Page 22 of The New Year's Party

Olivia, in the passenger seat of their small VW Tiguan, was in sweats. She was going to change into her new backless yellow silk dress once they got there, since the hour-and-a-half drive from Chicago would have wrinkled it hopelessly. It was an expensive dress, but when she’d hit “Buy Now” on the website, she hadn’t given a damn about the price. She was thirty-five, and her days of being beautiful and desirable were ticking down fast. She was wearing real diamond earrings tonight too. No engagement ring, because even though Bennett had bought her a new one when the original thin band with its crumb-sized diamond disappeared a few years ago, she was a little paranoid about Doug stealing it again. It had been Doug, she knew it, but like Bennett said, they couldn’t prove anything, and anyway, it was only a three-hundred-dollar ring and Doug wasn’t himself at the time. That was before his second time in rehab. Or third?

Anyway, she knew Doug had changed. That he and Hellie had been trying to have kids and had suffered not one but two miscarriages. Olivia had sent flowers both times and forgiven Doug a thousand times over for stealing her ring.Ifhe had. It was just a ring, after all. He and Hellie had lost actual babies. She couldn’t imagine. Well... she could. It had happened to her and Bennett too. But they’d already had Norah at that point, so it wasn’t the same.

“Excited?” said Bennett.

“Nervous,” she said in a moment of unreflective honesty. “About leaving the kids,” she amended quickly, pulling out her phone to check. No texts from her mom, of course. She had a full handle on the kids. “All quiet!”

“Great,” said Bennett.

As they made a brief stop at the top of the exit ramp, Olivia opened Facebook. She navigated to Hellie’s page. Wouldn’t it be incredible if she was pregnant again? That would be something to celebrate. Something to take the focus off Olivia. Well, there was nothing new on Hellie’s page since her birthday in May. She clicked over to Jenn’s page, the most active of them all on Facebook.

Jenn had always been really gushy online, but recently it was hitting new levels. The whole family dressed up as characters fromAlice in Wonderlandfor Halloween. Then, for Thanksgiving, the kids dressed up as little turkeys as she and Will posed on either side of them with a giant fork and spoon with the captionSo grateful for these turkeys!!!...which was a bit macabre?

A couple days later, there were pictures of the kids putting ornaments on the tree, and a long post.So grateful for another celebration of the birth of our Savior with these precious kiddos, and of course, Will, who proves to me every day what it means to be a man after God’s heart!!!

So grateful.How nearly all of Jenn’s posts started. Of course, it wasn’t a personal attack on Olivia—Jenn was just sharing about her own life, which she absolutely had the right to do—but still. The posts always made Olivia feel like crap. Which was her own fault, she knew that—her own guilt, which liked to scratch and scratch every time Olivia posted anything on social media.Liar, liar, liar,it whispered.Trying to manipulate everyone into thinking your life is so perfect.The month she’d gone without sharing pics of the kids though, both her mom and Bennett’s mom had texted.Need pics of the grandkids!!

Fine—so she was jealous of Jenn. Jenn embodied everything Olivia had always wanted to be. A great wife, a great mom. An energetic force who made granola bars from scratch and ran 5ks and had given birth with no pain medication all three times. She’d even sent Olivia her hypnobirthing book when Olivia was pregnant with Norah, but to her shame, Olivia caved around six centimeters and went with the epidural.

There had been times over the years that Olivia had thought she and Jenn could get closer, maybe even become besties—the kind of girlfriends who sent each other memes and funny Instagram reels, the kind you could text when you were PMS-ing and the world felt like it was falling apart. In retrospect, Olivia had probably been drawn to Jenn above the other girls among Bennett’s friend group because in terms of social class, Jenn felt the most similar to Olivia. The others—Phelps’s ex, Kylie, with her big opinions and two-packs-a-day habit; Hellie with her never-ending cycle of Doug issues; Bunny with her brash, no-filter way of talking—felt too foreign. Not that Olivia was judging anyone... They were just so different from Olivia’s circle of middle-class, stable friends who weathered the miseries in their marriages and stayed, for better and for worse. Their dirty laundry, they kept safely in the hamper, where it belonged.

It’s not that Olivia was a snob or thought she was better than Bennett’s high school crowd. Nothing like that—sheknewhow bad she was. It’s just, there was a fundamental part of her that didn’tgetBennett’s friends. The absurd, almost fantastical nature of their problems... Someone was always lacking a vehicle, or getting mysteriously fired, or driving on a suspended license, or—

“Almost there,” said Bennett.

Olivia checked her makeup nervously in the little car mirror as they pulled onto Phelps’s street. There was a little mascara running. She wet a finger on her tongue and wiped it away. Her hand was shaking.

Bennett, seemingly oblivious to Olivia’s shattered nerves, had been talking for the past who-knows-how-long about his dream of designing a new class at DeLane Prep, where he taught. He kept talking as he pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road, which would do for a parking spot. Phelps’s house was the last one on the road before it turned to cornfields.

“So I don’t know if I’ll get the Teacher of the Year Award again this year, but that would really help my cause, you know, getting to write the curriculum for my own class—”

She finally allowed herself to take a good look at Phelps’s house. It looked much as it had five years ago. Single-story, white, with that depressing stoop with the flimsy rails... though Phelps certainly was trying this year, with Christmas lights on the bushes and an inflatable Santa in the yard. She could remember with absolute clarity what it felt like to park here five years ago. She was fresh out of that miscarriage, and doing all that processing about the stuff from college... And she and Bennett grieved so differently; he was already moving on, while she was stuck in a pit...

Shit, shit, shit. The truth was, she hadn’t seen Phelps since the last party. And she hadn’t reallyrealizedthat until now. She’dknownit. It’s not like she’d forgotten. But she hadn’tallowed herself to emotionally confront it. Now, the factual, three-dimensional, brutal reality of the house was walloping her. She was about to go inside. About to sit in the same room with Phelps and Bennett. It would be unbearable. She couldn’t do it. Why had she thought she could?

She braced an arm against the car door, because she was about to plummet.

You could tell Bennett, said a little voice inside her.

The little voice was more than familiar. She heard it every damn time Bennett picked Rosie up. Every time they slept together. Every time he mentioned Phelps or another of the old crowd.You could tell. You could.Always reminding her, ironically, not as much what she could do, but what she couldn’t: undo her mistake.

But this time, she didn’t dismiss the voice. She held it. She considered it.

WhatwouldBennett say if she just told him? That, in a moment of blackout drunkenness, at the New Year’s Eve party five years ago at this very house they had just pulled up to, she had been unfaithful. That Rosie was not Bennett’s daughter.

She wasn’t afraid of Bennett’s emotions, whatever they may be. Truly. She’d been angrier at herself than he could ever be. More disappointed with herself than he could ever be. She’d hit rock bottom alone, with no one to talk to, no friend to unload on or support her, because it was her own damn fault, and she deserved no better than to live in silent agony with the accusing voices in her own head. How much worse could her life be if he knew?

It was when Bennett put the car in Park that she realized she couldn’t bear the silence for a second longer. For five years this secret had eaten at her, tortured her, and this, here, now, was her breaking point.

“Bennett, there’s something I have to tell you.”

Her own absurd problem, she now realized. She was just like them after all, only in more expensive clothes.

Bennett turned to her and grinned as he killed the engine and unbuckled. “Let me guess. Bow tie crooked?” He twisted toward her and arched his neck, inviting her to adjust it.

She resisted the urge to tug it back and forth, for familiarity’s sake. She loved to fuss with his clothes before they made an appearance at a party or event. It made her feel cozy inside, like a mother hen, like she was staking her claim. Instead, she clasped her fingers in a pale tangle in her lap.

Her heart was going furiously. She felt like she was going to pass out. But that wasn’t new. She’d felt like this a hundred times over the last five years, every time she imagined telling him... and then didn’t.