PROLOGUE
Eliza Hunt had always been a fan of the sisterhood. It was the reason she became a Girl Scout—well, that and the Thin Mints—and why she joined the women’s chorus in high school even though she couldn’t carry a tune. It was her impetus for pledging a sorority in college when frat boys made her nervous, and why she worked at a female-run marketing firm after graduation. Eliza was completely happy to be traveling through life in the company of her girlfriends, until one fateful night across a Greenwich Village bar, when the boyfriend that she wasn’t even looking for appeared.
Eliza and Luke were engaged within the year, married in the next, and pregnant with twins shortly thereafter. Soon, the Hunt family of four moved into the house Eliza had grown up in, a traditional Colonial in Hudson Valley, New York, where they quickly settled in for their happily ever after. Or so she thought. It wasn’t long before Eliza found herself longing for the safety net of female friendship. She missed the camaraderie, support, candor, advice, laughs, drama, and encouragement that one gets from being in the company of other women. Eliza missed the sisterhood.
She joined a mommy-and-me group, started playing round-robin tennis, and spent a lot of time at the local playground, but these interactions all left her longing for more. When she came up short, she set out to create a solution of her own. Inspired by the traditional bulletin boards at the library and supermarket, Eliza took the concept of posting things into the twenty-first century, creating an online source for exchange and support that, like most modern resources, can be carried around all day, right in your pocket. She named it the Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board.
Creating and moderating the bulletin board immediately felt like a gift to Eliza—just what had been missing in her life. After the local newspaper ran a piece featuring her and the bulletin board, its membership quadrupled.
It turned out that the ladies of Hudson Valley weren’t alone in their digital love affair. The newspaper reported that women in communities from Manhattan to Mumbai were also banding together online to commiserate over their pelvic floors, the glass ceiling, and everything in between. What began with sharing recipes and doctor recommendations morphed into an electronic soapbox where women could shout their innermost truths and fears from computer-generated rooftops. Children, careers, fashion, love, orgasms, money, and men were all fair topics for endless, lay-it-on-the-line discussions. Women holding one another’s virtual hands through the joys, the frustrations, and the traumas of life. It was a tale as old as time, from the biblical menstrual tent to the quilting circle to these modern online hives—female bonds help solidify happiness.
And Eliza was happy—for a very long time. The article featured a photo of her leaning against her desk, looking smart but casual in a crisp white blouse, pencil jeans, and ballet flats. Twelve years later, it still sat in a frame beside her computer. The last time that she looked at it she had cringed. She barely recognized the smiling, fresh-faced woman in the photo. She was quite surprised that no one wondered where that woman had gone.
CHAPTER 1
Eliza Hunt
Eliza Hunt sat in the parking lot of her local Stop & Shop. Her neck was soaked in sweat, her hands trembling uncontrollably. It wouldn’t be long before she’d have no choice but to curl up in a ball on the front seat of her car and give up.
She looked at the curved bold font of the familiar bright purple sign and read it out loud: “STOP & SHOP.” Such simple instructions, yet she felt as if her body were weighted to the front seat of her car, pinned down by fear.
She refocused and tried talking herself out of the car: “Eliza. The twins are coming home from college for the long weekend. You need to walk across the parking lot and buy food for them.”
Nothing.
She had already attempted to will the panic away with calm breaths in and out, in and out, a method she had learned from the psychiatrist who treated her during her first bout with agoraphobia some thirty years earlier. It hadn’t helped then, either. She pried her feet out of her sneakers, peeled off her sweat socks, and shoved them under her now-drenched underarms. Thankfully, the sweat socks lived up to their name. How did I get here? she asked herself. She knew the answer, but as per usual, she didn’t have the strength to address it. She stared out at the familiar market she had been in a thousand times and yelled, “Get out of the damn car, Eliza!”
Still nothing; the fear was mounting, not retreating.
At this point in her life, Eliza knew the Stop & Shop so well that she could direct someone to aisle nine for beverages and aisle five for Preparation H as deftly as the store manager could. She knew that if she could just get midway down aisle four to her old friend, a box of chocolate-covered Entenmann’s donuts, she could ingest enough sugar, and derive enough comfort, to hold the panic at bay for the duration of her shopping. Growing up, she had kept a similar box under her bed, hidden from her mother, who didn’t allow sweets in the house. Whether she was suffering from anxiety, rebelling, or just looking for a remedy for the teenage blahs, they always did the trick.
Eliza closed her eyes and pictured the familiar blue-and-white box, with the clear window on top, visualized herself opening the side tabs and scoffing down one, or two, or four. She imagined her first bite—the distinct segue from the hard chocolate shell to the soft, vanilla cakey inside, channeling her mind and spirit into the exquisite sense of anticipation.
“Focus. Focus on the donut, Eliza.”
Before she knew it, she was out of the car and standing in aisle four, three donuts in. They had the desired effect, and she took a few deep breaths to seal the deal. She pulled the socks out from under her armpits, threw them in her purse, and yanked out her shopping list. She was good to go.
Half an hour later, with her cart overflowing, Eliza stepped in line at the checkout counter. There she was instantly distracted from her fear of exiting the store by a lively conversation between two young mothers ahead of her. One, who had a baby strapped to her chest, was helping the other, who had an unruly toddler strapped in the seat of the cart, unload her groceries. As the toddler’s mother placed one item on the belt, the toddler took another off and threw it back into the cart. It was entertaining, and Eliza was in no rush to go back outside.
The mother of the baby said, “I was up all night reading that epic thread on the local chat group. Did you see it?”
“Of course I saw it. It was like a train wreck.”
“I just don’t understand how these women spill everything. I mean, ‘My husband has erectile dysfunction, please help’?”
“At least she wrote that anonymously. All those women who answered with their expert advice, you can only imagine that their husbands have issues in that department as well. I mean, my God, my husband would kill me.”
They both laughed. Eliza did not. She found their conversation very alarming. Eliza reviewed and approved every post that went on the Hudson Valley Ladies’ Bulletin Board, and the one that these two were discussing was unfamiliar to her. She redirected her anxiety and butt right into the women’s conversation.