Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,3

that she had wanted this—nature, stillness, the sound of birds in trees.

Andrew bought a French press and made her coffee now. On the days they walked at the college, he filled a travel mug for her.

“Where are the actual college kids?” Andrew said the first time they drove down Main Street, which ran through the center of campus.

“I’m assuming these are them,” she said.

She gestured toward the young women all around. They were laughing in a group by the stoplight; sitting on the front porch of a dorm; rushing along, hunched forward from the weight of their backpacks. Photos in an admissions brochure come to life.

“No way,” Andrew said. “These girls look like they’re in the sixth grade.”

They crossed paths with a dozen of them now, jogging in formation. Their white windbreakers gave off a satisfying swishing sound as they passed, two by two.

Most of them smiled at the baby, asleep in the sling on Elisabeth’s chest.

Elisabeth smiled back, tried to appear cheerful. She had been in a snit since Andrew woke up and said he’d forgotten to tell her they were having dinner at his parents’. The early evening hours after he got home from work were her only chance to be alone, or to have a real conversation with him. She didn’t want to give them to her in-laws.

They came to the halfway point of the pond, marked by a rope hanging over the water from a thick branch. Elisabeth pictured drunk teenage girls in cutoffs swinging back and forth, shrieking as they let go. Still making the kinds of bad choices that ultimately didn’t matter. Their lives all ahead of them.

“These crickets are disgusting,” Elisabeth said. “Is that what they are? Crickets? They’re huge. I hate when they land on me, don’t you?”

Andrew shrugged. “None have landed on me, I don’t know.”

“It feels like this,” she said, and punched him in the arm.

He raised an eyebrow.

Notice the moments when you feel yourself growing resentful, Violet had said. Don’t assign value to them, just take note.

Nomi put it more plainly: You’ll probably loathe Andrew for a while after the baby comes. If he touches you, you might want to die. Don’t worry. It will pass.

Elisabeth didn’t loathe him. She had been lucky to find a man as kind as Andrew, a partner who understood her like he did. But so much had changed these past few months. Sometimes it felt like they were standing on opposite sides of a crowded room and could see, but not reach, each other. She wasn’t sure yet how or when the two of them would fit together again.

And there was the issue of the secret she’d been keeping, which Violet called toxic.

“It’s never the thing you’re holding back that kills the relationship,” Violet said. “It’s the holding back itself that does it.”

“I hear what you’re saying,” Elisabeth said. “But in this case, I think it could go either way.”

* * *

—

After Andrew left for work, she showered.

Children’s folk songs streamed from her phone, which she had left on a chair just outside the bathroom door. The baby was strapped into the bouncy seat on the tile floor. He started to cry halfway through “This Land Is Your Land.”

Elisabeth rinsed the conditioner from her hair and shut off the water. She had been trying to shave her legs for a week.

She wrapped herself in a towel and picked him up.

She stepped out into the hall and brightened to see a text from Nomi.

Brian’s acting weird. He’s either having an affair or planning something for my birthday.

Birthday, Elisabeth typed back. She didn’t need to think about it. Brian was capable of many things, but he wasn’t a cheater.

How can you be so sure?

Because he’s the last person on earth who would have an affair.

But isn’t it always the ones you least suspect?

No, it’s the ones you least suspect when it comes to murder. It’s the ones you suspect when it comes to infidelity.

They never had actual voice-to-voice contact anymore. There were no hellos or goodbyes, just an ongoing conversation that they picked up and ended several times throughout the course of a day. If her best friend called her on the phone, it would mean someone had died, or, back when they both lived in Brooklyn, that she was locked out of her apartment.

Any progress on a sitter? Nomi asked.

Interviewing someone in an hour.

Elisabeth’s friends in the city hired nannies from the Caribbean or Tibet, whom they paid to