“I was worried we were destined for friendship,” she said when they came up for air.

Tom brushed a lock of hair off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “Are you kidding? Besides, I’ve got enough friends.”

83.

Samantha: So we’re done then? You’ve got everything you need? Quite a saga, eh? We’re all back to normal now, except all us parents are being extremely nice to one another. It’s kind of hilarious.

Gabrielle: They’ve canceled the spring ball. We’re sticking to cake stalls now. Just what I need. I’ve put on five kilos from the stress of all this.

Thea: Renata is moving to London. The marriage is kaput. I would have tried harder myself, but that’s just me. I can’t help myself, I just have to put my children first.

Harper: Naturally, we’ll be visiting Renata in London next year! Once she’s settled, of course. She says it might take a while. Yes, I am giving Graeme a second chance. One trashy little nanny isn’t going to destroy my marriage. Don’t worry. He’s paying. Not just with his cracked ribs. We’re all off to see The Lion King tonight.

Stu: The biggest mystery is this: Why didn’t that French bird ever make a move on me?

Jonathan: She actually did make a move on me but that’s off the record.

Miss Barnes: I have no idea what happened to the petition. No one spoke of it again after the trivia night. We’re all looking forward to a new term and a fresh start. I thought we might do a special unit on conflict resolution. It seems appropriate.

Jackie: Hopefully the kids can be left alone now to learn to read and write.

Mrs. Lipmann: I think perhaps we’ve all learned to be a little kinder to one another. And to document everything. Everything.

Carol: So apparently Madeline’s book club didn’t actually have anything to do with erotic fiction at all! It was all a joke! Such prudes they turned out to be! But funnily enough, just yesterday, a friend from church mentioned she belonged to a Christian Erotic Fiction Club. I’m already three chapters into our first book, and I won’t lie, it’s quite fun and really rather, well, what’s the word? Spicy!

Detective-Sergeant Adrian Quinlan: I thought it was the wife, to be honest. All my instincts were telling me it was the wife. I would have put money on it. Goes to show you can’t always trust your instincts. So there you go. That’s it. You must have all you need by now, right? You’re turning that off? Because I was wondering, I don’t know if this is appropriate, but I wondered if you fancied a dri—

84.

A Year After the Trivia Night

Celeste sat behind a long table with a white tablecloth, waiting for her name to be called. Her heart thumped. Her mouth was dry. She picked up the glass of water in front of her and watched her hand tremble. She quickly put it back down; she wasn’t sure if she could get it safely to her mouth without spilling it.

She’d spoken in court a few times recently, but this was different. She didn’t want to cry, although Susi had told her it was fine, and understandable, and even likely.

“You’ll be speaking about some very personal, very painful experiences,” said Susi. “It’s a big thing I’m asking of you.”

Celeste looked out at the small audience of men and women in suits and ties. Their faces were blank, professional; some of them looked a little bored.

“I always pick someone in the audience,” Perry had told her once when they were talking about public speaking. “A friendly-looking face somewhere right in the middle of the crowd, and when I get up, I speak to him or her as if it’s just the two of us.”

She remembered that she’d been surprised to hear that Perry needed any techniques at all. He always appeared so scrupulously confident and relaxed when he spoke in public, like a charismatic Hollywood star on a talk show. But that was Perry. Looking back it seemed that he’d actually lived his life in a state of perpetual low-level fear: fear of humiliation, fear of losing her, fear of not being loved.

For a moment, she wished he were here to see her speak. She couldn’t help thinking that he’d be proud of her, in spite of the subject matter. The real Perry would be proud of her.

Was that delusional? Probably, yes. Delusional thinking was her specialty these days—or perhaps it had always been her specialty.

The hardest thing over the past year had been second-guessing and mistrusting her every passing thought and emotion. Every time she cried over Perry’s death it was a betrayal of Jane. It was foolish and misguided and wrong to grieve for a man who had done what he’d done. It was wrong to cry over the tears of her sons when there was another little boy who didn’t even know that Perry was his father. The right emotions were hatred and fury and regret. That was how she should be feeling, and she was happy when she felt all those things, which she often did, because they were appropriate, rational feelings, but then she’d find herself missing him, and looking forward to when he returned home from his trip, and she’d feel idiotic all over again and remind herself that Perry had cheated on her, probably on multiple occasions.

In her dreams she screamed at him. How dare you, how dare you? She hit him over and over. She woke with tears still wet on her face.

“I still love him,” she told Susi, as if she were confessing something disgusting.

“You’re allowed to still love him.”

“I’m going crazy,” she told her.

“You’re working through it,” said Susi, and she listened patiently as Celeste talked through every misdemeanor for which Perry had punished her, in what must have been excruciating detail—“I know I should have gotten the boys to tidy up the Legos that day, but I was tired”; “I shouldn’t have said what I said”; “I shouldn’t have done what I did.” For some reason she needed to pick endlessly over even the most trivial events over the last five years and try to get it straight in her mind.