The one that had two plush sofas and a fridge filled with chilled white wine.
Robert arrived alone. He was shoved into someone’s office, which they had decided to turn into a makeshift dressing room for the day.
“See?” Kit had been horrified but had laughed. “You need people! ”
“Oh pshaw,” Robert had brushed her off. “I can’t stand all that look at me, I’m a star business. I don’t need people, but I wouldn’t have minded some of those homemade pastries.”
Robert grins at Kit now.
“I don’t want you to come and assist me. I want you to come and be a member of the audience. Come and enjoy.”
“I . . . I’d love to,” Kit says. “I just have to see if I can get a babysitter.”
“Isn’t Tory thirteen? Couldn’t she babysit? ”
“Yes, but she’s already got plans tonight. Let me ask around this afternoon at yoga and see if I can find someone.”
Later that day, at her yoga class, Kit inhales, sits back on her ankles as she stretches forward in Child’s Pose, then swoops slowly through Chaturanga and into Downward Dog.
She catches the eye of Charlie, who grimaces at her and makes her smile, then she forces herself to stay focused on her breathing.
The room is absolutely quiet, save for the soft, tinkling music in the background, and Tracy’s melodious voice, taking them through the yoga movements.
Kit never would have thought she would become addicted to yoga. She remembers first trying it when she was pregnant with Tory. She went to a prenatal yoga class, armed with all the right gear because she was convinced it was going to change her life. She had cute maternity yoga pants, the matching vest with a painted Buddha on it, and a brand-new hot-pink yoga mat.
She had entered at the back of the class, a little surprised that when she smiled at the other mothers they didn’t smile back, but perhaps, she thought, they were already in a meditative state and didn’t quite see her.
Kit was looking forward to lying flat on her back and breathing deeply, anticipating an hour of rest and relaxation, of going through the movements in a slow and measured way. After the thirtieth consecutive Downward Dog, she knew she’d made a terrible mistake. It didn’t help that she was using her pregnancy with Tory as an excuse to eat whatever the hell she wanted and was subsequently the size of a small whale (she liked to think it was normal that six out of ten people asked her if she was having twins, but she very much doubted it).
She huffed and puffed her way through the class, threw the yoga mat in the back of the closet in the mudroom when she got home, and forgot all about it until the yard sale when they moved, when someone paid $2 for the mat.
Since the time of that first class, yoga seemed to sweep the country. Everyone Kit knew was raving about either Pilates or yoga, but it wasn’t until she and Adam separated that she actually decided to give it another go.
And even then she didn’t really want to, she just did it because Charlie was going, and this, more than anything, was an opportunity to see Charlie more often and grab tea or coffee or lunch, depending on the time of the class, afterward.
Charlie had been her lifesaver when she first moved to Highfield. Their girls, Tory and Paige, were in preschool together, and the minute Kit walked into the preschool and saw Charlie’s mass of curly red hair, her large open smile, she knew they’d be friends, made it her mission, in fact, to be friends.
She got Charlie’s number from the school, phoned her the next day and invited her over so the girls could get to know one another before they started school. Given that Tory and Paige were turning two, it was unlikely they’d find much in common, but that’s what mothers of preschoolers did, particularly ones who were new to the area—they looked for mothers they liked the look of and invited them over.
Months later, when she and Charlie were firm friends, Charlie confessed she had no idea who Kit was when she phoned with that initial invitation. “And you still came? ” Kit was aghast but Charlie shrugged and said, “I needed friends as much as anyone else.”
The girls had been best frenemies until Charlie sent her daughter to private school, and this had, unwittingly, split them up. Until then, if