Doing shots was not Caroline’s friend. Whether Sierra realized it or not, having too much to drink years before had caused the breakdown of their friendship.

“What about Will?” she asked. “Will he join the festivities?”

“He won’t be home for hours.” Sierra dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. “He’s got a committee meeting, and then he’s going to the lumber supply to pick up a load of boards for the oyster shed. My busy, busy husband.”

“On a Friday night?”

“Perfect time to do it,” Sierra said. “Otherwise he’d have to spend it with me.”

Caroline tried not to read too much into the comment as she stepped into the foyer. Water’s Edge was a beautiful home, so lovingly restored. Yet Sierra didn’t seem happy at all. “I’ll have two shots with you—one for the celebration and one for the lamentation.”

“Fair enough.” Sierra led the way back to the kitchen.

Caroline looked around in wonder. “It’s finished.”

“Pretty much. Will and Kurt added all the finishing touches last weekend.”

“Oh, Sierra. It’s fantastic.” She took a moment to check out the airy, light-filled space. The house’s old-world charm was on display even though it had been fully modernized. “Did you design it yourself?”

She lined up a bottle of tequila, salt, lime, and shot glasses. “Me? Heck, no. We have a kitchen designer, Padma Sen. She’s really good. Has a huge crush on Will. Just like everyone else.”

Caroline cut the lime into wedges, keeping her focus on the sharp knife blade. “Everyone else?”

“It’s like I told you—Will is incredible. I married a unicorn.” She poured two generous shots.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s a thing.”

They tapped glasses, licked the salt, and downed the shots, chasing them with lime wedges. Caroline savored the salty, tart flavors along with the heady burn of alcohol.

“Now then,” she said, “assuming you can still speak after that—what are we toasting?”

Sierra settled onto one of the country chic barstools. “I got a job offer from Nordstrom.”

“That’s . . . great?” Caroline couldn’t quite read her friend’s expression.

“I used to get tons of modeling gigs there. Now I’ve aged out of the role.”

“Unfortunately, I’ve seen too much of that in the industry. So they want you back?”

“As a producer, not a model. And not just a producer—the producer. As in, the entire shoot will be managed by yours truly.”

“Holy crap, that is great. Seriously—great.” A producer was tasked with supervising catalog and website shoots, everything from scouting locations to planning the travel and managing the scouts, stylists, set designers—the whole process. She studied Sierra’s face again. “Is this the good news or the bad news?”

“It’s the dilemma. I’ll be away half the time. Maybe more. It’ll be like Will’s navy deployment, only in reverse. I’ll be the one leaving. And instead of defending our nation, I’ll be on tropical beach shoots in the winter and mountain resorts in the summer.”

“It sounds amazing, except for the separation part.”

“How am I supposed to have a marriage if I’m gone all the time?”

Caroline poured two more shots. “Can’t help you there.”

“I’m so screwed. When we were young, I was the one who wanted the relationship, the husband, the marriage. But then . . . my priorities changed. He went away on deployment, and I discovered my own life. It’s not fair to either of us. I changed into a different person. I’m not the girl he married. And I feel so guilty about that.”

“Listen, everybody changes.”

“God. You’re as bad as Will.”

“What does he think of your plan?”

“He keeps saying it’s up to me. That we’ll make it work. But he’s wrong. No matter what I decide, one of us gets shafted. If I take the job, he loses his wife. If I decline the opportunity, I lose out on the future I really want.”

“No room for compromise?”

Sierra was quiet for several moments. Then she downed her second shot. “Will would hate it if he knew I was drinking. We’re supposed to be trying for a baby. I’m horrible.”

“Stop it.”

“I can’t. I know I’m horrible. You know how the women at the Sewing Circle meetings talk about trying so desperately to escape their monster husbands? Well, here’s me, also desperate. I’m desperate to escape my perfect husband. So in this case, I’m the monster.”

Caroline grabbed her second shot and threw it back with a vengeance. “Christ, Sierra. Why are you telling me this stuff?”

“Because you’re my friend.”

“For something like this, you need more than a friend. You need a therapist. Or a marriage counselor. Some kind of professional. And I’m not one, not even close. And coming to me for relationship advice? Like asking the plumber to accessorize your outfit.”

Sierra helped herself to another drink. “For what it’s worth, I did see a counselor and laid it all out for her, the whole story. The only result was that I came away feeling even worse than I already do. Why would I put myself—and Will—through a painful session like that? No thank you.”

“I’m so sorry. Maybe it wasn’t the right counselor for you. I don’t know. I wish you had someone better than me to help you figure things out.”

Sierra sighed. “Everything seemed so easy when we were young.”

Speak for yourself, thought Caroline.

“It was all so crystal clear. Remember the summer you introduced me to Will for the very first time? I remember it like yesterday. I looked at him and just knew he would be my everything. God, I wish I could find that feeling again. It was so powerful. I thought it would last forever. And now here we are. I’m trapped by his perfection.”

“Not to be too obnoxious,” Caroline said, feeling the effects of the tequila, “but that’s not exactly the worst problem to have.”

“I had an abortion,” Sierra blurted out.

Every small hair on Caroline’s body prickled to attention. “What?” She gaped at her friend. “I mean, I heard what you said, but . . . Jesus. What happened? When? Are you all right?”

Sierra pressed her hands down on the countertop, the sleek new stone gleaming. “It was last year. I got pregnant. I thought I wanted . . . Will wants kids so badly. But I couldn’t do it. I tried so hard to want the same things he did. I knew he would be so happy. But I . . . I didn’t tell him, and I ended it in secret. I’m a terrible person.”

It was shocking, but Caroline refused to judge someone else’s private decision. “I hope he was understanding about it when you finally told him.”

“He still doesn’t know.”

Caroline nearly fell off her stool.

“He doesn’t know I was pregnant and he doesn’t know I terminated it. You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”

“Holy shit,” Caroline said. “Listen, this is really big, Sierra. Like I said, I’m no relationship expert, but I want . . .” What did she want? For the two of them to be happy, yes, yet she wasn’t sure what that meant. Sierra’s confession festered inside her, unspoken. The truth needed to come out, but it wasn’t hers to disclose—not to Will. Not to anyone. She couldn’t bear the thought of being around him, carrying this secret. “You should tell him. You need to tell him. He’s your husband, for chrissake.”

“It would break his heart. It would break our marriage.”

Caroline did not consider herself to be someone who knew how an intimate relationship worked. She’d never had much success in that department. But she was pretty sure a marriage plagued by a secret that big was already broken.

Part Seven

So often the end of a love affair is death by a thousand cuts, so often its survival is life by a thousand stitches.

—Robert Brault

Chapter 23

Standing at the kitchen counter, Will stared at the divorce decree, which had arrived in the day’s mail along with the Northern Tool + Equipment clearance catalog and the Peninsula Tattler.

The page was sectioned into vertical columns like a divided highway, like his life and Sierra’s had been split in two once the inevitable decision had steamrolled over them with breathtaking finality.

It had taken fifteen years to build a life together.

It had taken a mere three months to dismantle it. And after all was said and done, the settlement was just a formality. The life he’d dreamed of, planned for, built with his own hands and the sweat of his brow, was gone even more quickly. In an instant. In the time it took for a phone to ring, for a plus sign to appear on a home pregnancy stick, for a tear to fall down someone’s cheek.