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of the time when Adam showed up to get the kids, or Kit drove over to his house to drop them off, it was like being with a stranger. There was something so familiar about him, and yet they were so stiff with one another, so awkward, she sometimes got out the wedding album and flicked through, just to check that she actually did marry him, that it wasn’t just a figment of her imagination.
    For a long time, Adam appeared to be furious with her, and during the divorce negotiations it was fair to say they pretty much hated one another, but as soon as the divorce was finalized it seemed they both started to heal.
    And now, a year on, there are times when Kit realizes they can be friends. Times too when she wonders whether things could have turned out differently, whether there was an opportunity they didn’t take, therapy perhaps, couples’ counseling, something that could have brought them back to one another before it was too late.
    She still remembers, so clearly, how she met him, on the Fourth of July in 1991, at a party in Concord.
     
    She noticed him as soon as he walked in, nudged her girlfriends and pointed out the cute stranger who had entered with a guy they’d all been at school with.
    “Hey,” Samantha, one of her bolder friends called over. “Who’s the new cutie? ”
    “This is my cousin Adam,” he said. “He’s from Connecticut.”
    “Hey, Adam from Connecticut,” Samantha said, all big eyes and flirtatious smiles. “I’m Samantha from Concord.”
    “Hey,” he said, then turned his gaze to Kit. “Who are you?”
    “Kit from Concord,” she said, and she blushed, looking away quickly so he wouldn’t see. He saw.
    The rest of the night passed in a blur of drinking, laughing and dancing. As did the rest of that summer. At twenty-three, Kit was mostly interested in having fun, and Adam made her laugh more than anyone she’d ever met.
    At the end of the summer he invited her to Connecticut to stay with him, and during her trip she rang her mother and told her where she was, and Ginny demanded they both come into the city and have lunch with her.
    She sent a car for them, and positively swooned when she met Adam. Kit tried to tell herself it didn’t matter, but now, all these years older and with the hindsight that comes with age, she realizes she phoned her mother because she wanted her approval, and Ginny quite clearly approved of this good-looking graduate of Harvard Business School who was evidently going to be a success.
    Could it have been that simple, Kit sometimes wonders. I married him to please my mother? She tries not to dwell on the answer.
    Almost immediately, once the partying and drinking stopped and they settled into being newlyweds, Kit had a horrible feeling that she had done the wrong thing. Sure, he still made her laugh, and sure, they still had fun, but now that the excitement of planning a wedding had passed, now that they were just getting on with life, they really didn’t have much to talk about at all, didn’t, in fact, seem to have anything in common.
    Adam was climbing the corporate ladder, and Kit was happy to just stay at home, more so when she found she was pregnant with Tory. She wasn’t interested in any kind of social climbing, had had quite enough of that with her mother, thank you very much, and much of the time when Kit said she couldn’t attend a function in the city—pregnancy was an extraordinarily useful excuse, particularly when she invented a morning sickness she didn’t actually have—Ginny turned out to be a wonderful and gracious partner for Adam.
    Everyone was happy.
    Except perhaps Kit. But she tried not to think about it. Tried to focus on all that was good, and who, after all, wouldn’t want what she had? A charming husband who all her friends adored, an impressive house, a beautiful daughter. How could she possibly expect more? What right did she have to feel there was something missing? How selfish to even dwell on that for a second.
    So