane had a hard time understanding. No matter how large a Manhattan apartment is, youâre still sharing walls with your neighbors. So hedges for a property that was already acres wide seemed redundant. Jane paused at the bottom of the walkway that led from the sidewalk to the front door as she watched the cab pull away and head back to the concrete jungle that was intent on eating her alive. She felt herself struggle to take her first step, knowing she wouldnât be welcomed with open arms, and worse, knowing that she didnât deserve to be. She listened to the birds in the trees and watched the kids down the block riding their bicycles in wobbly circles in the road, and didnât miss the irony that Cara was living
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