Page 30 of Mean Moms

Friendsgiving!

Frost Trevor felt okay, given that there may or may not be someone in Manhattan who was out to get her and her friends.

Unlike Belle, Frost was holding on to the idea that it was all just a big coincidence.

Or a misunderstanding. The private detective they hired had confirmed as much, sending them a succinct email basically saying: you’re being paranoid.

So Frost was trying to stay positive. Her marriage, which just months ago seemed to be on life support, had rebounded.

She and Tim were talking, they were having sex, they were being open with one another in a way that they hadn’t for years.

(Well, open-ish; he could never know about Art.) She needed to focus on her husband and her sons.

She’d been an asshole for too long. Frost was trying to be better.

The boys, however, were presenting a slight problem.

Frost hadn’t told this to anyone, particularly not Belle, but after school the other day, Frost had overheard Alfred and King, deep in Fortnite comas, talking about the “fake nudes.” She’d sat them both down, basically dragging them by the ears, and forced the story out: a couple weeks after school started, King said he’d turned on his phone to find a text message from an unknown number.

He’d opened it to see a slew of X-rated photos of Hildy Redness, whom he’d known since pre-K.

He’d shown Alfred—but that was it!—and Alfred, with his eagle eye, had guessed that the pictures were doctored.

“Hildy’s boobs are not, uh, like that,” said Alfred, turning crimson and looking anywhere but his mother.

King told Frost that a similar thing had happened at Dalton—some kid had used AI to make deepfake pictures of girls in his class and had gotten caught and suspended.

He’d even heard that the kid might have to go to jail.

With that in mind, King said he’d deleted the pictures and the text right away, but that “maybe” a few other boys had heard about it, including Ozzie Cain.

Or maybe a few other boys had also received the text.

He couldn’t be sure. But both twins swore to God, no fingers crossed, that they didn’t know who’d sent it.

“Does Hildy know?” Frost had asked, her heart sinking. As if Belle needed something else to worry about.

“I don’t think so,” said Alfred. “Bro, whoever did it is really perverted,” he said.

King nodded in agreement. “Maybe it was Gertrude Chary,” said King offhandedly.

“She’s sus,” he said, wrinkling up his nose.

Frost didn’t know what “sus” meant, but she wasn’t concerned about Gertrude. Gertrude was sad, not evil.

“Hildy’s not really our friend, but she’s fine.

She just does her own thing,” said Alfred.

At twelve, Frost’s sons were men one moment and little boys the next.

She’d tabled the chat and told the boys to let her know if they received anything else of the sort.

“Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone,” she’d warned, and they knew her tone meant business.

“And I’m not your ‘bro.’” They both laughed.

Frost’s hope was that somehow it would never surface—she wasn’t going to tell Belle, and maybe it would all just blow over.

And honestly, she was too busy to deal with yet another Belle meltdown.

Because Frost Trevor’s dream was about to come true: she was about to become a real artist. She’d shown Ethel her work after that initial phone call, hosting her at Frost’s apartment on Twenty-Second Street.

Ethel had arrived dressed in vintage Yohji Yamamoto—an oversize black tent dress—and pink eyeglasses, her long gray hair in a slick braid.

Frost, who never got intimated, had been intimidated, showing Ethel her collages shyly, carefully watching Ethel’s face, wrinkled in an attractive, artistic way, for reactions.

“Young lady,” said Ethel finally, pulling her glasses off to reveal large, blinking blue eyes.

“I like these. They are… thought-provoking, striking, and I think people will want them for their homes. I’m going to sell them, if you don’t mind,” she’d said.

“Though I know you don’t need the money.

” She’d cracked a wry half smile. Well, Ethel was right about that, but Frost didn’t care.

To be validated for something that wasn’t her father or mother, her looks, or her husband was thrilling.

She’d had a dawning, disturbing thought that she’d never been so happy in her entire life.

Maybe when her sons had been born, one right after another, that final push to get King out of her body, the hormones and fear and love and panic assaulting her all at once. This was close.

In a nod to the exhibit’s theme, they’d chosen to repurpose the old Bungalow 8 on Twenty-Seventh Street, now abandoned and tenant-less.

“This place is a shell of its former self, just like the women in your work,” Ethel had said as they’d toured the dilapidated club.

(Perhaps Ethel didn’t remember that Frost had incorporated herself into a few of the pieces.

Or maybe she did.) Frost had brought Sofia along for the visit, and it amused Frost to watch Sofia gingerly stepping over the exposed wires in her stiletto boots.

“I love it,” Sofia kept saying, about nothing in particular.

Frost had been spending lots of time alone with Sofia over the past few months, the four friends operating more as two separate duos.

There wasn’t a schism or anything like that—no one was fighting, no feelings had been outwardly hurt.

That Frost knew of, at least. But Frost was having a hard time stomaching Belle’s depressive pall and baseball hat–conspiracy theories, and Morgan’s hardcore Morgan-ing: obsessing about Thyme it reminded Frost of falling in love.

She craved Sofia’s presence the way she used to crave a new boyfriend’s touch.

She wanted Sofia to like her, and so when they were together, Frost became the best version of herself: witty, stylish, go-with-the-flow.

The person she used to be when she was younger and unattached, not the woman she was currently, navigating a troubled marriage and nearing a possible midlife crisis.

Frost looked over at Tim now, in the back of their chauffeured SUV.

They were headed to Friendsgiving, at the Cains’ apartment on Pearl Street.

Tim and Frost were in the middle row, and Sofia was in the back, in a blond wig and a Samantha Jones–inspired belted trench coat (and nothing else).

Tim, for his part, was dressed as Steve to Frost’s Miranda, and it made Frost laugh to look at him, in his sleeveless Puma B-ball shirt, small, wire-framed glasses, cargo shorts, and low-top Converse All Stars.

Tim had embraced the challenge, even buying his outfit himself after doing internet research on the character.

Frost grabbed his hand in hers and he turned to her and smiled.

“Looking hot, Hobbes,” he joked, pinching the sleeve of Frost’s gray blazer, part of the skirt suit she’d chosen to wear as Miranda, the one from the famous “he’s just not that into you” episode. She was planning on saying that line to people all night.

As much as Frost loved a party, she was anxious going into the evening.

Even the pulsing pop music (Cher’s “Believe,” at Sofia’s request) wasn’t quite enough to clear the murky, what-else-could-go-wrong feeling hovering over Atherton like an impending storm.

Belle was convinced that there was a sicko out there who’d found them together in an Instagram photo and was trying to ruin their lives, one by one, like in a David Fincher film or something.

Tim wasn’t so sure—“Don’t bad things happen to bad people? ” he’d joked to Frost the other day.

“Belle and Morgan aren’t bad ,” Frost had said defensively.

“And what about me?” Little did Tim know.

They were sitting in their living room on a pink Bellini sofa, having a drink before dinner, discussing how the search to find the man who’d scootered into Frost had reached a dead end.

To push it forward, Frost would have had to make an official police report, and based on the detective’s meager findings, she’d decided against it.

Spending alone time together was something Frost and Tim had been trying to do regularly, on the suggestion of their couples’ therapist. She’d set her vodka down on her Mario Lopez Torres wicker grasshopper side table, its antennae pointing right at her.

Why had she purchased that piece, again?

At the time, she supposed, she’d thought it was cute. Now it just looked creepy.

“Oh, come on,” said Tim. He was sipping a scotch, one of the expensive ones he’d bought at auction.

“You know how I feel about Belle and Morgan,” Tim continued. Tim thought Belle was a rich, whiny daddy’s girl, and that Morgan was a fake-happy pain in the butt. “Anyway, it seems you have a new best friend. And I like this one!”

Frost wondered if her friends would be annoyed that she and Sofia were arriving at the party together. Probably, though neither would ever admit it.

The car pulled up to the Cains’ building, a shiny glass tower facing the waterfront.

Tim helped both women down from the car, and when Frost saw how strikingly glamorous Sofia looked in her coat and wig, she instantly regretted her more humorous choice of unflattering workwear.

To complete her look, Frost had a stylist pin her red hair under to resemble Miranda’s shaggy short cut.

“Ugh, I don’t look like Miranda, I just look like a dowdy lesbian,” Frost whispered to Sofia as they were waiting for the elevators to take them up.