Page 6 of Seven Days in June

She had literally tripped over him in the lobby of Mount Sinai Hospital. Troy had been a volunteer, sketching portraits for patients. She’d realized she liked him when she scrambled to hide the IV bruises on her arms (as a result of her weeklong stay upstairs). After six weeks of rom-com-cute dates, they wed in city hall. Audre was born seven months later. But by then, they’d unraveled. The girl Troy had fallen for, the one who could sustain bubbly spontaneity on dates and lusty sleepovers, was different at home. Dazed from pain and pills. And soon her illness overwhelmed Troy’s life—killing patience, choking love.

Troy belonged to the Church of Just Think Good Thoughts. Despite watching Eva suffer—the nights she’d repeatedly smash her forehead against the headboard in her sleep, or the time she fainted into a2Fast, 2 Furiousdisplay at Blockbuster—he believed the real issue was her outlook. Couldn’t she meditate it away? Send positive energy into the universe? (This always baffled Eva. The universewhere? Could he provide cross streets? Would someone greet the positive energy when it landed, and would the greeter be Lena Horne’s Glinda inThe Wizlike she imagined?)

Once, after a late night at Pixar, Troy climbed into bed next to his fetal-positioned wife. She’d just given herself a Toradol injection in the thigh, and a little blood had leaked through her Band-Aid onto their dove-gray sheets. Moving was excruciating, so Eva just lay in it. Through slitted eyes, she saw revulsion, and just beneath it, martyrdom.

She was gross. Cute girls weren’t supposed to be gross. Quietly, Troy snuck out and slept on the couch—and never returned to their bed. In their one couples’-counseling session, he admitted the truth.

“I wanted a wife,” he wept. “Not a patient.”

Troy was too polite to end it. So Eva liberated him. Audre was nineteen months old; she was twenty-two.

Troy went on to be blissfully happy with his second wife, a yogi named Athena Marigold. They used words like “paleo” and “artisanal” and lived in Santa Monica, where Audre spent her summers. Next Sunday, she was flying out to “Dadifornia” (the name Audre gave her West Coast trips), where Troy excelled as a carefree summertime dad.

But tricky stuff? Analmost mansneaking into his baby’s room? Not his territory.

Eva staggered to her couch. She’d never been able to think clearly with jeans on, so she wriggled out of them. Sitting there in Wonder Woman panties, she googledTWEEN DISCIPLINE TIPSon her phone. The top article suggested a “behavior contract.” She had neither the legal prowess nor the energy to draw up a contract! Huffing, she tossed her phone aside and clicked on the Apple TV. When life got too challenging, she watchedInsecure.

“Mommy?”

She looked up, and there was Audre, framed by a 120-year-old arched entryway. Her face was puffy and tear streaked. She’d added a black shawl and oversized Ray-Bans to her outfit.

Eva tried to look stern. Tough work without pants.

“Audre, what are you wearing?”

“This is my Upscale Sadness outfit.”

“Nailed it,” Eva admitted.

Audre cleared her throat. “Therapy is my calling. But I should’ve closed my practice when you told me to. I’m sorry for that and for having Coco-Jean’s brother over. Though it’s heterotypical of you to assume that just ’cause he’s a boy we’re being…weird.”

Heterotypical.Brooklyn private schools produced ultra-progressive students. They protested abortion bans and marched for gun control. Last month, Audre’s seventh-grade class carried buckets of water two miles across Prospect Park to empathize with the plight of sub-Saharan women.

The upside? A top-notch liberal education. The downside? Kids who struggled to divide decimals or name a state capital.

“Honey, can you give me a sec?” Eva sighed, shutting her eyes. “I just need to think.”

Audre knew that “think” meant “rest her head,” and she sulked back into her room. Watching her through one open eye, Eva felt a wistful pang. Audre had been the dreamiest, most delightful kid. Now she was an eye roll shaped like a human. Thirteen was coming, and who knew what horrors it’d bring? She’d sneak out, or learn to lie, or discover weed. Not Eva’s, though, which was well hidden in her dildo drawer.

Just then, her phone buzzed. It was Cece Sinclair, Eva’s best friend and Parker + Rowe Publishing’s most celebrated book editor.

Eva answered with a tortured “Whaaaaat?”

“You’re alive!”

“According to my Fitbit, I’ve been deceased for weeks.”

“You’re in there. I hear Issa Rae through the phone. I’m outside—I’ll let myself in.”

Cece swept through the door seconds later. She was overwhelming in every way—six feet tall, creamy cocoa skin, bleached-blond coils. A product of Spelman, Vineyard summers, and white-gloved cotillions with Talented Tenth debs, she dressed exclusively in vintage Halston and always appeared to have leapt off a 1978Voguecover. Or at least to be someone who knew Pat Cleveland.

She did, actually. Cece knew everyone. At forty-five, she’d long been one of the industry’s most notorious editors, but her unofficial title was Social Queen of Black Literati. She collected authors, nurtured them, and whispered plot advice over cocktails—and her membership-only book/art/film-world parties were legendary. Eva had quickly discovered all of this after she’d won the short-story contest and Cece had become her editor.

During their introductory lunch on the Princeton campus, Cece took one look at the teen’s “haunted doe eyes and chaotic coffee-shop-poetess curls” (a description she oft repeated), and her soul screamed,Project!

Before Eva knew it, she had a doting big sister. Cece helped her move to Brooklyn, quit her vices, and learn the art of curl maintenance—and introduced her to a social circle of happening young writers.

Cece was bossy as hell, but she’d earned it. There’d be no Eva without her.

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