She would be speaking on the third day, though she was invited and encouraged to attend for all five. How was she going to manufacture a five-day trip? She couldn’t call it a girls’ trip. She didn’t have enough friends to go on girls’ trips, and anyway girls’ trips of more than two nights were frivolous, everybody knew that.

Equally pressing, how was she going to present herself as a stay-at-home dad in front of a live audience? Necessity being the mother of invention, she’d have to figure it out. Later.

I’d love to, she wrote back. Thank you so much for the invitation.

A text came in: Jeremy.

Mom says you were acting funny. Everything OK?

How perfect that Nancy had gone right to Jeremy with news of Lu’s erratic behavior. Nancy probably suspected Lu of something trite, like an affair. Normally this would have bothered Lu, but just now, with the invitation in front of her, she didn’t care.

Everything’s great, she texted back. Couldn’t be better.

Chapter 33

JOY

IT DIDN’T TAKE long to find it. Some simple googling. Of course, the Times article came up right away, followed by more articles in other papers: the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe. (“Carbon Copy.” “Hometown Boy Humbled.”) And more besides that, in industry publications. Publishers Weekly. Shelf Awareness. Writer’s Digest. All Joy needed, of course, was the first one; no mistaking Anthony in the photo.

She tracked down Anthony’s wife via her Facebook page, a public page that linked her art to a studio in the South End of Boston. Willing herself to close the browser, and unable to do so, Joy stared for a long, long time at Cassie’s photo. Both her hair and her shirt were silky. She looked like a model for an expensive skin care regimen, an advertisement for not eating. She looked like someone who would run fast in the other direction if she saw a whoopie pie.

Joy had never felt so short, so brown, so curly and curvy, so well fed—so wrong about everything.

On the publisher’s website there was an author bio that nobody had had the sense to pull: Anthony Puckett lives outside of Boston with his wife and their young son.

Son? thought Joy.

Joy’s phone rang a lot the next morning. The seventh time that day and she didn’t pick up, but the eighth time, she did. She was on her bike by then; she’d ridden as fast as she could, as far as she could.

“What?” she said aggressively. Anthony Puckett lives outside of Boston with his wife . . .

“Listen, Joy. It’s me.”

With his wife and their young son.

“I know.”

“Can we talk? Can I come over?”

Anthony Puckett had never told Joy Sousa about his young son.

“I’m not home.”

Anthony Puckett had stood with Joy and looked at a poster of his own father and pretended not to know him.

“Where are you?”

“I’m out.”

“Out where?”