Memories of all the tennis lessons and tennis camps they’d paid for Phoebe to attend over the years piled up inside her head. Six years earlier, the coach at the athletic club had pulled Amy aside after Phoebe’s second lesson and explained with a sparkle in his eyes that Phoebe had natural talent. Amy and Scott had latched onto the dream. Invested in it. Honed it. Amy hoped, one day, Phoebe might even get a college scholarship. She wondered how much they’d spent. It would have been enough for a year’s worth of mortgage payments, at least. Or to pay for several months of her own mother’s care in the nursing home.
Phoebe narrowed her eyes at her mom, her lower lip quivering. “It’s not your decision.”
Amy’s feet felt as if they’d sunk into the ground, the simultaneous urge to both hug and slap her daughter overtaking her. The landscape seemed to spin around her, like water circling the drain.
She reached for the phone in her pocket. Her initial impulse was to call Scott and join forces. Old patterns were hard to break, and sometimes, for a minute or two, she forgot they were divorced. When her reality came hurtling back toward her, she remembered that she didn’t need Scott’s guidance. Still, she wondered how much of Phoebe’s plan, if any, he already knew.
Amy yanked off her gloves and picked at her nail. Phoebe’s rash decision was yet another piece of fallout from the divorce. She silently acknowledged that she and Scott could have done a better job of not arguing in front of their kids. She shouldn’t have thrown that plate at Scott’s head—definitely not with the kids in the room—but that was almost a year ago. She’d made a mistake, but she refused to take all the blame for Phoebe’s turn in behavior. Scott had been the one who’d had an affair. He’d been the one who’d betrayed them all. Besides, her aim had been bad, and the plate had shattered against the wall, not against his face. Any wife and mother might have reacted the same.
Amy refocused on her daughter, gulping back the surge of hot emotion that rose up from her chest. She hardened her voice. “I can fix this. I’ll call Coach Mallory. I’m sure we can get this worked out. We’ll say you made a mistake. That you didn’t discuss it with me.”
Phoebe jutted out her chin. “No, Mom. I’m done with tennis. I don’t like it anymore.”
“But you’ve always loved tennis.”
“Things change.” The girl stared daggers toward her mother. “You and Dad should know that.”
Amy stood motionless, feeling as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Phoebe fixed her eyes straight ahead, marching around the front walkway toward the open garage. A few seconds later, a door slammed in the distance.
Tears formed in her eyes. How had she missed this? How had she not known that her daughter had lost interest in a sport she’d worked at for years? Now that Amy thought about it, Phoebe had seemed different lately. Even more detached. Even more sullen. Still, she hadn’t considered Phoebe’s behavior anything too out of the ordinary for a teenage girl whose parents had just been through an ugly divorce. She’d give anything to get back the happy girl who’d bounced around as if she had springs attached to the bottoms of her shoes, who was quick to offer a smile to small children and strangers, whose determination and hard work had earned her straight As throughout her first two years of high school.
She remembered Ethan, the tall, scrawny boy who Phoebe had hung around with during the second half of the last school year. He’d been a swimmer with matted hair who always smelled of chlorine, but he’d been so polite and funny. He’d disappeared from Phoebe’s life over the summer, along with most of her friends. Amy had been so wrapped up in her own emotional despair that she’d neglected her daughter’s struggles.
Amy’s eyes traveled to the Cape Cod across the street where Phoebe’s former best friend, Simone Jana, lived. She and Phoebe had grown up together, had worked their way up the ranks of the tennis team side by side and slept over at each other’s houses, giggles seeping from under the bedroom door late into the night. They’d had some kind of falling out over the summer. Simone and the rest of the crew—Dawn, McKenzie, and Grace—had abandoned Phoebe. Amy had no idea why.
For as many years as Amy had lived here, she often felt like an outsider herself. Unlike the high-achieving women surrounding her who held multiple advanced degrees and ran two nonprofits on the side, Amy’s sociology degree had gone unused. Instead, she’d chosen to support Scott’s real estate empire. They’d saved their pennies and started buying dilapidated rentals close to campus, fixing them up and renting them out. She’d made more money working odd hours as a realtor leasing out apartments to college and graduate students and keeping the books than she would have with her sociology degree.
Twenty-five years later, Granger Rentals owned the largest bulk of off-campus student housing in the city, complete with five full-time property managers. The divorce agreement had forced Amy out of the business she’d helped build, just as she’d been forced out of her marriage and replaced with a younger model, but she’d fought to keep ten percent ownership in Granger Rentals, plus five years of child support and alimony. And the house.
A smooth motor hummed around the bend and slowed. Simone’s mom, Nicolette, lowered the window of her Volvo as she stopped short of the driveway across the street. The Janas’ house looked like it was ripped from the pages of a magazine—windows shining beneath the solar-paneled roof, the native plantings out front bending in the breeze. Nicolette was head of psychology at the university and her husband, Amar, was a surgeon. No money had been spared.
Amy blinked away the moisture in her eyes and realized she was standing in the middle of the front yard with yellow gardening gloves dangling from her fingers. She waved toward the Volvo and pushed her feet forward.
Nicolette tipped her head through the open window. “Hi, Amy.”
Amy pressed her lips into a smile. “Hi.”
“Are you getting back into the school routine?”
“Yes. How about you?”
“Yeah.” Her neighbor propped her dark, glossy sunglasses on top of her equally dark, glossy hair. Her large hoop earrings reflected in the sun as her eyebrows furrowed. “I heard Phoebe quit the tennis team. Is everything okay?”
Amy’s breath rushed from her lungs. She folded the gloves into thirds and pressed them between her sticky hands. “She says she’s not that interested in tennis anymore.”
Nicolette peered at her, her stoic and unwavering eyes always making Amy feel as if she was assessing her for some sort of psychology experiment.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Nicolette said. “She’s an excellent player.”
Amy balled the gloves into a lump and crossed her arms.
Nicolette rummaged through her center console then thrust a white card out the window. “You know, it might help Phoebe to talk to someone about her feelings. I have several colleagues at the clinic who could help. The same goes for you. You’ve just been through so much this past year.”
Amy nodded. “Thank you, but we’re fine.”
Nicolette waved the card up and down. “Just take the card in case you change your mind.”
Amy took it, reading the words University Family Clinic before shoving the card in her pocket. This wasn’t the first time Nicolette had tried to convince her to visit the clinic. Her psychologist neighbor had witnessed the toll the divorce had taken on her, but Amy was determined to climb this mountain on her own, and Phoebe could do it too. What Phoebe really needed right now was a friend.