The Starter Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer

was no schmooze factor at the school—for example, if the parents were mostly in finance rather than entertainment—well, then, Kenny couldn’t be bothered.
    Tiny Miracles’ schmooze factor was off the charts. In Jaden’s class alone, there was an Oscar-winning director’s child, an action-producer’s child, and most important, a movie star’s child. Who did Jaden prefer to hang out with? The scholarship child, the daughter of a local housekeeper. Gracie called it Divine Social Justice; Kenny called it annoying and grumbled at every check they wrote out to Tiny Miracles, as though the schmooze factor should have made the tuition tax deductible.
    So there Gracie was, performing her motherly duties with one other mother and thirteen nannies, even though her world was crumbling around her like an Irwin Allen movie.
    And now, she had run into the rumor-mill generator, Patient Zero of The Gossip Pool.
    “Is what true?” Gracie asked Sharon. “Are you talking about global warming? Or the brave new direction of the Democratic Party?”
    Sharon Adler was also known as The Local National Enquirer.Having a conversation with her was like looking at the cellulite-ridden celebrity photographs inside the
Star
—you were just happy the story wasn’t about you.
    But this time it was.
    Sharon focused on her, and Gracie suddenly felt a familial empathy toward shark bait. “Cricket told me,” she said. “I can’t believe it—I heard Julia Roberts left her husband for Kenny.”
    “That’s ridiculous. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gracie said. But Sharon the Great White smelled blood in the water, so Gracie added, “Kenny and I are just taking a little break.”
    What she really wanted to say was: “Kenny and I are just taking a little break of his neck.”
    Gracie looked at her daughter, finishing up a sand pie in the crowded sandbox. Gracie wondered what the real estate market was like in Costa Rica. She wondered what the food was like in Costa Rica. She wondered what the men were like in Costa Rica.
    “Jaden doesn’t know anything,” Gracie admitted, “so I appreciate you keeping this quiet.”
    “You know I’d never say anything to anyone,” Sharon replied.
    “I know,” Gracie lied back.
    “Someone said Kenny was gay. Is he gay?” Sharon asked.
    “Sharon!” Gracie said. And then she thought for a moment.
    “Actually,” Gracie said. And then she didn’t say anything. But she posed a philosophical question in her mind: If a lie falls in a preschool sandbox without making a noise, is it really a lie?
    “Y OU ARE A bitter, hateful, pathetic—” Kenny was calling Gracie on her cell phone. Gracie was heading back to the house from Whole Foods, an upscale, organic-enough-to-feel-good-about-yourselfgrocery store she was now drawn to on a daily basis.
    Whole Foods had become Gracie’s crack.
    “And hello to you, my young friend,” Gracie said. She realized, as she swallowed the remainder of a yogurt pretzel, that she’d forgotten her thrice-weekly training session.
    “Did you tell Sharon Adler that I was gay?” he said in his best demanding studio-exec tone.
    “No.”
    “You didn’t say I was gay.”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “She told Ben that you said I was gay.”
    “I don’t know how she would have picked that up,” Gracie said, “unless …”
    She dipped her hand back into the yogurt pretzel bag. She reminded herself to call her trainer.
    “You are a sad, sad person.”
    “Actually, I’m feeling a bit better, thanks for asking.”
    He hung up on her.
    The truth is, Gracie was crushed. She didn’t know why, but somehow, talking to Kenny was better than not talking to him. Even if they were unhappy together, even if they rarely had intimate conversations anymore, much less sex. Gracie didn’t know her life without Kenny.
    Gracie would have to learn.
    She ate the rest of her pretzel, washed it down with the protein smoothie that tasted suspiciously (and gloriously) like a