I’d hate Taylor’s life. I love working, love my career and my colleagues, the intensity and challenge of it all. My life is one of taking risks. That’s what brought me back to the Pacific Northwest, after all.

“Can I ask Jemma for a sleepover?” Eva asks timidly.

I’m jolted by Eva’s question. Jemma Young for a sleep-over? Oh, Eva. Jemma Young doesn’t even treat you nicely. Why do you want her as your friend?

But I don’t say it. I hold my breath instead, count to three, and then exhale. As I exhale, I draw Eva toward me, wrap her towel around her shoulders. “She might already have other plans.”

Eva shrugs. “She might not.” Her shoulders are so thin. She’s tall, bony, delicate.

“That’s true.”

“And I haven’t had a sleepover all summer.”

When I was growing up, playdates and sleepovers weren’t the thing they are now. Maybe now and then you had a friend over, but it wasn’t this almost daily round robin of going to friends’ houses that dominates the Points Elementary School scene. “That’s true, too.”

Eva smiles at me. “So it’s okay?”

“Mm-hmm.” I’m biting my tongue, biting it hard, knowing that Jemma’s just going to reject her, wanting to protect her from the rejection, but not knowing how to. For the first time in my life, I wish I were someone else, wish I’d been crafted from different material. If I were like other women, if I were more domestic, more maternal, I’d know how to handle this, wouldn’t I? I’d know what to say, what to do, to make my daughter more secure, more popular. More like the people she wants to be.

“Will you go with me?” she asks, pressing her towel to her mouth and chewing on the thick yellow terry cloth.

Will I go with her?

I don’t even have to look at my Eva to see her. She’s imprinted so deeply on my heart that I just know her, feel her, love her with the love of a mother lion or tiger. The love of a protector. I would do anything for her. “Yes. Let’s go ask.”

We—Eva—asks. Jemma says no. It takes all of five seconds to ask and be refused. As Eva heads into the girls locker room to get her clothes, I see Taylor Young rise from her chair and walk around the pool. She’s stopping now to say hello to some women who’ve just arrived. Her smile is big. She’s so shiny and pretty. So perfectly assembled.

My dislike doubles, grows.