In the past few months, everything Juliet took for a fact seemed fluid. She’d always wanted to be an architect, but did she anymore? Somehow, inexplicably, it felt like she was living the wrong life. How could that be? Every detail had been planned, mapped out, worked for and achieved. Harvard, check. Yale, check. Oliver, check. Two healthy daughters, check and check and thank God. This house that she’d designed in the town she loved. Check. Parents who loved her and had a solid (ha!) marriage.

But suddenly it all felt wrong. Never before had Juliet questioned that she was on the right path . . . until now.

Was she a good mother? A good wife? She loved her girls, of course she did. She’d die for them. Kill anyone who threatened them with a song in her heart and a smile on her lips. She did everything she could for them, and from the outside, it probably looked like she was a good mother.

She just didn’t feel like it these days. Brianna had grown sullen and withdrawn—she was twelve, so it wasn’t the world’s biggest surprise. But the thing was, Juliet hadn’t done that with her mother. She adored her mother, every day, every year. Sloane was right behind Brianna at ten . . . Would she stop talking to her, too? Oliver had been a little . . . distant, maybe. And if there was one thing Juliet couldn’t stand, it was distant. Her father had been that way (except with Sadie). And Dad had been especially distant with Mom.

Of course things stopped being hot and heavy after fifteen years of marriage. You couldn’t keep that shit up, no matter how hard you tried, how many thongs you bought. Things became expected and comfortable, and that was good, wasn’t it? Even if she tried really hard to be spontaneous and exciting, she and Ollie knew each other inside and out. Would she find herself walking her parents’ path, barely speaking, being invisible to the other?

This seeping dread, this flight response . . . why did it feel so real? Was she a fake somehow, in both work and life? Why was Arwen so terrifying when she was perfectly . . . fine?

Shit, shit, shit. This was what happened. One little crack, and the whole building comes down.

Juliet stood. Her legs felt shaky, and her hair looked greasy. There were circles under her eyes.

That faint would’ve been welcome. A little nap.