the “real reason” your maid of honor won’t come to the
fitting?
Let’s take a breath and consider this: a maid of
honor who hates her dress won’t ruin your wedding. A
maid of honor who hates her bride will.
Her dress is not the problem. She agreed to get it
fitted, just not on the day you picked, which sounds
rough and hurtful for sure until you consider there
is no way her boyfriend’s grandmother’s ninety-fifth
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Rules for Moving
birthday party will be rescheduled for your fitting. You
know that, right? Good.
Now let’s talk about the psychopath in the room.
Crazy as it sounds, honesty is probably not the best
policy for you. I’m sure you didn’t mean to piss off your
friend, but you did and—incoming wedding alert—
that’s a problem. Luckily it’s a problem you can fix.
Here’s how:
First, apologize. Don’t wait. Don’t waffle. Don’t put
it on her. I’m sorry you’re so hypersensitive about your weight is not a good apology even if it’s true. What’s called for here is a simple heartfelt, Sorry. That was hurtful. I shouldn’t have said it. Next, offer to come to her fitting. Given what you say, she probably could use some
moral support when she puts on that dress.
Like you, I can’t read minds. But I’m going to make
an educated guess:
If you’re big about this—apologize, offer to go to
her fitting, forever stop mocking her weight—your
maid of honor will be your most devoted attendant on
your big day.
Go for it! Be big. Be happy. And congrats!
Yours forever, or at least for now,
Roxie
5
CHAPTER ONE
Done. Lane Meckler hit the Send key and her email to the reader known to her only as Lost Soul disappeared
from her screen. With luck, her email would get to Lost
Soul before it was too late. With more luck, Lost Soul
would follow her advice and immediately call the hotline
number she’d included so he could get help fast. More
than that was out of her control. She closed her laptop
and heard herself let out a long breath. She hadn’t real-
ized she was concentrating so hard that she’d forgotten
to breathe. Blinking her bleary eyes, she looked around.
Where was everyone?
Lane’s thirty-six-inch swath of desk was at the most
distant worktable in the office. Farthest from reception,
bathrooms, kitchen, private phone pods, it sat adjacent
to a wall of windows made of special textured glass that
managed to prevent anyone from looking out, but did
nothing to stop glare from coming in. Most of the Guild
workers assigned to Lane’s long table quickly asked to
be relocated anywhere else. But there was a self-sorting
bunch who were happy with this spot, people who pre-
ferred glare on screens and distance from food to being
in the center of activity. Lane was one of those people.
She stood up and scanned the room. Except for Jem,
who sat next to her, hunched over, earbuds in and typing
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Rules for Moving
fast, everyone was gone. She checked the time. Five o’clock.
Too early for the office to empty out, even on a Friday.
Jem looked up and took out an earbud. “They’re at
the party. You really don’t hear anything when you’re
concentrating, do you?”
“That is true.” Also true was that she had completely
forgotten tonight was the annual office event she never
went to. This year it was a skating party. Ice skating with the folks in her office was not Lane’s idea of a good time.
Okay, any kind of party with any group of people was not
her idea of a good time. Last year it was an indoor pool
party—the invite promising a four-hour tropical escape
from the harsh New York City winter—and Lane skipped
that, even though she was a dedicated swimmer. She did
not swim to socialize. She did not socialize. “What about
you?” she asked Jem. “No ice skating?”
Jem gave a quick shake of the head. Jem did not so-
cialize either.
her day, Post-it notes with itemized lists of tasks not yet done, scrap paper with phone numbers of social workers
and lawyers she had not yet called, a bag of nuts she’d
bought, opened and then forgot to eat. “Don’t work too
late, okay?”
Jem smiled. “Thank you, Roxie.”
Lane smiled back and quickly cruised down the empty
corridor. She wouldn’t have said that— Don’t work too
late—if there had been anyone else around. While it was true she was a professional advice columnist, Lane worked
hard to make sure her colleagues did not mistake her for a twenty-four-hour help desk. As deeply committed as she
was to helping her Ask Roxie readers with their problems, she was equally committed to trying to get through her
7
Nancy Star
day otherwise left alone. Except for her son. And Jem. Jem was what Lane thought of as a perimeter person. She had
a soft spot for people like Jem, those who made their way
through the world trying not to take up too much space.
She dropped her food garbage in the designated bin
and was almost at the exit to the reception area when she
heard a sound. She stopped. The sound stopped. A head
bobbed up over a nearby desk partition and then disap-
peared. She heard another noise. Sniffles. She held her
breath and listened hard. Was someone crying?
Okay. No thanks. Not now. Her column was online
only. She was off duty, unavailable, not interested in getting sucked into a conversation with an unhappy stranger.
She took another step toward the exit and stopped. What
if it wasn’t an unhappy stranger? What if it was someone
who’d fallen down or taken ill? She let out a sigh and
switched direction.
The origin of the noise was a very young woman—
was she even old enough to work here?—sitting at a desk,
trembling as she cried.
“Aw honey,” Lane said. “What’s wrong?”
The young woman’s mouth was working hard to
contain her emotion. “I went to the bathroom because I
was upset about—it doesn’t matter. It’s just I stayed there for a really long time and when I came back everyone was
gone. And I don’t know why. Was the building evacu-
ated? Did something awful happen?”
“No. It’s nothing like that. Everyone’s at the party.”
Lane saw the confusion on the young woman’s face.
“When did you start working here?”
The young woman sniffled. “Yesterday.”
“Okay.” Lane took out her phone and searched her
email. “It’s in here somewhere. There’s a party every
8
Rules for Moving
January. For team building. Ah. Here it is.” She asked
the young woman—her name was Alyssa—for her phone
number and texted her the address for the skating rink.
“I’m Lane, by the way. You should go. You’ll have a
good time.”
“I wasn�
��t invited. Anyway it’s too late.”
“Everyone’s invited. And it’s not too late. These things
go on forever. When it’s over the party just moves to a
bar. You should go,” Lane repeated. “You’ll meet people.
You’ll make friends.” Alyssa hesitated. “I would go with
you, but I have to get home. My son, Henry, is waiting
for me. Want to walk to the elevator together?”
“Okay.” Alyssa gathered her things. “Thank you. For
being so nice.”
“I’m not that nice,” Lane told her and smiled. “Come
on. Let’s go.”
As they waited for the elevator in the empty recep-
tion area, Alyssa glanced at the wall and noticed the large poster of Lane’s face. “That’s you? You’re Roxie?”
Lane glanced at the image and turned away. The shoot
for the poster had been slow and painful even though
Lane did her best to cooperate. She didn’t fight the styl-
ist who told her she had to—absolutely must—change
into a blue blouse to bring out her eyes. She didn’t argue with the hair guy who, after saying he was in love with
her natural curls, proceeded to blow-dry her hair so that
it hung straight as a sheet. The problem was the pho-
tographer who, despite being full of compliments—he
adored her big eyes and long lashes; he could not believe
her perfect skin—got annoyed that Lane was unable to
fix her expression.
asked.
9
Nancy Star
“Probably not,” Lane told him.
“Too tense,” he’d grumbled an hour later, as if telling
someone they were too tense had ever made anyone relax.
“Sorry you have to see that,” Lane told Alyssa. “They
put those up everywhere. To promote Roxie’s Live-Chat.
I don’t know who decided it was a good idea to paste
my face on walls and buses. I mean, would you want to
talk to that face?”
“Yes,” Alyssa said with what sounded like reverence.
“You look super friendly.”
Lane took a quick glance. She could see nothing
friendly in the face on the poster, but she didn’t want
to contradict Alyssa, who had finally stopped sniffling.
“Thanks,” she said instead.
They rode down in the elevator in silence. In the lobby,
Lane said, “Have fun,” and then stopped to check her
phone, while Alyssa continued out of the building, alone.
She’d missed three texts on her phone, all of them
from Aaron. Her husband never texted. Her eyes went
to the earliest in the thread.
Just got out of the cab!!! Took Henry to Milo’s!!!!
So much for claims that it was hard to tell tone in
a text. Turned out if you knew someone well enough,
punctuation did the trick. Genial Aaron was never ex-
clamatory except in an ironic way, when he was what
she thought of as drunk annoyed. She let that sink in, that at five o’clock Aaron was already drunk annoyed.
She knew immediately what had annoyed him, in
the way that couples who fought all the time did, their
arguments so repetitive by now that they each could
play both sides with perfect pitch. Aaron was annoyed
10
Rules for Moving
that Lane hadn’t been home in time to take Henry to his
friend Milo’s for his first ever late-over.
Neither of them had heard of a late-over until Henry told them about it. “It’s like a sleepover,” he explained,
“except you don’t sleep. You get in your pajamas and you
brush your teeth, but at bedtime your parents come and
take you home.” He told them the next part purely as a
matter of fact: “Everyone in my class has gone on one
except for me.”
Naturally Aaron could not let that stand, his son be-
ing behind in something, even though Lane tried to get
him to see that rushing to arrange a late-over might not
be teaching Henry the right lesson. Maybe it wasn’t a
bad thing, she’d said, for Henry to be in the back of the
herd when it came to his social life. Aaron had listened,
annoyed—he never did take advice well from her—and
then proceeded to pick up his phone and make the date.
Now, because Aaron had unilaterally decided to take
Henry over to Milo’s half an hour earlier than their plan, he thought she was late. She wasn’t late. In truth, she
probably would have come home earlier if she hadn’t
gotten held up by that letter from Lost Soul. But it was
not reasonable to stop in the middle of dealing with a
letter from a reader who’d come to the conclusion that
ending his life would be a gift to his family, just because Aaron might have a bout of anticipatory annoyance at
her hypothetical tardiness.
Caring about desperate people did not make her an
irresponsible parent. She was clear about her priorities.
Henry always came first. Tonight’s choice was not between
Henry and work. It was between coming home early so
Aaron wouldn’t get agitated or helping someone in crisis.
Next text, Showering. No exclamation points.
11
Nancy Star
Showering? She and Aaron had never been overcom-
municators. By now they were barely communicating
at all. Why would he text, Showering? Was the next text going to be, Drying off ?
The next text was, Where are you????
Wait. Now she remembered. There was a dinner. A
work dinner. Aaron had a work dinner tonight somewhere
on Long Island. Port Jefferson? Port Washington? It was
definitely a port but she couldn’t remember which one
because she really hadn’t been listening because she wasn’t going. He’d asked her to go and she said no.
Wait. Had she said no? She definitely meant to say no.
Why would she have to say no? How could he think
she would agree to go to a business dinner. Yes, it was
true: as far as the world knew they weren’t getting di-
vorced. They weren’t even separated yet, officially. No
one besides the two of them knew. Well the marriage
counselor knew. And their lawyers. And maybe Brielle.
Brielle was Aaron’s “drinking partner” and though
Aaron insisted Brielle didn’t know any details about their marriage, he also insisted she was only his drinking partner.
The first time Lane asked Aaron what a drinking partner
was, she got an eye roll. The second time she asked, he
got a shot of bourbon. After that time, she stopped asking.
h h
h h
The decision to keep their plan to divorce private until
they told Henry was mutual. But according to Aaron it
was never the right time to tell Henry. There was always
something pulling him away. Even after she’d enlisted the
aid of a therapist and her lawyer and his lawyer and their marriage counselor, Aaron still found reasons to delay.
12
Rules for Moving
“Bad time for me,” he’d tell her and then sometimes, to
mix things up, “Bad time for Henry.”
Just because no one knew they were getting divorced
did not mean Lane was going to go with Aaron to some
business dinner party and be all wifey. She didn’t like to do that when things were good. When were things good?
She couldn’t remember.
She texted back—On my way—and hurried home,
scarf wrapped over her mouth to keep out the wind, cold
wet air turning her cheeks raw. She spent most of the
walk home—it was thirty minutes door to door—trying
to get Aaron’s voice out of her head. Their last argument
had been brutal, Aaron’s anger exploding in a battery of
name-calling: she was cold as ice, hard as granite, dreary as dust. Actual spit had come out of his mouth when he
said, dust. The word had stuck like an earworm. It was that complaint—not cold or hard but dust—that hurt the most.
Their building came into view and she stopped. If it
weren’t for Henry she wouldn’t go in. She’d walk away.
Turn right, turn left—either direction was fine. But leav-
ing now was not an option. She pulled up the collar of
her coat and, head to the wind, walked inside.
h h
h h
Their apartment was near Lincoln Center in a tall building on a high floor, with sparkling views of the city and the
nonstop backdrop of sirens racing down Columbus and
up Amsterdam. In the city, someone was always having
an emergency.
They could afford the place because of a below-market
rental-rate perk, offered by Aaron’s boss, who owned the
building. The small one-bedroom was perfect for them
13
Nancy Star
until Henry was born. Now Henry was six and they were
still there. When people asked them why they hadn’t
moved yet, they either said it was because they were too
busy to figure out where to go next, which was true, or
because they’d gotten used to the solution: giving Henry,
who went to bed early, the bedroom, while they slept
on the living room pullout couch. That was also true,
for a while.
Being privy to what went on in strangers’ lives was
a hazard or a privilege of Lane’s job, depending on the
day. Either way she knew when a marriage went south it
was not unusual for one partner to be banished for some
amount of time to a couch. New York City real estate
being what it was, she and Aaron ended up banished
there together.
h h
h h
The doorman gave her a wide smile, which she answered
with a milder version of her own. She avoided conversations with the doormen, who were replaced roughly every six