“I’m so sorry,” Sherri repeated. “I can’t even imagine. I thought my situation was hard.”

“Your divorce,” said Rebecca.

“Yes,” said Sherri. “My divorce. And the move. But all of that pales in comparison to this—I can’t even imagine.” She paused. “It must help, to have so many friends around, for you, and Morgan too. People seem really nice. The other day, Katie was invited to Brooke’s house to swim with Taylor.”

“Oh, Brooke,” said Rebecca, rolling her eyes.

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Rebecca. “Brooke’s great. Everybody’s great. When it first happened people were so supportive. So supportive. Casseroles, carpools, the whole bit.” She rummaged in the cooler and cracked a second seltzer, offering one first to Sherri, who shook her head. “I just feel like we’ve come to the end of our time limit. Like we had six months, maybe a year, to get through it and then everyone expected that we’d all be back to normal. But we’re not normal. I don’t think we’ll ever be ‘normal’ again.” She made little air quotes around the word normal. “Mourning isn’t a quick process.”

“No,” said Sherri decisively. “It isn’t.” She said that like someone who knew, and that felt to Rebecca like an unexpected kindness, like a cool hand laid against a hot cheek.

The first twelve months after Peter’s death had been a nest of confusion and anxiety, both of these coupled with a bone-deep, mind-numbing fatigue that nothing seemed to help. Rebecca could get nine hours of sleep, or four, or none at all, and in all cases she dragged herself through her days, especially at school, going through the motions of “getting back to normal” while wondering where she could find a quiet corner in which to lie down, and close her eyes, and forget, and remember.

Her friends were wonderful for the first three months, caring enough for the next three, and after that point she began to sense their fatigue with her fatigue. Oh, they tried to hide it! But she was starting to drain their emotional reserves. They were ready to have the old Rebecca back: they were ready for her to move on.

Rebecca had decided that she would never move on. She wouldn’t Tinder or Match or Zoosk or Bumble. She wouldn’t swipe left or right. She wouldn’t accept the invitations of her friends when they asked if she wanted to come to a barbecue where there might be a recently divorced man from North Andover who was “definitely looking.” (Looking for what, specifically? Rebecca wanted to ask, but didn’t.) Rebecca had had two chances at love, first with Alexa’s father and then with Peter, and look what had happened. She’d used up all of her turns. Happily ever after was not in the cards for her.