In Twenty Years: A Novel Read Free Page A

euphoria (and her very lean biceps and really cute bikini) from their weekend spent in the Hamptons. She settles on one that makes the ocean much bluer than it actually was that day, but the bluer the ocean, the better the picture! And the better the picture, the happier they seem.
    So she uploads it and then almost immediately regrets her choice—maybe she should have included a shot with Baxter to show off his handsomeness, his wavy chestnut hair, his eyes that match the sea, their triangular, perfect threesome—but it’s too late now; she already posted it, and besides, he hates her obsession with social media, hates it when she uploads photos of him without his permission.
    It’s not professional! he says. My clients can see them!
    Annie attempted to sway him a few months back while she was pressing Hershey Kisses into the center of heart-shaped cookie cutouts for one of Gus’s school bake sales, but Baxter had already dismissed the notion, returning his attention to his own phone, his oxfords clicking on the marble floor as he headed back toward his home office.
    It was hardly the worst of his dismissals; hardly, also, the worst of hers.
    She’d started up with the pills after Gus was born, gulping them like they were jelly beans, the better to ease her postpartum depression, and then simply to ease, well, everything. So when she discovered that Baxter was seeking refuge, seeking affection elsewhere, she couldn’t blame him. Or at least, she didn’t blame him. She’d only discovered his indiscretions in a fit of paranoia, scrolling through his texts while he showered, and since she shouldn’t have been spying on him in the first place, she never quite worked out how to point fingers. She didn’t have the spine to dig too deeply into his old texts, more-than-likely-guilty e-mails; she wasn’t the type of wife who chased bad news with more bad news. So it was what it was. She was who she was. He was who he was. That was that.
    He still took care of her, after all; he still offered her more than she’d have without him: the Upper East Side apartment, the tuition for Gus’s tony private school, the occasional dinner companion, and access to charity galas and theater and all sorts of interesting people who would never deem her worthy without him.
    Sometimes it was simply better not to know, not to investigate too deeply into betrayal.
    She’d mostly forgotten about the affair. Made her peace with it. Her pills helped, had a way of blunting the pain, distorting the truth of it. Then, on Valentine’s Day four years back, something shifted. Baxter clutched her wrist over dinner at Gramercy Tavern, then nudged a Cartier box around the candles and wineglasses. A diamond necklace. Her eyes welled, and his did too. Annie had read enough posts on CitiMama to know that unexpected generosity from a spouse often correlated with an affair (or the end of one), so she scrolled through his texts again that night while he slept, and indeed, he’d ended it on New Year’s Eve, while they vacationed in Aspen.
    And thus, right there and then on Valentine’s night, Annie rose in the darkness of their bedroom, stumbled to the white-tiled master bath, and flushed the Klonopin, the Xanax, and the remaining Percocet she hoarded, for good. Once and for all. Really, this time.
    Baxter never knew about the pills. Or at least she didn’t think he did.
    Instead, in the years ensuing, Annie found other ways to quell her anxiety, her dissatisfaction, her guilt. Like Instagram. Or volunteering for the PTA once Gus hit kindergarten. (The all-boys private school Baxter had attended: they wore jackets and ties, which were just adorable. Annie incessantly captured shots of Gus on the way to school. It was too cute not to.) Or developing her long, lean biceps, which she liked to display on Facebook.
    Slowly they found their way back to each other. Or at least as close to that as they ever had. Two years ago, Baxter’s father keeled over on the