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  It struck me, now, as I sat on the floor of Aubuchon Hardware, with a flamenco fan of color chips in my hand, that I had never been back to Newburyport since then. Charlotte and I had talked about it, but she hadn't wanted to commit to renting a house not knowing if you'd be in a cast that following summer. Maybe Emma and Rob and I would go down there next summer.

  But I wouldn't go, I knew that. I really didn't want to, without Charlotte.

  I took a quart of paint off the shelf and walked to the mixing station at the end of the aisle. 'Newburyport Blue, please,' I said, although I did not have a particular wall in mind to paint it on yet. I'd keep it in the basement, just in case.

  It was dark by the time I left Aubuchon Hardware, and when I got back home, Rob was washing plates and putting them into the dishwasher. He didn't even look at me when I walked into the kitchen, which is why I knew he was furious. 'Just say it,' I said.

  He turned off the faucet and slammed the door of the dishwasher into place. 'Where the hell have you been?'

  'I . . . I lost track of time. I was at the hardware store.'

  'Again? What could you possibly need there?'

  I sank down into a chair. 'I don't know, Rob. It's just the place that makes me feel good right now.'

  'You know what would make me feel good?' he said. 'A wife.'

  'Wow, Rob, I didn't think you'd ever go all Ricky Ricardo on me--'

  'Did you forget something today?'

  I stared at him. 'Not that I know of.'

  'Emma was waiting for you to drive her to the rink.'

  I closed my eyes. Skating. The new session had started; I was supposed to sign her up for private lessons so that she could compete this spring - something her last coach finally felt she was ready for. It was first come, first served; this might have blown her chance for the season. 'I'll make it up to her--'

  'You don't have to, because she called, hysterical, and I left the office to get her down there in time.' He sat down across from me, tilting his head. 'What do you do all day, Piper?'

  I wanted to point out to him the new tile floor in the mudroom, the fixture I'd rewired over this very table. But instead I looked down at my hands. 'I don't know,' I whispered. 'I really don't know.'

  'You have to get your life back. If you don't, she's already won.'

  'You don't know what this is like--'

  'I don't? I'm not a doctor, too? I don't carry malpractice insurance?'

  'That's not what I mean and you--'

  'I saw Amelia today.'

  I stared at him. 'Amelia?'

  'She came to the office to get her braces off.'

  'There's no way Charlotte would have--'

  'Hell hath no fury like a teenager who wants her orthodontia removed,' Rob said. 'I'm ninety-nine percent sure Charlotte had no idea she was there.'

  I felt heat rise to my face. 'Don't you think people might wonder why you're treating the daughter of the woman who's suing us?'

  'You,' he corrected. 'She's suing you.'

  I reeled backward. 'I can't believe you just said that.'

  'And I can't believe you'd expect me to throw Amelia out of the office.'

  'Well, you know what, Rob? You should have. You're my husband.'

  Rob got to his feet. 'And she's a patient. And that's my job. Something, unlike you, that I give a damn about.'

  He stalked out of the kitchen, and I rubbed my temples. I felt like a plane in a holding pattern, making the turns with the airport in view and no clearance to land. In that moment, I resented Charlotte so much that it felt like a river stone in my belly, solid and cold. Rob was right - everything I was, everything I'd been - had been put on a shelf because of what Charlotte had done to me.

  And in that instant I realized that Charlotte and I still had something in common: she felt exactly the same way about what I'd done to her.

  The next morning, I was determined to change. I set my alarm, and instead of sleeping past the school bus pickup, I made Emma French toast and bacon for breakfast. I told a wary Rob to have a nice day. Instead of renovating the house, I cleaned it. I went grocery shopping - although I drove to a town thirty miles away, where I wouldn't run into anyone familiar. I met Emma at school with her skating bag. 'You're taking me to the rink?' she said when she saw me.

  'Is that a problem?'

  'I guess not,' Emma said, and after a moment's hesitation, she launched into a diatribe about how unfair it was for the teacher to give an algebra test when he knew he was going to be absent that day and couldn't answer last-minute questions.

  I've missed this, I thought. I've missed Emma. I reached across the seat and smoothed my hand over her hair.

  'What's up with that?'

  'I just really love you. That's all.'

  Emma raised a brow. 'Okay, now you're skeeving me out. You aren't going to tell me you have cancer or something, are you?'

  'No, I just know I haven't exactly been . . . present . . . lately. And I'm sorry.'

  We were at a red light, and she faced me. 'Charlotte's a bitch,' she said, and I didn't even tell her to watch her language. 'Everybody knows the whole Willow thing isn't your fault.'

  'Everybody?'

  'Well,' she said. 'Me.'

  That's good enough, I realized.

  A few minutes later, we arrived at the skating rink. Red-cheeked boys dribbled out of the main glass doors, their enormous hockey bags turtled onto their backs. It always had seemed so funny to me, the dichotomy between the coltish figure skaters and the lupine hockey players.

  The minute I walked inside I realized what I'd forgotten - no, not forgotten, just blocked entirely from my mind: Amelia would be here, too.

  She looked so different from the last time I'd seen her - dressed in black, with fingerless gloves and tattered jeans and combat boots - and that blue hair. And she was arguing heatedly with Charlotte. 'I don't care who hears,' she said. 'I told you I don't want to skate anymore.'

  Emma grabbed my arm. 'Just go,' she said under her breath.

  But it was too late. We were a small town and this was a big story; the entire room, girls and their mothers, was waiting to see what would happen. And you, sitting on the bench beside Amelia's bag, noticed me, too.

  You had a cast on your right arm. How had you broken it this time? Four months ago, I would have known all the details.

  Well, unlike Charlotte, I had no intention of airing my dirty laundry in public. I drew in my breath and pulled Emma closer, dragging her into the locker room. 'Okay,' I said, pushing my hair out of my eyes. 'So, you do this private lesson thing for how long? An hour?'

  'Mom.'

  'I may just run out and pick up the dry cleaning, instead of hanging around to watch--'

  'Mom.' Emma reached for my hand, as if she were still little. 'You weren't the one who started this.'

  I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything else. Here is what I had expected from my best friend: honesty. If she had spent the past six years of your life harboring the belief that I'd done something grievously wrong during her pregnancy, why didn't she ever bring it up? Why didn't she ever say, Hey, how come you didn't . . .? Maybe I was naive to think that silence was implicit complacence, instead of a festering question. Maybe I was silly to believe that friends owed each other anything. But I did. Like, for starters, an explanation.

  Emma finished lacing up her skates and hurried onto the ice. I waited a moment, then pushed out the locker room door and stood in front of the curved Plexiglas barrier. At one end of the rink was a tangle of beginners - a centipede of children in their snow pants and bicycle helmets, their legs widening triangles. When one went down, so did the others: dominoes. It wasn't so long ago that this had been Emma, and yet here she was on the other end of the rink, executing a sit-spin as her teacher skated around her, calling out corrections.

  I couldn't see Amelia - or you or Charlotte for that matter - anywhere.

  My pulse was almost back to normal by the time I reached my car. I slid into th