Chapter 3

The humidity let go when the front door shut. AC on my skin. The foyer. I came in quietly. I didn’t want his voice. I didn’t want mine.

The office door was closed. Same as when I left. Like the house hadn’t moved.

I went upstairs and stood in the shower until the court came off me. Florida heat makes even a bad match feel like work.

Tommy. The name circled like a bad dream.

Nineteen. Barely. The kid who couldn’t feed us a ball without looking bored. A year older than Beth’s son. Probably still at home. Still on his parents’ cell phone plan. A beat-up Honda Civic the club made him park behind the tennis courts so the members wouldn’t have to look at it.

By the time I got out, evening had arrived without asking.

Emily was at a friend’s. The house had that thin quiet that only happens when she’s gone. A sad little preview of the empty nest waiting for us when she went off to college next year.

All three of them. How.

Gloria was my mother’s age. Jill was six months off a baby. And Beth? Beth was me. Or so I had decided.

Alex broke out of the office long enough to throw something on the grill. He plated it. He asked about my day the way you ask when you are already aiming back at a door.

He barely knew I had signed up for tennis. He didn’t know about the matches, or that I had made new friends. Before I could decide if that was an insult or a gift, the plates were in the sink, and he was back in his office.

I brushed my teeth. I got into bed. The day sat down on my chest and stayed.

I put something mindless on the TV. Junk I could stare at until the day let go.

Then the phone buzzed. WhatsApp. Gloria. The group.

“Hope you aren’t mad at us.”

Followed by a hugging emoji. A peace offering at the top of my screen.

I needed those women. That was the part I couldn’t say out loud. They were the only friends I had made in Florida. If I walked away, I would be a woman with a racquet and nowhere to take it. No one to sit with on the veranda. No gossip. Just this house, all day, stewing over what Alex was doing behind that office door.

I didn’t agree with what they were doing. It was disgusting. I had been raised in church. My parents had been loyal to each other for fifty years. His shrine wasn’t a hall pass.

I stared at the preview and tried to find an answer that wouldn’t strand me.

My fingers moved before the rest of me had voted.

“I’m good. I don’t judge.”

The three of them piled love emojis onto my message before I could put the phone down.

Then Jill changed the subject like someone opening a window.

“Tough day out there, ladies. We’ll get them next week!”

The chat went still. I let The Real Housewives fill the room. Other women. Other houses. A fight that wasn’t mine.

Then Jill.

“How was your lesson after the match, Beth?”

Gloria stamped an eggplant under it so fast it felt like a tattoo.

The junk TV kept talking. I didn’t. The question had reached into the room and pulled me into their world against my will. Bold, the second I said I didn’t judge.