Jack gathered up two jackets, two pairs of trousers, three shirts, one tie. His mother dug in her handbag and looked at him as if he were a terrible burden. This was a big day, an important day—he didn’t want to admit his mother’s resentments. He could look at that later; his mother’s attitude wouldn’t go away.

Jack got in line, keeping a significant distance between himself and that boy, Theo, who was tall and lithe and perfect, who smelled like vanilla and gin, who was sparkling. Who belonged here, effortlessly.

No one could ever miss Theo Beaumont.

Jack hated him at once.

“For fuck’s sake, Will.”

Jack, if pressed, would admit with a sheepish grin and a tilt of his head that Gwilim Linwood Alistair—Will, now, since all of his kids were determined to have normal names, despite his best efforts—was his favorite child. He was quiet, a dreamer, with all of his father’s sarcasm but none of his insecurity, and Jack maybe felt a bit bad about the name, but it was too late now.

He looked exactly like his dad. But he was better.

Though, admittedly, just as absentminded. Christ.

Johnny, of course, had set herself up in her room with little fanfare and a careless hug for each of her parents—a very clear “go away” signal—and was already prepared for her junior year. She’d been through the routine before. And she was never quite as—distractible as Will.

Jack looked at Will’s Gwynns Academy blazer, forgotten in the back of the car. Meg, as pretty as ever but twice as worn out, strapped Amy into her seat belt, and gave Jack a that’s your kid, you idiot stare.

He sighed. “I’ll run it in, all right? Maybe check in with Charlie, catch a cab home.”

“Mm.”

He handed over the keys and leaned down to press a kiss to his wife’s freckled cheek, and then they had that moment which many soon-to-be divorced people must have—oh, shit.

Not his wife. Not anymore.

Jack turned away, walked out of the parking lot and back to the mica-flecked granite of the school gates, school uniform in hand, and he tried not to think about what was coming next. The signing of the papers. Finding a new place to live. Splitting up the hours, the days—Will and Johnny at school, for now, but where would Amy live, and would he get to see her enough, and would they all hate him, maybe, for tearing down a marriage which must have looked, from the outside, unbreakable?