“Take them around the back, please. All of them. I don’t want anyone cutting through the house. I just had the carpets steam cleaned with filtered eucalyptus water.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sandra says as she leaves the room.

“And tell them no diving!” Debbie shouts. “I don’t need a lawsuit on my hands when someone breaks their neck on the bottom of the shallow end.”

“Who are all these kids?”

“Kurt and I volunteer our pool for the neighborhood to enjoy on Mondays in the summer while school’s out,” she says.

That’s way too noble for Debbie, so I figure one of these kids’ parents must be her ticket to skipping the membership line at the SoHo House or something.

“It’s time for you to go, Charlotte,” Debbie says as she propels herself off the velvet seat cushion and begins walking back toward the kitchen. “I’m sending Sandra to get the urn.”

I am momentarily distracted by little kids cannonballing into the water just outside. So much so that I almost miss her casual declaration.

“No, you’re not, Debbie,” I say, trying my best not to sound combative.

She stops in her tracks and slowly turns back around. Debbie’s gaze shifts ever so slightly to me and our eyes connect. Her expression screams, You bitch.

As if I needed another reason, that look is my cue to leave. I stand up and straighten out my skirt. On my way to the door, I just about steamroll a stringy tween.

“Jesus Christ,” I mutter under my breath, startled.

“Do you have any pool noodles?” the squeaky-voiced boy says.

Debbie rushes to put her hands on his wet shoulders and face him back toward the pool like a round of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

“No wet feet on the shag rug, please!”

I watch her interact with the boy—all stiff and rigid—and on the way out think to myself how it was probably a good thing Decker and I didn’t get around to having children.

“Oh, Charlotte. I wanted to ask. Does it ever haunt you?” Debbie says before I clear the living room.

I don’t turn around because I don’t want to see the look on her face accompanying her callous tone.

“Does what ever haunt me?” I say, my eyes locked on their freshly steam-cleaned flooring.

“All the damage you did to our family the day you decided to yank our son off life support?”

Chapter 8

I’m not sure which was more brutal to wake up to this morning: a stream of texts from Debbie Austin asking if I’ve “changed my mind about the urn” and if I “want to come over and talk again”? Or my boss, Zareen, begging me to bypass the office and instead attend an influencer event by myself at a new gym in West Hollywood.

As far as Debbie is concerned, it’s clear she is suffering from what I learned in therapy is called a “Rage Hangover.” It’s when you do things and say things you normally wouldn’t and otherwise fly off the handle in a moment of emotional desperation, but then eventually calm down and realize you were being, for a lack of better words, an ass about stuff. People don’t often apologize in their rage hangovers, so much as they just act all nicey-nicey after in an effort to convince everyone involved they should just silently agree to sweep things under the rug. For the record, I’m not sweeping shit.