Do you see her even now, shifting her attention away from her friends, from the other mothers, as they talk about their kids’ teachers? She’s scanning the crowd, trying to make out the figures in the night. Looking for her husband. She longs to be alone with him and her daughter, somewhere far away. A vacation, maybe. Or more. Away from all this. Away from inane conversations and meaningless days. She wants them to live glamourous lives—sail around the world or caravan across the desert. Anywhere but here.

But it’s too late for that. Things are already beyond her repair.

She wishes she could sneak away and take another hit of nose candy, as the line she’d snorted before coming out here is starting to wear off and she’s feeling twitchy.

Where the hell is Greg? The man she gave it all up for?

She is swallowed for a moment by the thought he’s gone forever.

Then he is there, swaggering through the crowd, dressed like some literary figure—she can’t remember who—and the cape and weird discolored collar embarrass her. Jacqueline stands and crosses the cul-de-sac to meet him.

“My dear,” he says in a bad accent, bowing to her, and she wants to smack him. She wants to scream as he leans in to kiss her cheek. She smells perfume on him, a dusty, heady scent that reminds her of a club she used to go to in Brooklyn, of some other time, some other life, but one thing she knows for sure: it’s not her perfume.

“Where have you been?” she asks, daring him to lie.

If you turn and look, you’ll see the rest of the Ivy Five are suddenly interested in this exchange. They are watching by the fire. They know what Greg Hendricks has been doing, and they are tired of it. They don’t stand for that kind of behavior here on Ivy Woods.

Jacqueline feels that they are judging her. She’s never good enough and she knows it. Part of her wants to please them and another part wants to burn it all down.

“Getting my costume ready,” he says, chuckling. He’s not a big drinker, Greg, but she can tell he’s had something. “Want to dance?”

Jacqueline does not want to dance. She walks away from him, toward the drink table. She thinks about going home, but the trail down and around the lake to her house feels very far away. Instead, she refills her cup with the rosé she brought. She likes her wine the kind of sweet that hurts your teeth.

Someone’s opened a small bag of M&M’s and left them scattered across the tablecloth, and Jacqueline presses a fingernail into a green one, crushing it to dust. She licks the chocolate from her finger and surveys the place, her neighborhood, her home. This was not how it was supposed to end up.