Cleo silenced herself at this. She couldn’t remember the last time, other than Gaby, that anyone had called her a friend. MaryAnne, but look how well that ended up.

“About three years ago,” Emily continued, looking a little ashen but more sure of herself too, “I found . . . I found myself having feelings for someone else.”

“Oh!” Cleo exclaimed and hoped it didn’t sound judgmental.

“I didn’t do anything, or at least then I didn’t.” Emily paused, and Cleo gave her the time she needed. As a friend would. “It, well, she was a woman.”

“Oh!” Cleo said again.

“It’s been . . . complicated. I love Jonathan, and he loves me, and we are a great team, but relationships grow and expand and don’t always conform to what you expect them to be at the start.” She shook her head and smiled. “We were so young when we got married, you know? How was I supposed to know that I might want to sleep with a woman from time to time?”

“Oh!” Cleo repeated and wished she had something more articulate to offer. Labels. More peeling them off, shredding them up, leaving them in the garbage.

“Anyway.” Emily shrugged. “I didn’t want you to think I was the victim here. We decided, mutually, that we were still partners but that . . . we could also find other ‘partners’—oh my God, I hate that word, but it’s the one we use, the one our therapist suggested—and still . . . be OK.”

Cleo took her time, wanted to be sure that she said the right thing to her friend whom she admired for many reasons, including speaking her truth.

“I think that’s pretty wonderful,” she said finally. “I never had that type of . . . flexibility. It was always black or white with me. And . . . maybe that hasn’t always worked out so well.”

Emily laughed. “Cleo, you’re a fucking United States senator. With an amazing kid. And if rumors are true, you’re about to get Veronica Kaye’s endorsement for president. Black and white works for you. Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Maybe.” Cleo shrugged and thought about how she had been alone with Lucas in the delivery room and alone again with him in the emergency room and how, in the span of fourteen years, not much had changed.

Cleo met Emily’s eyes and loved her friend a little more for seizing the moment to redefine herself. She thought of her father and of her regrets list and also of MaryAnne Newman calling her a bad person, and she wondered if you couldn’t redefine yourself so many years later while still staying true to who you were. Emily and Jonathan had navigated all this, and that gave Cleo hope that she could too. Maybe that was at the heart of the list; maybe that was the purpose. To look back, to acknowledge who you were, to see where else you might be going. Cleo didn’t want to not be a senator, to not be president, but she wondered if there weren’t another route too, one that opened up her world a little wider, one that relabeled her beyond how she’d always seen herself: “Only Forward!”

She was so glad that Georgie had flown in and even gladder that Emily had shown up with two casseroles.

“Anyway,” Emily said before she had to run and drop off her eldest daughter’s basketball jersey because she’d forgotten it that morning. “I just wanted to tell you: you know”—she laughed and held up a fist—“Not All Men.”

Cleo laughed too. Not all men. Not Jonathan. Not Lucas. Not Benjamin. Not Matty. Not Bowen either.

“But some of them are still pricks,” she said.

“Oh,” Emily said as she walked out the door, “some of them are still pricks for sure.”

TWENTY-ONE

Georgie and Cleo brought Lucas home from the hospital on Friday. Marley and Benjamin had insisted on decorating his room with over-the-top get-well decor—streamers and banners and balloons found at the grocery store—and Cleo watched from the hallway as her ornery son became someone else around his peers.

That afternoon, Georgie was stirring a homemade chicken soup, and the entire condo smelled of sautéed onions and garlic when Arianna called to confirm that she and Gaby had locked in a last-minute dancing event for tomorrow night and to say that she was forwarding the details. Cleo grabbed her phone, read the fine print, and went into red alert. With everything else, there was no way, no way she could dance in public tomorrow. (If ever! she had decided.)

“Cancel it—you just booked it; how hard can it be to get me out of it?” Cleo screamed at Arianna on speakerphone.

“I don’t—I can try?” There she was again, Cleo thought, ending her sentences in question marks. This wasn’t a request from Cleo. This was a demand. She heard Gaby in the background of the office. “Hang on, Senator; Gabrielle wants to speak with you.”

Cleo paced the kitchen while Georgie made some hand gestures that Cleo thought indicated that she wanted her to take deep breaths, but she was past deep breaths now. She was well on her way to rage or panic or a mix of the two, and she didn’t see how breathing would help her with that.

“Clee, I know you have a lot on your plate, but you can’t cancel. I actually called in a favor and squeezed you in—Arianna remembered that we had initially said no weeks ago, before, I mean, all of this,” Gaby said, officious as ever, like Cleo hadn’t just brought her son home from the hospital after his insides turned putrid and could use some quality time with him, and as if she hadn’t gotten enough publicity in the past two weeks, between MaryAnne and Nobells—like she needed to humiliate herself on the dance floor!

“It was just some stupid idea!” Cleo shrieked. “I don’t need to face it tomorrow, to address this regret right now! Look through the ten I gave you, find something else. Do you want me to adopt a dog? I’ll adopt a dog. Do you want me to go backpacking through Europe? I have August off!” Cleo, in fact, did not regret not backpacking through Europe after college, as she was pregnant by then, but she could see how it would make a nice video diary for Gaby to exploit. She also didn’t really think they had time for a dog, but she wouldn’t rule it out. Voters loved dogs.

By now Georgie had stopped with the gestures and threw her hands on her hips. Cleo heard her say, “Oh no,” and then she became as still as a statue, which Cleo had never seen in her sister and terrified her nearly as much as public dancing.

“Veronica Kaye is on the board of the foundation,” Gaby said. “She called me personally when she saw that you recommitted. She asked what changed your mind, and I told her you were newly impassioned about the arts, and she practically howled with glee, Cleo!”

Cleo reread the email Arianna had forwarded.

“And she believed that? She really thought that I’d start with a public dance performance if I were trying to turn arts education around?”

Gaby hesitated. “I explained that it was all about your new commitment to your gumption—which was Veronica’s word, not mine. You’re not going to argue with me. Instead, I will see you bright and early tomorrow at eight a.m.—”

“That’s not bright and early; that’s practically lunch.”

Gaby did not laugh at her attempt at humor and instead quieted. “Cleo, impress Veronica tomorrow and I’m pretty sure you’ll be a lock as her pick. Which means you’ll be a lock for the nomination.”

Cleo let out an audible sigh. How could she say no to that?

Which was how she wound up saying yes to Dancing with the Stars: Washington, DC (Charity Version!).

Georgie waited until Cleo had cooled off from the phone call to bring it up. And that took some time, to be honest. Cleo looked in on Lucas, who had fallen asleep with his headphones and computer on—she checked, because she couldn’t help herself, to make sure it wasn’t porn, but it was actually The Simpsons, and she started crying again because it really did appear that he was not going to turn out to be a world-class asshole. This alone was a triumph of modern parenting. Then she laced up her sneakers and ran around the neighborhood for what felt like seven hours but turned out to be twenty minutes and two miles, and then, with a cramp in her side and her anxiety over public dancing only slightly in check, she slunk home.

Georgie had ladled up a bowl of soup and also made some chai tea (Cleo had no idea where she’d gotten chai tea).

“Sit,” she said and pointed toward the kitchen table, and because Cleo had not yet adjusted to having a big sister push her around and having the instinct to push back, she sat.

“Let me start by saying I like that you hung Mom’s painting in the hall. It makes me really happy to see it.”

“Me too,” Cleo said.

“Now, the other thing. Regrets?” Georgie asked, scooting out a chair and blowing on her own mug of tea. “You . . . you haven’t been doing that all these years? Dad’s thing?”

Cleo blinked quickly. Why was she always crying now?

“I mean, well, yeah. Of course I did, or . . . I am.”