Heathers meets The Stepford Wives in this creepy and frighteningly funny dark thriller about a woman who will do anything to find her missing sister. Even pretend to be one of them.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Elizabeth Rose Quinn’s Follow Me, which is out April 1st 2025.
After her twin sister, Chiara, goes missing at a mom-fluencer weekend, Adrienne Shaw will find her no matter what it takes. They may have been on the outs, but no one comes for her sister and gets away with it.
It’s been a year, the authorities have no answers, and her brother-in-law is useless in the matter. It’s time for Adrienne to take the case into her own hands. Following in Chiara’s last footsteps, Adrienne goes undercover, infiltrating the same influencer retreat as the last thing she wants to be: an Instamommy.
The remote ranch in Northern California is certainly welcoming―in a cult-adjacent kind of way. A charismatic leader, communal crafts, fixed smiles―and a lot of dead eyes.
Going on gut instinct and chasing a wild theory―that Chiara came here and never left―Adrienne is determined to uncover the truth before the too-perfect-to-believe women figure out who Adrienne really is: a threat to be eliminated.
Chapter 1
Americana Mama
Chiara rolled down her minivan window to better take in the Mendocino hills. Hot summer air billowed in, and for the first time since she gave birth to her two boys, she felt like herself—her actual full self. She tried to remember the last time she didn’t feel like a chewed-up, spit-out sticky ball of motherhood. The memories were vague, and none were more recent than two years ago. But with the window down and music blasting, she could almost block out the two toddler car seats the size of parade floats and the smell of vomit from their last attempt at a family road trip (aborted: car sickness, pink eye). In fact, if she squinted just right in the rearview mirror, she could even pretend that her forehead wrinkles were gone and the graying hair at her temples were actually sun streaks.
Chiara wasn’t naive; she’d known motherhood was going to be hard. Especially when she’d found out she was having twins—or “Hell’s Jackpot,” according to her own twin, Adrienne. (“But at least they’re not identical,” Adrienne had quipped, echoing their mother’s oft-repeated gratitude for that small mercy.) Chiara was ready for late nights, piles of diapers, and missing anything fun that happened after 5:00 p.m. But she wasn’t ready for the one-two punch of personal obliteration and her new constant companion, hormone-fueled doom. That sneaky postpartum anxiety had her up all night, thinking of how exactly she would get her babies out of the car when the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge collapsed, plunging them into the dark gray-green San Francisco Bay water, and casually jotting down funeral arrangements in her Notes app when the twins caught the flu at four months and coughed until they threw up. Loud noises made her jump. The hideous cacophony of the garbage truck made her bones vibrate for two hours. Her internal monologue was just all the ways Death was beckoning her family to ruin: a car jumping the curb as the driver texted, flattening her double stroller; a grape grabbed too early off the cutting board getting lodged in a toddler’s throat; drowning in the bathtub when she sprinted to grab an extra hooded baby towel. Her mind was a one-screen movie theater, the only film available was Final Destination: Baby Edition, and that horror show was playing on repeat.
Chiara remembered her mother’s daily mantra when taking her own ineffectual antidepressants: “Better living through chemistry.”
Chiara had thought her mother’s turn of phrase was so clever and was crushed when, years later, Adrienne told her it was actually the tagline from a commercial.
But even with the unmanageable fear chewing away at her brain every second, Chiara had recently declined a Zoloft prescription. Her moods had been unpredictable, her patience as taut as a violin string. She could see outside her own body when she lost her temper, but she was powerless to stop it. Yet somehow she couldn’t accept taking a medication while she was still breastfeeding.
The doctor had assured her it was safe for her boys. “A healthier mom is a healthier baby,” her OB had said gently.
No dice. Instead of pills, she’d left the exam room with a pile of pamphlets on what to look for to prevent postpartum psychosis. Chiara tossed them in the garbage as soon as she was home, newly annoyed every time she thought of her doctor’s earnest worry.
Chiara would take Zoloft, she had said. She just wanted to wait until the boys were properly weaned. She had a plan.
This was just the most recent example of her new emotional hierarchy. The boys always came first, even when it harmed her.
Therein was the irony: she couldn’t see that the main culprit for her own obliteration wasn’t her sons, but her.
That’s what a good mother does, she thought. Better living through self-sacrifice.
So this trip to the mommy-influencer weekend was more than a treat—it was an aberration. While Chiara was sure a prescription wasn’t right for her, a quick weekend away and two glorious nights of sleep would be crucial for her mental health. This weekend of rest would buy her the next six months of sanity. Then she could wean the boys.
(Does it ever occur to her that she can’t undo years of exhaustion and bank six months of sleep in forty-eight hours? Of course not. Mommy logic is closer to a Zen koan than actual math.)
Chiara had never been much of a social media person. She posted infrequently and was always about three years behind whatever the new “It” app was. Born in ’89, she had missed MySpace entirely, as she was slightly too young. Tumblr was a mystery. She was the last of her friends to join Facebook. She was only two years late to Instagram, which was early for her. By the time Snapchat came around, she declared that she was retired from all new media. Partially, this was laziness. But it was also due to a wish that when Instagram was no longer cool and perhaps even disappeared, so would her entire digital universe. Like when they closed the wave pool at the waterslide park when she was twelve, and she had not been in, nor sought out, another wave pool since. So the fact that Chiara became a tiny internet celebrity was implausible bordering on absurd.
Chiara had come to call it her “moment of cursed serendipity” when she posted a silly photo of her boys and had accidentally used the niche yet popular hashtag #ThankGodIMicrodosedToday to explain the glazed look of I give up in her eyes. The irony being that she hadn’t microdosed that day—or any day, in many years. Not that anyone had asked her. Instead, one of the most highly trafficked mommy-meme accounts reposted her, and within what seemed like hours, Chiara had gone viral. Not only was her original post shared by several other accounts (using hashtags like #SoTrue, #ItMe, etc.), but her words were also superimposed on other people’s posts. Posts about their dogs who’d eaten a large rock for the fifth day in a row, or their elderly parents’ surprise hoarder homes that were supposed to have been packed up for the moving van by 4:00 p.m., or even one jilted bride at her wedding reception, sans groom.
While she struggled to retain any of the specific social media lingo (Stories vs. Reels? Hashtags vs. tags?), viral she experienced as the most intuitive word in the glossary. Her phone and life were overrun with unwanted dings, buzzes, and DMs. If her Instagram account was her quiet parcel of farmland, this viral moment was the once-in-a-generation flock of locusts coming to consume her.
Her Insta-inbox had flooded with offers for merch. But when she read the fine print, they weren’t offering the wares for free—it was always for sale. And she didn’t need any more stuff in her house. Stuff stuff stuff. Stuff was everywhere. Stuff piled up so high, in so many corners, that it was threatening to become sentient and smother her. Chiara hoped for a (small, controlled) house fire to cleanse her of all the detritus she had passively accumulated over the years. So the idea that random brands wanted to send her more crap, for the low, low price of using her face and her babies’ faces in an ad for perpetuity? Hell no.
She was honestly waiting for the interest in her Instagram to dissipate, and even considered deleting her account for a bit to hasten the process. Then, about a week into her tiny internet fame, in a message she couldn’t ever find again in the piles of DMs, someone had suggested this influencer weekend as something she should look into.
Even though Chiara didn’t want to become an Instagram personality, the photos from the previous years looked so fun. More than fun—it looked like what she was needing: community. Or, as they called it, coMOMunity. She would pass on the cheap HGTV-knock-off home goods and expensive subscription Montessori-rip-off toy bundles that filled her targeted ads. She desperately needed other mom friends, and this weekend seemed like a good way to meet some.
She had tried meeting moms at the park or at mommy-and-me classes. But having twins meant that, more often than not, one of them was always napping, so she would go weeks without ever leaving the house. She couldn’t even make it to the grocery store, and instead had to order things to be delivered, or walked out to her car while she held up a sign saying Baby sleeping, please put Target order in the back! She felt like the entire world was happening on the other side of a pane of glass that was one thousand square miles, and no amount of planning could get her through the partition.
Her husband would come home from work and ask her, “How’s nap jail?” The first time he’d said it, Chiara laughed hysterically, which then came close to actual hysteria. Then she’d dissolved into uncontrollable tears for thirty minutes as her husband lovingly held her, even though he was so confused that he was afraid to speak for fear of making it worse.
So no, she did not want a sustainable-bamboo spice rack with little vintage-style jars and the tiny pen to label the jars with the special spices that would be delivered monthly to her house. She did not need the rotating seasonal doormats that go in the washing machine. She did not covet the ethical-linen duvet set that matched the shower curtain that aesthetically tied to the carpet, which came with a complimentary set of furry poofs no one would ever sit on.
But this mommy-influencer weekend . . .
It was the Annual Style Summit for Instagram Moms, held at queen influencer Thea McCorckle’s ranch in Northern California. It boasted spa treatments, crafting ideas, and most of all, coMOMunity! Chiara had wanted to ignore it. She told herself she had bookmarked the post so she could show it to her sister and make fun of it. A style summit? she’d planned to say to Adrienne. What the hell is that? Oh, they would laugh. They would feel so superior.
But that never happened.
Instead, Chiara found herself going back again and again to pore over the photos. Everyone looked so happy! The comment section was so supportive! Mothers were counting down the days until the event. In other posts, moms were asking for support on sleep training, on finding time for themselves, on making their husbands help out more with the kids. Chiara saw herself in this online world. Finally, the partition was gone. She posted, she tagged, she commented, she voted in polls, and she clicked every Link in Bio. Finally, she wasn’t alone.
Chiara had even done something that a previous iteration of herself would have never, ever have done: she entered a contest to win a ticket to the summit. Chiara, who hadn’t even once called a radio station to request a song, and who found the exhibitionism of Wheel of Fortune stomach churning, followed the multistep directions to enter her name in the Thea Summit Sweepstakes. She knew it was a long shot, as they were only giving away one spot out of two hundred, but the tickets were so expensive that winning was the only way she would get to go.
And then . . . she won.
Chiara had read the DM again and again, unable to comprehend that, for the first time in her life, she’d won something! The message was so generic that she almost deleted it, not realizing it wasn’t yet another piece of marketing spam.
Hello, Mini Mom! Welcome to your new home away from home—the CoMOMunity Style Summit! Your ticket is below. Can’t wait to meet you! —Yours, the Mom Squad
Chiara was elated! However, she suddenly had a new problem: How would she tell her husband that she was going to leave him with the babies for a weekend to join an online world she hadn’t yet told him anything about? This summit was going to seem completely out of the blue, possibly on par with a psychotic break. To be fair, she had been teetering close to a mental health episode for months, so she wouldn’t blame him if he thought it was all a fever dream brought on by POW levels of sleep deprivation. Nevertheless, the promise of respite, the promise of sleep, the promise of life with adults—it all lifted her mood more than the Zoloft that her doctor kept suggesting.
Apparently, this emotional shift was obvious, because two days later her husband said timidly over dinner, “You seem happier. Are you?”
Chiara sheepishly told him about the Instagram accounts she was following.
Before she had even realized how much she wanted it, Chiara was halfway through her pitch on how she had won a ticket to the weekend, and why she needed to go, and how she could preplan everything so it wouldn’t impact him or the kids too much.
Even now, Chiara could feel the strange mix of embarrassment and uncontrolled yearning she’d had during that dinner. Once her words had tumbled out, she braced herself for her husband to dismiss the idea.
Instead, he was on board immediately. “Chiara, I think this is a great idea!”
Her breath caught in her chest. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You don’t think it’s dumb? It might be so dumb. I’ll sleep on it. Maybe circle back in a couple days, see if it’s really something I actually want to do.”
He started shaking his head. “No, no, no. You are not going to talk yourself out of it.” He pulled out his phone and started typing. “In fact, I am going to check . . .” Chiara heard the whoosh of a text message being sent, and then his phone chimed. “Yup, my mom is free that weekend. She will come help me with the kids. You’re going.”
Chiara laughed. “Why do you care so much? Think my mothering is that terrible? That I need a craft crash course?”
“Of course not!” Her husband paused and bit the corner of his mouth—the sure tell that he was debating the cost of honesty. Choosing his words carefully, he took Chiara’s hand and looked at her with palpable compassion. “I just feel like this is the first time in a long time I have seen the old carefree you. I miss her.”
Chiara’s eyes welled with tears. “I miss her, too.”
Now, finally, the summit was here.
Chiara felt lighter with every mile she drove. Her hand out the window, hair blowing in her face, she relished the feeling of being alone. Truly alone. Not the hiding in the bathroom while small baby fingers smushed cereal under the door alone that she was used to. She stopped at a farm stand and spent way too long perusing a variety of dried fruits—and why not? There was no rush! No nap to time out! No diaper that was in need of changing! Chiara’s cheeks flushed with the sheer luxury of thinking What would I like to do right now? What would I like to listen to? What snack sounds good to me and only me?
She settled on dried apricots and a giant bag of mixed nuts, two things that were essentially outlawed in her home for being choking hazards. Chiara even did the unthinkable: she took a detour to a viewpoint on the map. She parked her slate-gray minivan under a large oak tree and took in the panorama. Big puffy clouds floated above her, and she watched as they slowly hit the cold marine layer and spread into a thin fog. Dappled sunlight caught her eye as she reclined in her seat, eating her bag of allergens and windpipe blockers. A nut rolled out of the bag, and she smiled ear to ear knowing she didn’t have to immediately locate it before small hands did. The only sound was the oak tree’s leaves rustling in a soft breeze and a lone dove cooing. If this was the high point of the weekend, Chiara would be more than satisfied.
Her mother-in-law had arrived the night before to help for the weekend. Chiara definitely got a perverse pleasure out of the fact that her husband had immediately recognized that he couldn’t handle one single weekend alone with the kids. She hadn’t had any experience with babies when she left the hospital with two newborns, but no one had seemed to think twice about her.
“You’ll figure it out” was the only response she’d gotten when she shared her apprehension.
“Nature will kick in,” the nurses had said as they ushered her out of her L&D room.
No one said that meaningless treacle to her husband, though. Everyone knew that this was too hard for one person to handle, as long as that one person was anyone but Chiara.
She even hoped quietly that the weekend was extra hard so he would really, truly know. But then she immediately felt guilty for such thoughts, because she knew if it was a hard weekend for her husband, then more than likely, it was also a hard weekend for her babies. She wanted them to be fine without her. She really, really did. After this little break, she could come back and be better than ever. More loving, more patient, more present.
Parenthood was a trip. As if she were seeing a monsoon moving across a plain, Chiara could feel the heart-shaking moments coming, soak them in, and then commit them to memory as they happened. Even if she missed it, the wildest part was that she knew another magic moment was coming. She just had to wait.
Her twenties, of course, had been filled with joy. Core memories of dancing in gay bars with Adrienne in the Castro District. Of that sunrise they spent on the beach in Mexico. Of a certain dinner party where the lighting was perfect. But she had been drugged out for so much of it that she never saw it in the moment. She saw it later, sometimes a day, or a month, or a year passing before she realized how special that time was, and by then the details had faded and she wasn’t sure if what she was remembering was even true.
Parenthood for Chiara was having this higher power to see the past, present, and future all at once.
Holy shit. It’s happening, she would think, and she would open herself up to the joy, the soul-rendering bliss. Sure, minutes later it would be followed by tantrums, or lost shoes, or, more often than not, vomit. But those were made oh-so tolerable by the happiness.
Everyone says parenthood is both so incredible and so damn hard. What people don’t talk about is the awareness of it all. Chiara was unsure if this was her unique experience or if it was just too hard to describe until it was lived firsthand.
It felt so whole and wholesome, she could die at any second and never need more. Weekend pancakes. Lounging in the grass at the park. The first time the boys realized they could put bubble bath on their heads and they laughed until they both got hiccups, and then they laughed even more. The perfect five minutes of quiet after the babies fell asleep. This was to know contentment in its truest form.
Often, especially when the kids were crying and everyone’s patience had left the building, she would take her husband’s hand and say, “We are in it.”
And he would say back, “We are in it.”
It wasn’t a rallying cry or a way to vent their frustration. It was a call to stay present in this chaotic moment. This was it. No other childhood was coming. They wanted to sink into it like a warm bath and never get out.
Her sister, Adrienne, wasn’t there for these moments. She didn’t see it. This was actual love. Actual romance. Someone who could sit in a used midsize SUV with an interest rate one point shy of loan shark territory and think, I choose you. Someone who could collapse into bed at 7:00 p.m. after a single trip to the market, the faint whiff of diaper cream embedded in all their clothes, and say, “This is all I have ever wanted.”
More than I love you, “We are in it” meant “I would only do this with you.”
As much as Chiara wanted to be angry with Adrienne for not understanding her new life in marriage and motherhood, she knew her sister had good reason to be skeptical. Chiara cringed in embarrassment for herself and flushed with deepest gratitude for Adrienne when she thought back to her very long, very subpar dating history. Chiara had had a real talent for picking losers with a mean streak. When the men would eventually shed their meek presentation to viciously cut her down, Chiara had always taken it. She accepted the inconsistent affection and the brazen lying, and quietly waited for more.
It was hard to choose the Top 3 Worst Boyfriends, but a few stood out. There was the bartender who would berate her if she tried to contact him more than once per day, even though they lived together and shared a car. Meanwhile, his expectation was that she was always available to him no matter what, and would be furious if she didn’t drop everything to ferry him to and from wherever he needed to go. Even if that meant her waking up at 3:00 a.m. to pick him up from his shift, or her being forced to run for the bus at the last second because he was too hung over to drop her at her job. There was the boyfriend who “didn’t like labels,” and when he went on monthly business trips, he would always stay at “friends’ houses” instead of hotels. It turned out, by friends he meant women he was sleeping with on the side. Not to mention his business trips were already suspicious as hell, as he did not have a job beyond selling pot to college students. Another boyfriend asked Chiara to marry him after they had been dating for eight months. Part of his romantic proposal was that his other girlfriend was three months pregnant, and he thought Chiara would make a great stepmom. He somehow didn’t anticipate the math of Help me raise the baby I conceived while cheating on you as a downside. But all this bad behavior from every man had seemed acceptable to Chiara—expected, even. In every instance, it was only when she reported these things to Adrienne and her sister would blow a gasket that Chiara realized she deserved infinitely better.
Adrienne demanded respect for Chiara. On multiple occasions, she came to move Chiara out of apartments with men who were mistreating her. Boyfriend 1 came home to an empty apartment, changed locks, and a book of bus tickets taped to the front door. Boyfriend 2 arrived at one of his “business trips” only to find out that Adrienne had emailed every single one of his side trysts on a group email introducing them to each other, effectively detonating his carefully constructed web of lies. (The email subject: A Storm in Every Port.) Afterward, he had left voicemails for months threatening violence, and even tried to break into Chiara’s apartment as revenge. But Adrienne smashed his hands with a baseball bat, called the cops, and got Chiara a new cell number all in one day. Boyfriend 3 was her opus. Adrienne bought a four-month supply of diapers, plus all the requisite baby-changing paraphernalia (as per the saleswoman) and sent it all to the mother-to-be with a card reading When you throw out a dirty diaper, throw out that cheating asshole too, along with copies of his texts to Chiara begging her to marry him.
It was Chiara’s lifelong pattern: she fell in love with potential and promises. Even when the potential never actualized and the promises became a road map of broken trust, Chiara was ever hopeful that it would all work out. Adrienne tethered her back to reality, where these men weren’t worth her time or attention. But it wasn’t just hollow romances that Adrienne rejected for her sister—Ade also refused to accept Chiara’s low self-regard in all its forms. When Chiara made a passing gibe at her own expense about wanting to try community college but being too dumb, Adrienne marched her ass to the Laney Junior College admissions desk and made her enroll.
“Chiara, you are smart as hell. Don’t let anyone tell you that you aren’t.”
When Adrienne said it, Chiara believed her.
A year later Chiara was late to the lecture when her final paper was due at the start of class. She called Adrienne, heaving tears. “The professor won’t accept it now! Without that paper in, I’ll fail!”
“How many people are in the class?”
Chiara was confused how this was salient information, but she answered, “I don’t know. It’s a big lecture, so maybe one hundred?”
“Great. Don’t move.”
Adrienne drove to campus like a bat out of hell, double-parked in a loading zone, and found Chiara in the hallway outside the lecture hall. Adrienne took Chiara’s paper and then waited next to the classroom door. When the professor exited, Adrienne pretended to slip, knocking him down with her. As she helped him gather his things, she slipped Chiara’s paper into the professor’s pile without him seeing.
Chiara passed the class. And the next. And the next. Adrienne was always helping pay for books, always reading the syllabus, too, so Chiara could bounce ideas off her and feel prepared in class. When Chiara eventually transferred and then graduated from Cal State East Bay, Adrienne brought an air horn and screamed, “That’s my sister!” when Chiara got her diploma. The first college graduate in their family. Chiara sincerely wished she could give half her degree to Adrienne; it was only because of her twin’s belief in her that Chiara had made it all the way to a bachelor’s. It felt disingenuous that only her name was on the diploma.
So, as exhausted as Chiara was now with Adrienne’s attitude, she couldn’t blame her, either. When she assured Adrienne that her husband was good and that they loved their boring domesticity, Chiara could hear how it all sounded exactly like the denials from her past—that the crappy boyfriend was really sweet when no one was around, and it was totally fine that the newest jerk on the scene let his hard-core punk band use her studio apartment as a crash pad and a rehearsal space, and whatever menial job her GED got her was the best she could hope for. Except now it was Chiara defending a man who loved canonizing Friday Night Pizza Night (a.k.a. weekly frozen pizza dinner) and trying to sell Ade on the joys of the very specific Raffi playlist she had made (“‘Bananaphone’ is actually really catchy!”). She felt like a sane person trying to convince the mental hospital staff she was ready to go home. The more she pushed, the less convincing she got.
Ade is still waiting to save me, Chiara realized. Just like how she has saved me a thousand times before, even when—especially when—I didn’t see the danger I was in or when I thought I deserved for life to fall apart again.
Maybe this was the key to the whole mess. Instead of trying to convince Adrienne that her life was good, she would invite Adrienne in to “kick the tires,” as it were. She would thank her for every time she swooped in in the past and tell her, “It’s because you did that then that I see how good this is now.”
After many hours of driving, and a GPS that dropped out too often, Chiara finally arrived at Thea’s ranch deep in Mendocino County. Highway 101 stretched up from the Golden Gate Bridge, with Route 128 first and then Route 20 farther north, cutting both west to the Pacific, creating a rambling square. Thea’s ranch was in the center of this square. This was the type of area where directions like Turn left at the fire station and If you see the gas station, you’ve gone too far made sense because there were only one of each of those for fifty miles in any direction.
As Chiara pulled onto the property, joining a long line of mommy vehicles, it smelled like wild fennel but more intense somehow. Nature, augmented. She realized the scent was being pumped out of the misters, along with French lavender. The wholesome equivalent of pink lights in the supermarket produce section and oxygen in casinos. Better living through chemistry once again.
Across the perfect ranch gate stretched a banner: Welcome to CoMOMunity™. In case anyone didn’t know who she was, there was a life-size photo of Thea in a faux-Instagram frame, which women were ecstatically posing with. There were rolling golden hills, no neighbors, and women women women as far as Chiara could see.
The Ranch presented as #Rustic, but anyone could tell every splinter had been sanded off and the cedar was imported from Italy. But no one was here for realism. All the Mini Moms™ flocked into the CoMOMunity™ perfect Instagram world ready to take it down like an expired quaalude. Chiara included. She had had enough of real life. She was ready for escape.
After Chiara parked, she pulled a little photo off the sun visor—her two boys lying on a blanket, looking absolutely adorable. The photo had been laminated, and the edges were soft with wear. This was one of the only habits she had brought into her current life from her own mother. A sweet Polaroid of Chiara and Adrienne had lived in her mom’s purse for decades and was slipped into the broken AC vent of her car during drives. They had found the photo still on her nightstand when she died.
Chiara stared at her picture lovingly, then slipped it into her pocket as she got out of the car. She grabbed her suitcase and joined a group of women in line at the check-in table.
Once she was near the front of the check-in line, Chiara took in a woman whose name tag read Opal Winslow. Opal stood rigidly straight, with an iPad at the ready, like a sentinel from Hobby Lobby, and despite her big grin and can-do attitude, she had all the warmth of a built-in Sub-Zero fridge (#SponCon). “Welcome, Mini Moms! Who’s ready to create a cohesive-content approach for Independence Day!”
All the women let out a big “Woo!” and Chiara jumped a bit, her nerves still frayed from the drive and from . . . well, life.
Another woman with an iPad and a glazed look of joy on her face that gave Chiara the heebie-jeebies waved Chiara forward. When she got closer Chiara recognized her—this was Ashleigh. Her blond braid glinted in the sun, and her lace nap dress fluttered in the breeze. “Welcome to the CoMOMunity Style Summit, Mini Mom. I’m Ashleigh. Tell me your name, how many babies you have, and your top post.”
“I’m Chiara Shaw, I have twin boys, and my top post is, um . . .”
She showed the #ThankGodIMicrodosedToday post on her phone to Ashleigh, whose eyes went wide. She took Chiara’s phone and started typing.
Chiara was startled. “Whoa, what are you—”
Ashleigh waved her off. “Don’t worry, Mom. It’s a surprise for later. Please scan this.” Ashleigh handed Chiara her phone back and then held out a QR code. Chiara complied. Ashleigh looked to her iPad again. “Okay, you’re on Wi-Fi and your personal devices are all synced up.”
Chiara looked at her phone and Apple Watch; a new CoMOMunity app had opened up on both.
“You can find the weekend itinerary and site map and get reminders for your preferred events all through the app. We will also suggest meetups that we think complement your mommy style.”
Chiara was impressed. “Wow. So if I click here . . .” She pressed a few keys on her phone.
Ashleigh smiled. “Yep. You just booked a massage. Time to relax, Mom. You are in Cabin 8.”
A few minutes later Chiara entered her one-room cabin, which was identical to the rows of other little cedar duplexes lining the edge of the field. It was like a cozy Coachella summer camp, except instead of EDM and STDs, there was shiplap and crisp cottons.
Chiara tossed her bag on the leather club chair (#PotteryBarn) and lay face down on the bed like only an exhausted mother away from her twins can. Just from being there, her stress had already gone down ten notches.
There was a quiet knock at the door, and a voice gently called, “Cabin 8, your massage service is here.”
Chiara rolled over and grinned. Hell yes.
Night came quickly, and Chiara was locking her cabin door to go to dinner. It was that particular hour in which the air around her face was still warm, but the grass underfoot was cooling rapidly. The contrast made her acutely aware of her body in a way she had forgotten was possible, beyond anxiety over her shredded pelvic floor. She wore a linen romper, little cowboy boots, and a cute Stetson-style hat with a feather. She felt good. Still got it. Nothing said Woman on Her Own like an outfit with no easy breastfeeding access. She’d been alone for most of the day—massage, nap, bath—so she was excited for the big welcome dinner. A night with only adults? Where people talk in complete sentences? And sociopathic YouTube Kids songs aren’t playing in the background at full volume? Heaven.
Chiara entered the massive barn with legitimate pep in her step, where she saw long salvaged-wood dinner tables set for the two hundred moms in attendance. A giant brass pendant light twinkled above between the rustic beams. Garlands of eucalyptus, lavender, and sage mingled with tiny American flags and hand-stamped tin stars.
Everything was perfect. Everything was themed. Everything was #InstaWorthy.
Then Chiara immediately saw five other women wearing her exact same outfit. Right down to the damn feather. Chiara realized in that instant she wasn’t a cool city mom on a glamorous night out—she just looked the worst in a generic outfit from the mall. Her confidence was shattered. Chiara’s shoulders rounded forward, and her hands tightened into anxious fists. If she wasn’t staying here, if this was just a dinner near her house, she would have left on the spot.
A woman in her outfit entered and yelled, “Oh my God, Lauren!”
Eighteen women turned around. Yes, they were all named Lauren. Yes, they all did that high-pitched lady scream that made Chiara jump in her skin.
Suddenly, Chiara felt like this weekend was a big mistake and no amount of hot-stone massages would make up for it. She winced at the steadily increasing noise level as more women arrived. The temperature in the room was rising, too. Chiara’s romper suddenly felt too tight around her hips, and the linen fibers were making her itch all over. Feeling hot, she wanted to take her hat off but knew that her hair was a sweaty mess underneath. Besides, what would she do with the hat once she took it off? Carry it? Pop it on top of a centerpiece during dinner? She grabbed a napkin off a side table and dabbed at her temples, then shoved the wadded-up paper into her pocket.
Chiara went to the closest empty seat she could find. But when she pulled the chair out, the woman next to her grabbed it.
“Sorry. This seat is saved,” the woman said, possessively draping her arm over the back of the chair.
Chiara gulped out an apology and walked over to the next open seat. But when she got closer she saw that a napkin had been laid on it in a clear signal of Not Available.
She tried a third seat, but just as she was about to sit, another woman kindly said, “Sorry, I’m sitting there. I was just in the bathroom.”
Chiara awkwardly backed away. “No worries.”
Except, all worries.
Chiara finally saw a seat that had no napkin and no possessive neighbor, and made a beeline for it. She was relieved to at last be sitting down, as sitting felt less exposed than standing. However, she had chosen a chair between separate groups of friends, and so, instead of meeting peers like she had imagined, she was stuck between two women who had turned their backs to her and were turned toward their own people. Chiara had all the social cache of a mop.
To escape her awkwardness, Chiara pulled out her phone and scrolled through the nostalgia album of the day from her photo stream. Normally it was all cute pictures of her boys, which always made her happy, but today it was old, scanned pictures of her and Adrienne. One indie sleaze–era picture from the Elbo Room made her laugh, and suddenly she wished Adrienne was there. They had argued again before she left for the summit, and Chiara just wanted to make it right. She took a truly hideous selfie on purpose and texted it to her sister.
Horrid welcome dinner. If I try to come back next year, tie me to a chair, she typed. (No emoji. Adrienne hated emojis.)
Things had been rocky between them for several years, ever since Chiara started dating her now husband. As the new relationship had progressed, a novel feeling entered Chiara’s life: calm. It was such a foreign concept that it had taken Chiara several months to even identify the feeling by name. Before, the constant emotions in her life had been more of the anxiety, franticness, and insecurity varieties. Along with this centered, relaxed vibe came other changes: Chiara got a regular day job at last and was shocked at how much she liked it. She started grocery shopping and stopped returning calls from scumbag exes whom she had previously always gone back to. She only partied with Adrienne on the weekends instead of every night. And even then, those weekends grew further apart. In short, she felt like she was growing up.
Meanwhile, as her entire life seemed to be coming together, Chiara’s relationship with Adrienne was fraying.
Chiara had hoped that as she lessened her drug use, Adrienne would follow suit. Instead, when they hung out Adrienne seemed compelled to do all the drugs that Chiara was leaving behind. Every pill, puff, tab, and baggie Chiara declined, she watched Adrienne take as if to punish Chiara for her new habits. If Chiara passed on a shot, Adrienne took it and her own, plus a beer back for good measure. More often than not, by the end of the night a sober Chiara would drag a stumbling Adrienne out of a weird warehouse party and then pour her into bed. After a while every minute they spent together just seemed to exacerbate the distance between them. The second most painful thing in the world for Chiara was missing her sister. The first most painful thing was being in the same room as her.
After a year, this tension boiled over during an awkward lunch at a cheap Tex-Mex place on the marina.
Over unlimited chips and salsa, Adrienne had been taking jab after jab at Chiara’s new habits, at Chiara’s new job, and most of all, at Chiara’s relationship. Chiara’s attempts to speed the lunch along—ready to order, no starters, no drinks—were slowed by Adrienne at every turn.
“Of course we should get chips and salsa! What do you mean, you aren’t getting a margarita? Do you guys have flan today? Yes, please do check what the specials are; we can wait.”
Nearly an hour into the passive-aggressive emotion emporium, Chiara was shredding her napkin in her lap and desperately trying not to take the bait. She took deep, measured breaths like she had learned in her new yoga class, and visualized this lunch ending as soon as the sizzling fajita plate was cleared.
Then Adrienne went too far.
“Oh my God, Chi, I saw the funniest thing online. Did you know that when moms post stuff online, they do it in this code? Like DD means Dear Daughter and DS is Dear Son. It’s so sad. Like, wow, amazing encryption, Karen. Plus, all the stories are just the worst.” Adrienne put on a mocking tone. “‘DD won’t bring grandkids to my house to trick-or-treat, says an hour is too far to drive on a school night.’ Or ‘DS insists on sharing Christmas with in-laws, but Christmas is MY thing.’ On and on.”
Chiara took a deep yoga breath and shredded a little more of her napkin. “Just sounds like women trying to make their families work.”
Adrienne blew past her. “Don’t even get me started on the Dear Husband posts. ‘DH won’t sort raked leaves for our decorative Fall Festival wreath.’ ‘DH doesn’t know how to change a diaper.’ ‘DH thinks I need to spend less money crafting.’ It’s so cringe.”
Chiara’s breathing was speeding up, and her napkin was confetti. “Then don’t read the posts.”
Adrienne plowed on. “And I was dying because all that DH stuff is so your boyfriend. He is one hundred percent a future DH. Really captures that whole khaki-coated vibe.”
Adrienne laughed too loud at her little joke to notice that Chiara didn’t laugh at all. In fact, Chiara had absolutely had it.
“How about you be a grown-up and say what this is really about?” Chiara hissed through her teeth. She felt a flash of satisfaction when she saw Adrienne’s smile falter.
“What are you talking about? I’m just joking. You’re so serious now. What, does your DH not like jokes and now you don’t like jokes?”
Chiara’s nostrils flared, and the flush from her chest rose to her cheeks as she spoke. “He has a name.”
Adrienne waved her away. “Let’s order more margaritas. You need tequila so bad.”
Chiara’s anger modulated in a matter of seconds into a cool detachment she had never once felt toward Adrienne. It was as if all the chaotic strife of the last year had suddenly come into perfect focus. “Our entire lives you have pushed me to want better, to be with someone kind, to be with someone who would protect me and care for me like you do. And now I am with that person. And you hate him.”
“I don’t hate him. He’s too boring to hate.”
But it was Chiara’s turn to ignore her sister and plow on. “I think you resent me for growing up. You liked when I was a mess, and you got to be the center of my life, always saving me. But I’m not her anymore. And I don’t understand why, after a lifetime of being in lockstep, this new healthy, sober phase is the single one where you won’t follow me even a little bit?”
Adrienne sputtered for a second, and again tried to get out of the conversation. “You have totally lost the plot. I’m fine. I am who I have always been. You’ve changed.”
Chiara’s voice rose, carrying to every ear in the immediate vicinity. “Yeah! That’s the point! I am growing—why can’t you? You think I don’t see you using more? Spending time with the sketchy people we used to avoid even when we were at our lowest? Buying pills from dealers you don’t know? This is dangerous stuff you’re doing, and I know you know it! It’s like you’re hurting yourself to punish me!”
“I have to use more to drown out what an absolute bore you’ve become. I don’t even know you anymore.”
Chiara stood up from the shiny vinyl booth. She could feel the rest of the restaurant looking at her, but she didn’t care. “Here’s an idea: How about you stop being a selfish bitch and take some responsibility for your own mess?”
Adrienne stood up, too. “How about you admit that you bailed on me! On us!”
“‘Bailed’ how? I am living the life you always told me you wanted for me, and now you’ve disappeared. You say I left you, but I say you left me. Call me when you grow up.”
At that, Chiara gathered her bag and stormed out.
She didn’t speak to Adrienne for three months. The worst part was, she didn’t really miss her. She was exhausted from the constant drama and the unpredictable anger she’d realized she had spent her whole life soothing. Adrienne’s absence in her life wasn’t a void—it was peace. Chiara loved her beyond measure, but she needed a break.
There was so much blame from both of them heaped onto the other, over and over, for everything. Weird unconscious emotional math was sprouting up in their once-unbreakable bond like poison oak.
But even with all the arguments, silent treatments, awkward reconciliations, and cooling-off periods that lasted too long, Adrienne was one of the most important people in Chiara’s life. Anytime Chiara felt low, Adrienne knew the exact thing to say to boost her confidence—and tonight Chiara felt low as hell in this fancy barn. She would have paid any amount of money to have Adrienne here, at this weird weekend getaway, whispering snarky comments, stealing candlesticks from the centerpieces, and most of all, making Chiara feel special in this maternal monolith. She felt a pang of guilt for wanting her sister to be there for the sole purpose of uplifting her ego. Perhaps it was selfish, but maybe it wasn’t.
Dinner finally began. An (apparently preselected) ensemble of mommies rose from their seats at the sound of a gong and efficiently headed toward a side kitchen behind a barn door designed to blend in with the wall, which Chiara had failed to see.
Chiara heard a mom whisper in an awed tone, “Incognito Barn is so hot this year.”
In smooth, choreographed movements, the select mommies entered the kitchen, then exited ladened with food. They set platters (handmade pottery, no dishwasher) down at perfect intervals on every table, along with short menus propped up on tiny stands made from vintage wine corks.
Chiara read over the menu, partly because she was interested and partly to cover the fact that she was still in a social desert between two groups who continued to be oblivious to her presence. The meal was titled #AmericanaMama: BBQ chicken, corn (not on the cob, that’s bad for pictures), Caesar salad (dressing on the side), biscuits with hot honey (#HotHoney was very on trend), and marinated jackfruit for the #HealthyGirlies. The word organic was listed so frequently that it started to look fake to Chiara’s eyes.
Chiara ate her food and continued to read the menu over and over until one of the women next to her said, “Oh, hi, I didn’t see you there.”
Chiara smiled and replied in her best casual tone, “Oh, yeah. Just sat down.” A lie she hoped she could pull off.
The woman smiled back and pointed to the menu. “Can I see that?”
Chiara handed it to her. “Of course!”
The woman took the menu, said thank you, and then immediately turned back to her friends, leaving Chiara alone again.
Chiara finished her dinner quickly and was plotting her exit when the gong sounded again. The twinkle lights sped up as the overhead lights went down. Women everywhere started wooing and clapping.
And then Thea came up to the stage, her mere presence hushing the crowd like a magic spell.
Chiara almost gasped when she saw her. Thea was, in a word, magnetic. She had long, brunette tresses that country songs were written about. She was beautiful in a way that felt accessible, avoiding all the fake lashes and lip filler that plagued other Insta-images. When she smiled out at the crowd, Chiara felt like it was a smile just for her. Her warmth wasn’t a put-on. There was a reason why two hundred women had driven to the middle of nowhere for two days, and that reason was Thea. Chiara had spent hours poring over Thea’s Instagram feed, and then her Pinterest page, and then her website, all while listening to any podcast in which she had made a guest appearance. Chiara could recite her story from memory now: a forty-year-old mom of three who built an empire by making motherhood feel less lonely. Raised in Topanga Canyon, she spent her early twenties doing design work in Manhattan, and she was one of the first bloggers to catch a following in the aughts.
Chiara had devoured the backdated blog like it was a long-lost friend’s diary. She relished how natural and easy Thea’s life seemed as she changed and grew post by post. First, her nights out at Bungalow 8 (“Great grilled cheese!”) became nights in at her brownstone in Brooklyn (“I still miss Manhattan, though.”). Then a mid-century DIY renovation in Santa Monica was documented in charming detail (“California girls always come home.”). By the time she announced Baby #3 and their family moved to the country, she was a mommy-influencer powerhouse, and Chiara felt like she really knew her.
While their timelines had similarities, Chiara’s transition from teenage dirtbag to suburban mom had been rocky at best. So many missteps, so many regrets. There were full calendar years Chiara wished she could forget. Meanwhile, Thea’s growth was an organic progression that never felt forced. No awkward stages or terrible, universally hated boyfriends here. And her growth was always both personal and professional, with one informing the other, her internal yearnings feeding into her design work and coming out as a new way to see the world—or at least, a new way to see kitchen renovations. Whatever Thea posted was exactly what every white millennial mom wanted to wear, eat, be. Audrey Gelman might have put Millennial Pink all over the Wing, but it was Thea who first put plush dark-rose carpets in her bedroom. Posh and Becks named their daughter Harper after Thea did (her sons Finch and Radley came later). And even if someone remained unaware of Thea as a person, as Chiara had until recently, her love of kombucha, Cronuts, and Carrara marble reached far and wide. She’d even brought carnations back from the style dead.
But none of it—not even the Denny’s-style carnations she dyed herself—was bullshit. Thea liked it all way before any sponsor paid for a spot on her grid, and she genuinely wanted to share it with whoever cared to listen, regardless of personal financial gain. And that casual take it or leave it vibe meant that everyone wanted to listen. In fact, Chiara was shocked to see how much of Thea’s taste had already been present in her life. Millennial Pink–bath towels, kombucha in the fridge, and so much late-night googling for dupes of the expensive Italian marble she could maybe one day afford to put in her town house.
Chiara felt oddly breathless being in the same room as Thea. She had prepared to be let down when presented with the mere mortal. Instead, this grounded individual was even more inviting than the curated media images.
Thea stood behind a tasteful podium with a small microphone that had been artistically tucked into a floral arrangement. “Welcome, Mini Moms!” she said like she was seeing her oldest friends for the first time in years.
Every mother there let out her best “WOO!”
Thea put on a coy tone. “I think you know who I am . . .”
Two hundred voices yelled out, “THEA!”
Thea winked, which actually somehow impossibly worked when she did it. “That’s right! We have a great weekend planned. There are seminars on how to time the perfect family photo with fireworks, trend forecasting for #ToddlerMeals—can you say char-CUTE-erie? Plus, massages, facials, and wine tastings. #WineTime #MommyJuice.”
This was met with the loudest “WOO!” yet.
Thea went on. “But first, we need to meet a few of our new Mini Moms. These are the moms who really made a social media splash this year, and they need their flowers. When I say your name, stand up. First is Becky Ackerman. She’s a mom of six, living in Akron. Her top post is . . .”
Projected onto the screen behind Thea was Becky’s top Instagram post: a Boomerang of all six of her kids lined up in personalized “pots of gold.” A papier-mâché rainbow fluttered above their heads as the kids tossed out gold coins over and over and over.
This was met with a unanimous Awwwww from the crowd.
Thea touched her heart. “So cute! We still haven’t picked our holiday for next year’s CoMOMunity Summit. Maybe we should do Saint Patrick’s Day? A little luck of the mommies?”
“WOO!” (So many woos. Chiara wondered if the woos would haunt her dreams.)
Thea continued, “Next, we have Shannon Trapps. She has triplets—two girls, one boy. And her top post is . . .”
Projected onto the screen was a photo of Shannon and her husband crouched on a lake dock with their three kids between them. Their teeth were so white you could see them from space. Chiara squinted. Did that small child have veneers?
Thea read the caption: “Life with you is always an adventure. #TRIPLETrapps.”
More awwws.
“Follow that hashtag for daily joy, I am telling you. Next, we have Chiara Shaw, and her top post is . . .”
Projected onto the screen was Chiara’s selfie as she stood over the bathtub. Her sons had smashed multiple tiles around the shower. Her caption read “#GoodbyeDeposit! #ThankGodIMicrodosedToday.”
Chiara’s post was . . . nothing like the others. Seeing it up on the big screen only made the stark divide worse. Her life was messy, and not in a cute way. The lighting in the windowless bathroom gave her and the kids’ skin a grayish tinge. There was clearly a soap ring in the tub, with old bath crayon mixed in. The grout desperately needed a scrub.
It was . . . well, real life.
And apparently that was very bad.
A weird hush washed over the room.
Chiara felt every eye on her. The judgment was palpable, like a cold mist running down her back. Her eyes flitted around the room, and all she saw was a sea of derision, of whispers, of unmistakable anger.
Thea put on a gossipy tone. “Whose engagement numbers went down when this post hit the Explore page?” This was met with dead silence. Thea pressed a bit. “Come on, no need to be shy. If your engagement took a hit after this post went viral, put your hand up.”
More silence. Then . . . Thea put her own hand up. There was a gasp from the crowd. And then, slowly, everyone else’s hands went up.
“Oh yeah, it was this lady right here.” Thea looked down to make sure she got the name right. “Chiara Shaw! She took the Gram by storm that month! My numbers dropped, too, ladies. No shame.”
Chiara wished for a trapdoor to open beneath her chair so she could disappear from view. To be so judged, so singled out; to be mocked for her mothering—this was her hell.
Thea’s tone turned chipper. “Here’s what I’ve got to say, though. Social media is supposed to be just that: social. A way for us to connect! And real connection requires real vulnerability.” Thea looked directly into Chiara’s eyes. “Thanks for being real, Chiara. We moms all need that.”
Thea was 100 percent genuine, and it made all Chiara’s worries wash away. More than that, though, this comment from Thea seemed to act as a kind of blessing. Chiara could physically feel the other moms change their perception of her. She went from pariah to special in seconds flat, like a public opinion riptide that had happened to wash her ashore instead of out to sea.
“It’s not all perfect—am I right, moms?” Thea called out. “Plus, this sassy post caught the eye of Kristen Bell. Yeah. Big deal.”
The women around Chiara all murmured.
“Ahhhhhh!”
“She is so talented.”
“I love those refrigerator commercials she does with her husband.”
“WOO!”
(So. Many. Woos.)
Thea shifted gears, making it clear that the getting-to-know-you portion of the night was over. “And now for a fun surprise . . .”
Thea made a motion to Opal, who pressed a few things on her iPad. Suddenly, there was a chorus of alerts from every cell phone and Apple Watch in the room.
Thea beamed. “That’s right! Two hundred and fifty dollars off your next Target purchase from our sponsors!”
Every woman there went berserk.
In her best You Get a Car! Oprah impression, Thea called out, “Cupcake wine! Crest Whitestrips! Joanna Gaines. Yup! Two hundred and fifty dollars off for ALL of you!”
Chiara looked at her watch in disbelief. Two hundred and fifty dollars was a lot of money! Maybe between the dried apricots and this gift, she hadn’t made a mistake in coming here. And after Thea’s blessing, the moms on either side of her finally became aware of her existence.
The mom closest to her gushed, “Oh my God, I saw your post!”
The mom across from her nodded. “We didn’t recognize you all cleaned up!”
Chiara shrugged, making the internal decision to ignore the insult. “That’s me!” She put out her hand to shake theirs but just got a few limp waves back.
They opened their circle a bit, and Chiara leaned in to join. They were all named Emma, or Emily, or something else from a Jane Austen novel.
“We were just talking about school lunch,” the mom closest to Chiara said. “I have to get up at five a.m. to cut all the fruit.”
“Tell me about it!” a mom at the end of the table chimed in. “It’s like Jenga to get all the aluminum containers to fit back into her Bento-To-Go-Kiddo.”
“OMG, I love the Bento-To-Go-Kiddo!”
There was a chorus of “Me too,” and Chiara found herself joining in. She had no idea what they were talking about, but the urge to be part of it made her feel like she was possessed.
The mom closest to her asked, “Which bento style do your kids like, Chiara?”
Chiara’s mouth opened, but no words came out. She hadn’t anticipated follow-up questions! Finally, she mustered, “They like the blue one.”
There were some blank stares. Clearly she had answered incorrectly.
The mom said unconvincingly, “Nice.”
Chiara breathed a sigh of relief when their eyes moved on from her.
There was something that felt a little off to Chiara the longer she listened. Every woman spoke in these little canned sound bites that invited no questions or discussion. A Greek chorus each coming to deliver their moment of plot to the group. Even when they allegedly opened up and complained about their lives, it was also a brag.
“Well, Stellen just got this huge, huge, huge promotion at work—so unexpected—so he’s in Paris a lot now. Of course the forty-five percent increase in our budget is nice, but it’s hard to find a nanny who can be flexible with our travel schedule.”
Another mom commiserated. “Yes, it’s so hard to find nannies who speak French. And we spend every summer in Aix. What are we supposed to do?”
“At least you two still get to travel somewhere warm. Eddison is one of the top skiers in the country. I feel like my entire year is taking him from event to event. I miss the beach, you know?”
“The thing about a beach house, though—the landscaping has to be redone every year. Such a chore.”
Chiara couldn’t tell who this was for. Nothing felt real or honest. There was a thick layer of impenetrable social lacquer she couldn’t decipher. The only moment they seemed genuine was when they talked about Thea. How much they admired her, how much of an impact she’d had on them. They also all agreed that Chiara was lucky—so very lucky—because Thea knew who she was.
Chiara nodded and clutched her wineglass. “Yes, I am lucky.”
The dinner conversation changed topics quickly, from one surface problem to the next. Besides tossing a few cursory questions her way, the group mostly went back to talking among themselves, with Chiara being a quiet observer. This felt okay, though. She didn’t want the spotlight. The low-stakes chatter about who’d had the stomach bug versus who was doing a cleanse, and who was transferring from one private school to another was a balm to her exhausted social skills. She was delighted to have nothing to contribute to those hot topics and just be along for the ride. If she could be part of a mom group and not have to do much? Ideal. A toe back in the social waters was all she could do, but it felt like an accomplishment for night one.
A few hours later, as she walked through the fog to her little cabin, Chiara’s mind swirled with everything she had seen today. CoMOMunity was truly delivering. Sure, she felt awkward being out in the world again—and no, she didn’t think those moms at dinner were her new best friends forever. But Chiara was so starved for other adults that she would choose some personal discomfort if that was the price for socializing with other moms. Of course, being away from her children felt like having a phantom limb; she kept reaching out to see if she could feel them bobbing around her knees. The combination of relief and guilt when their chubby hands weren’t there to take hers was heady. She couldn’t tell whether she felt like she had been away from them for ten years or ten seconds. She never wanted to go home, and she was desperate to see their little faces again. How both things were true, she didn’t quite know.
Missing her babies felt so sweet that she decided to savor it so she could remember this feeling the next time she needed to say, “We are in it.”
After entering her quiet cabin, Chiara collapsed onto a bed that someone else had made and fell into a sleep so deep not even her postpartum anxiety could disturb her.
