I laughed, but it occurred to me that maybe that’s what I liked about the mommune. At home, it was just Mom, Dad, and me. And for a minute, it seemed like it was just going to be Mom and me. And now I had this whole big family to hang out with and laugh with. And even when the little kids kind of got on my nerves it was fun to be a part of it.

“Your sisters are great,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Right. Try having them nag you all day every day and then see if you can still say that.”

We walked into the classroom and took our seats beside each other.

“All right, class,” Mr. Friedman said, turning on the smart board. “Let’s talk about last night’s reading.”

My hand shot up. I was eager to discuss all the ways that Jo was so forward-thinking and ahead of her time. In fact, it was the very thing I had talked about with the group at dinner last night, and the other moms—and Merit, surprisingly—had had some cool insights to share.

Before Mr. Friedman could call on me, Ben leaned over: “Don’t forget about dinner.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

Mr. Friedman pointed to me, and as I started to talk, I couldn’t help but notice that Ben never took his eyes off me.

Charlotte Joint Property

“Wow,” I said as I buckled myself into Grace’s Mercedes. “This is something I never thought I’d be doing.”

“Getting a job?” Grace asked.

“Well, not exactly. I could always imagine myself going back to work. But I imagined if I did it would be all about companies wining and dining me, not me begging some small-town office to let me be its secretary.” I winced and looked over at her. “That makes me sound really awful, doesn’t it?”

Grace laughed. “Are you kidding me? Women never fight enough for what we deserve. We roll over and roll over until we lose our minds, at which point we get labeled crazy bitches.” She looked over at me. “So, no. It doesn’t make you sound awful. It makes you sound like a woman who knows she’s been shafted.”

I thought back to fourteen years ago, when Iris had just been born, when my six weeks of maternity leave—which, let’s face it, had been peppered with calls and questions from work—was coming to an end. I was crying over having to leave her, over the nanny being the one she would call “Mommy,” over how I could work sixty hours a week when I had a baby who needed me.

“So quit,” Bill had said.

I’d laughed, assumed he was kidding. Quit? I couldn’t quit. That was ridiculous.