If You Only Knew. Kristan Higgins

pray that we were—but we weren’t. It wasn’t like that. But he’s kind and nice and funny and comfortable as flannel pajamas. In addition to being my oldest friend, he’s Adam’s coworker at Brewster, Buckley and Bowman, or Triple B, as they call it.

      So I’m not about to gossip behind his back.

      “You guys talking about Jared?” Claudia calls from the other side of the pool, unfettered by loyalty.

      “Yes,” Elle says at the same time I say no. Grace yanks on my hand again, and Elle tows Hunter through the water to Claudia’s side of the pool for a better gossip partner.

      In the changing room as I wrestle my damp daughters back into their little dresses, Elle strips off her suit to make sure everyone—including the kids—is treated to a view of her new breasts. Claudia rolls her eyes, and I smile back. Personally, I thought the “before” pair was more attractive, but Elle insisted that Hunter had ruined her body.

      The body looks pretty great to me.

      She has a bikini wax.

      So did the woman in the picture.

      In fact, Elle’s body is pretty damn perfect. No stretch marks… She had a C-section two weeks before her due date. The Hollywood, she called it. The scar is barely visible. Her ass is round and high, her stomach perfectly toned.

      I’m suddenly cold.

      Is it possible that Elle sent the picture?

      “Mommy, wrong foot, wrong foot, wrong foot!” Rose yells cheerfully. She loves the echo in here. She’s right, though. I switch feet and have better luck getting her little sneaker on.

      Adam doesn’t even like Elle. Says she’s a climber. But maybe he does like her. I don’t know why I’m thinking about it. That picture was sent by mistake.

      My stomach doesn’t feel so good.

      “Okay, girls, sit tight. Mommy’s going to get dressed, too.”

      “I’ll keep an eye on them, Rachel,” says Kathleen Rhodes. She has two sets of twins, ages seven and four—another in-vitro mom—and she’s been really kind and helpful, loaning me books on getting your baby to sleep through the night, inviting us to playdates. Not many people want three kids in addition to their own. Kathleen doesn’t mind a bit.

      “Thanks,” I say.

      I pull the curtain behind me in the changing room and peel off my wet suit. It’s a retro-style one-piece, red with white polka dots and wide shoulder straps. I liked it when I bought it, but now it seems matronly.

      Well. I am a matron, after all.

      I look at my reflection in the mirror. Unlike the mirrors in Nordstrom or Bergdorf, it’s not a magical mirror, making me look taller and more slender than I really am.

      For the most part, I love my body. I’m proud of what it did, percolating three babies at once, nursing them afterward. There’s a little pooch of skin that no amount of crunches has been able to vanquish, but I’m the same size as I was in college. My breasts fared pretty well, too. Granted, they’re not what they were when I was twenty, but they’re hardly embarrassments. In fact, Kathleen once said she envied how I bounced back from pregnancy. Told me it took her four years. She still carries some extra weight, but she carries it well.

      Adam has always been complimentary…though now that I think of it, maybe not as much lately.

      My body is a mother’s body. It’s hopefully a MILF’s body, but it’s a mother’s body, no doubt. My stretch marks, once a lurid red, have faded to tiny silvery marks, like a small school of fish. I can feel them more than I can really see them. On the rare occasions that I get to take a nice long bath, I find myself stroking them as I read.

      I’m average. That’s the word for it. This is an average body. It’s not bad. For a nearly forty-year-old mother of triplets, it’s really good.

      But it’s not Elle’s body.

      “Elle works out with a personal trainer five days a week,” Kathleen tells me ten minutes later when I admit my insecurity. We’re hunched over, buckling the kids in their car seats. Our cars, both minivans, are side by side. “Do you want to stick your kids in day care so you can go to the gym? Or drink kale shakes for breakfast?”

      “No,” I said. “I definitely don’t.”

      “And you’re fucking gorgeous, Rachel,” she says. I’ve always been both shocked and impressed by her potty mouth. “Edward, if you bite me again, you won’t have any dessert until Christmas.” She turns back to me. “You okay, Rach?”

      “Oh, sure,” I say, sliding the door shut. “I just… I don’t know. I guess I’m at the age where I’m getting…”

      “Invisible?”

      I hadn’t thought of it that way, but there it is. Very few men look at a woman wrangling three toddlers. And I don’t have time to look at them. “Yeah. Invisible.”

      “I know how you feel. The other day, this guy at the deli—you know, Gold’s? The short guy with earrings?” I nod. “Well, he handed me my baloney and said, ‘Here you go, beautiful,’ and I was so fucking grateful! I mean, I used to get that all the time. All the time. And now, nothing. It takes longer and longer to pull off even not bad. Beautiful left on my thirty-fifth birthday. So I wanted to kiss this guy and buy him a car.” She hands Edward a juice box, gives one to Niall and closes the door. “Enjoy it while you still have it. You want to get coffee?”

      “Maybe next week,” I tell her. “I think I’ll drop by Adam’s office for lunch.”

      I call our babysitter from the car. “Hi, Donna, it’s Rachel Carver.”

      “Donna! Donna!” Charlotte shouts happily, and the other girls pick up the chant.

      I smile. “I know this is last-minute, but I was wondering if you were free to babysit the girls today.”

      “I’d love to,” she says instantly. “When do you want me to come by?”

      “Twenty minutes?” I suggest.

      Donna Ignaciato is every mother’s dream—a retired widow who lives down the street, loves children and was deprived of her grandchildren when her son moved to Oregon last year. She’s the kind of grandmother my mom is not—hands-on, affectionate, completely at home, the kind of babysitter who will take the laundry out of the dryer and fold it, and leave the girls cleaner and happier than when you left. I haven’t used her much—just when Jenny hasn’t been free, because she loves to spend time with the girls. My mom isn’t the babysitting type. “All of them?” she said when I asked her to watch the kids this past winter. “At the same time?”

      “No, Lenore,” Adam said. “We want you to lock two of them in the cellar, and just rotate them out.” I smiled, and Mom whipped out her ultimate guilt answer.

      “If your father was alive, we could do it together, but…”

      I let her off the hook, as I always do. It’s sort of my job—the softer, more understanding sister. Besides, I’d worry constantly if Mom was in charge.

      When Donna gets to the house, the girls swarm her, and I go upstairs and shower. Blow-dry my hair, put on makeup, dress carefully in a pink-and-black-checked dress and pink cardigan, the dangly silver earrings Adam gave me for Christmas, and the trifold, heart-shaped locket that has a picture of each of my girls. A bracelet. Black heels—but low, because it’s daytime. Perfume, even.

      Five days ago, I accused my husband of having an affair. And while it’s understandable why I thought what I did—and though he’s very generously let it go—damage has been done.

      “You’re pretty, Mama,” Grace says when I come downstairs. She kisses my knee, and I stroke her silky hair.

      “I should be back around three,” I tell Donna, who’s already cutting up