Page 48 of The Best Worst Thing

Norfolk, Virginia

Nicole and Valerie didn’t waste any time.

Every waking minute the boys were at school or asleep or lying on the living room floor, FaceTiming their father, the two women were hard at work.

They locked down guests, they mapped out their next ten episodes, they pored over each other’s notes from the week before.

They scoured the comments sections of mom groups and message boards and magazines with similar missions to see what those mediums were getting right and where they were falling short.

They identified look-alike audiences they could target across every platform imaginable.

They took an hour-long call with Mari, who—from an airport lounge in Miami, where she’d just closed a deal with a start-up that sent very sexily packaged espresso pods to your door for less than a dollar a day—gave them a crash course in securing partnerships with D-list celebrities, momfluencers, and women-owned brands with money to burn and awareness to build.

They wrote intros and outros. They designed a new logo.

They begged Paige to debug the very glitchy contact form on their website on three separate occasions.

And then, on Friday morning, they recorded. They sat on the carpeted floor of Valerie’s perfectly insulated walk-in closet—where smooshed maxi dresses and maternity overalls dangled from mismatched hangers like curtains—as Nicole’s fingers pressed down on her trackpad in a long, careful click.

“What was your first memory of your mother?” Nicole said.

“I was four,” Valerie said with a soft, distant chuckle.

She tilted her head just a little, her gaze unfocused and her smile, slight.

“I broke my wrist at school—it was Bike Day. She had to come and pick me up early. At first, I went back to my classroom with everyone else, but I wouldn’t stop crying, so they brought me to the back office and gave me an extra Popsicle and a bag of ice, and then, finally, they called her. ”

Nicole raised an eyebrow, then held up her index finger.

They’d practiced that—quietly signaling each other when to create little, conversational breaks in their stories.

Nicole had assured Valerie that as their rapport grew stronger, they’d learn to anticipate the beats in their banter.

After a week of nonstop practice, they were nearly there—but for now, the little gestures still helped.

“Wait, I’m sorry, but that’s the most nineties thing I’ve ever heard. That your preschool just let you wander around all day with a dangling arm.”

Valerie laughed into her microphone.

It was a real one: deep and warm and perfect.

“I know, right? And of course, the minute she got there, she knew it was broken. She drove me to the pediatrician and I got a pink cast and a sling and then we made Rice Krispies Treats. She let me stir the bowl with my good hand while my dad was still at work. We must have eaten half of it straight from the pot, just standing in the kitchen. I don’t remember my arm even hurting now.

Not after she came and got me, anyway. I just remember melting margarine, you know?

Being too full for dinner. Being really, really happy. ”

Nicole smiled. She’d never heard this story before. They hadn’t rehearsed this. “How do you feel about that day now, when you think back to it? Now that you’re a mom? Now that … now that she’s gone?”

Valerie closed her eyes for a moment.

“It’s weird,” she said, “because, looking back, I think she was already dying. She was so, so sick when they found the cancer. It was already everywhere. That was only a few years later too, so I just believe that. That it was already too late.” Valerie dried her eyes with the hem of her tank top.

Her stomach, all of a sudden, had curved.

It hadn’t been there yesterday. “But I don’t think it would have changed a thing, even if she’d known.

She was all in until the minute she couldn’t be. That’s how I remember her.”

Something sharp cut through Nicole’s ribs, then rose through her voice like an ache. “Do you know how amazing that is? To have someone in your life who’s truly all in?”

“I do,” Valerie said. “And sometimes, it almost makes me mad. Because I’m not as patient or kind or present as she was.

And because sometimes it feels like, since my job is to stay home with the kids, I don’t get to have bad days.

Because she never did, you know? She was always happy.

My husband says I’m just not remembering it right, because it’s not actually possible that she was always on like that.

Rose-colored glasses or something. But I swear, he’s wrong.

I swear, she was perfect. I think that’s the way God planned it. ”

Nicole was quiet for a few seconds.

“What do you mean by that?”

“I know it sounds silly. But sometimes, I think maybe she knew. Maybe that’s the real reason I was an only child. Maybe it was only supposed to be us. Maybe that’s why she loved on me so hard. Because she knew we didn’t have forever. That we were only going to have each other for a little while.”

It was nearly midnight on Monday when Nicole—drained but buzzing from putting their first episode out into the world—crawled underneath the covers of Valerie’s guest bed, pulled a floral print throw pillow between her knees, and grabbed her book off the nightstand.

Outside, Virginia was dark and still. Crickets chirped.

Dew gathered on the windowpanes. A few garden lights flickered, revealing little hints of bluegrass, velvety and overgrown.

Nicole was already twenty pages into a comfort reread of Emma when her phone dinged.

She reached for it, wondering what absurd factoid or filthy one-liner Logan was going to open their chat with tonight.

It was … a picture of a hot dog?

Her eyes rolled as she flung back a response.

Mari warned me that guys like to send these sometimes. Told me I should be prepared.

A bubble danced next to Logan’s name.

So you’re saying I’m your first?

Hot.

She laughed, turning onto her stomach and kicking her feet into the air. She only had another night here—tomorrow morning was the ultrasound, and then she’d take an eight p.m. flight out of Norfolk and head home.

Please. You won’t even show me your bedroom. Starting to think that’s where you keep the bodies. That you’re just trying to change the pH levels of my blood with stale Oreos or something before you put my head in a jar.

A second later, Nicole’s phone rang.

“Yes?”

“The bodies are in the Tar Pits. I was clear with you about that from the start.”

Nicole rolled over. “You’re so weird.”

“You are too,” he said. “You know that, right?”

“It has been brought to my attention lately, yes,” she said, imagining the smirk stretching across his face.

In the background, the city clamored. He’d already told her he was taking his team out for sorry-you-had-to-work-seven-days-straight-to-cobble-together-a-pitch-I-never-intended-to-use drinks this evening, probably somewhere downtown.

“Anyway, how was your last night? How’s New York? ”

“Oh, you know,” he said as a horn honked, as tires screeched. “Hot. Dirty. Full of trash. But magical, for sure. Greatest city in the world. There’s something in the water. Something in the air. If you can make it here, you can make it any—”

“Shut up. You know it’s my favorite.”

“I know,” he said, his voice, suddenly, not so playful. His voice, suddenly, thick. “I’m on Jane Street, Nicole. I remember.”