The Wives

‘Yeah, quite the drama,’ Emily said. ‘That headline this morning: “Most Hated Celeb: Rizzo Benz or Karolina Hartwell?” My God. I haven’t seen the press this excited since Harvey Weinstein.’

Karolina opened her mouth to talk, but she felt the now-familiar knot in her throat. ‘It’s been … hard. And confusing. I just didn’t expect it to be so vicious in Washington. Reporters … are …’

‘Staking out the house, I imagine?’ Emily asked.

‘Oh my God. They’re everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like this. Not when they thought I was having an affair with George Clooney pre-Amal. Not even when Graham was elected to the Senate. They were three deep at our home in Bethesda.’ She motioned to the front door. ‘Thank God for that hideous fence Graham had installed here.’

‘How is Harry?’ Miriam asked, sipping her tea.

Karolina shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Graham insisted we take an Uber from my mother-in-law’s house, and literally, a mob of people descended on us as soon as we pulled in. And you know what the first question was? “Are you drunk right now, Mrs. Hartwell?”’

‘They’re animals,’ Emily said knowingly.

‘Thank God we could pull directly into the garage, because I don’t know what would have happened if we had to walk through it. They literally mobbed the car. Harry was crying.’

‘Where was Graham?’

Karolina took a deep breath. ‘He couldn’t risk being seen with me.’

She told Miriam and Emily how she had tried Beth, her best mommy friend. The phone had rung and rung until finally going to voicemail, which wasn’t particularly strange: no one answered the phone these days. Karolina had felt self-conscious even calling. But when her first text had gone unanswered, and then two more, she’d started to feel a little queasy. That wasn’t like Beth, who joked that her phone was practically welded to her palm. Nearly two hours later, Karolina finally received a reply text: Cole may no longer play with Harry. Please don’t contact either of us again.

Karolina had gasped as though she’d been punched. For nearly a full minute, she’d struggled to catch her breath, wondering if she was having a heart attack. When her breathing had finally slowed to something resembling a normal rate, she’d fired off a group text to the mothers of the boys from the night before: Hi all. I’ll call each of you individually, but I just wanted to let you know that I was NOT drunk and last night was a huge misunderstanding. Your children were never in danger. Love, K.

The responses came back fast and furious:

We trusted you with our son!

How can you even look at yourself after what you did?

And the worst one of all, although it was the only message that didn’t include any angry exclamations:

Please, please, please: get some help. I’ve been there too. You can’t do this without the professionals and you’re deluding yourself if you think you can.

These four simply worded text messages had broken Karolina in a way that being pushed into the back of a squad car, feeling the rage of her husband, and spending an entire night in a country jail had not. Her phone slipped from her hands, and she succumbed to the sobs. These were her friends. Not the catty frenemies she’d made in her twenties. Not the New York society women who were alternately intimidated by her appearance and put off by her lack of pedigree. The group of women she’d met after they had moved to Bethesda had been easy from the start. Some of them worked, some of them didn’t; there was a big variety of education levels and backgrounds and income; most of all, they were all trying to raise their kids as well as they could manage and have some laughs along the way. No one cared that she used to be a famous model. No one cared that her husband was a senator. And certainly no one cared that she wasn’t Harry’s biological mother. They got together for birthdays and took the kids trick-or-treating and carpooled to softball practice. Their husbands shared beers during weekend barbecues. Their kids all mostly got along and treated one another’s houses as their own. It was easy. It was natural. And it was over. She felt ill.

Miriam’s hand on her arm brought Karolina back to the charmless living room where she sat with two women who didn’t despise her. ‘How long are you staying?’

Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Graham says it’s better with me here in Greenwich, so that Harry doesn’t have all the stress of the media attention, but I don’t know.’

‘When was the last time you spoke to Graham?’ Emily asked.

‘Last night. I’m so confused. Do you know I actually asked Harry about that night?’

‘What about it?’ Miriam asked.

Karolina dabbed her eye with a tissue. ‘I couldn’t help myself. I asked if he remembered what I had to drink. He said he saw me having one glass of wine – I called it “mommy juice,” which he found totally humiliating in front of his friends. He even remembered I poured it for myself right after I gave the boys their Sprite, and he was worried that Graham would be upset because I’d opened a new bottle. What he could not answer was why there were two empty champagne bottles floating around the back of the Suburban when the police pulled me over.’

‘You don’t think it’s possible he and his friends got into it?’ Miriam asked. ‘I’m sure he’s a good kid, but he is twelve, and he wouldn’t be the first.’

‘Those boys weren’t drinking champagne. None of us were. And I begged for a Breathalyzer once the boys were out of the car, but the police are saying I refused. It’s a nightmare.’

With this, Emily slapped her hands in her lap. ‘I can’t stay quiet another second. Why are we all freaking out right now? DUIs are totally recoverable! If you just get in front of this, you can make it go away.’

‘Go away?’ Karolina asked. ‘Have you turned on a television or opened a newspaper in the last three days?’

‘Yes, I get it. The former face of L’Oréal and current wife of New York senator Graham Hartwell gets busted for driving drunk. Big fucking deal! You didn’t kill anyone. That would be way harder. The kid factor complicates things a little, I admit, but let’s keep the focus on what’s important: no one got hurt; no one died; no one even crashed. This is all a lot of hysteria for nothing.’

Karolina saw Miriam give Emily a look telling her to shut up. She remembered enough about Emily to know that was unlikely. And besides, when Emily phrased it like that, it didn’t sound quite so horrific.

‘Go on,’ Karolina said.

Emily shrugged. ‘I’ll tell you what I would tell a client. No one cares if you were drunk or not. You need to apologize for having a problem and putting children at risk. You’ll definitely need to do thirty days inpatient somewhere – the optics for that are just unbeatable, especially when we tip the press off ahead of time – but there’s one in Montana that’s downright fabulous. Like an Aman.’

‘Thirty days inpatient? Like rehab? But I don’t have a drinking problem!’

‘That’s totally irrelevant,’ Emily said, glancing at her buzzing phone. ‘There’s a protocol people follow, and this is it: everyone loves to forgive a repentant sinner. Look at Mel Gibson. Reese Witherspoon. John Mayer. Graham’s affair complicates things a tad, but it’s nothing that can’t be dealt with. They’ll forgive you too.’

‘His … affair?’ Karolina whispered.

‘I’m just assuming. Am I wrong?’

Karolina sat quietly for a minute and then said, ‘If he is, it’s with Regan Whitney.’ Karolina could see Miriam’s face register shock before she tried for a more neutral expression. Was she surprised that Graham might be cheating on Karolina or just surprised that it might be with the young, beautiful and polished daughter of former President Whitney? Karolina’s suspicions were based solely on a handful of texts she’d seen that were more suggestive than actually incriminating. That and the fact that he’d lost all interest in sex over the past six months.

‘She’s not nearly as pretty as you,’ Emily said authoritatively. ‘Not even close.’

‘She’s nearly a decade younger than me,’ Karolina said. ‘Does she really even need to be pretty?’

‘No,’ Miriam and Emily agreed simultaneously.

‘Being connected is more appealing to Graham than being pretty,’ Karolina said flatly. ‘Anyway, right now Trip advised us to keep quiet. Supposedly he’s working the phones on my behalf, and he thinks we have a shot at getting the charges dropped.’

The sound of a buzzer broke the silence.

‘That’s the gate,’ Karolina said. Her mind flashed back to the hordes of camera crews and reporters camped outside their Bethesda home. ‘You don’t think the police have let them through, do you?’

Thankfully, the neighbors on either side of the Hartwells’ house had complained about the disruption from the paparazzi, and the Greenwich Police Department had very thoughtfully closed the road to all traffic except those who could prove their residence and their invited guests. It was the only thing saving her sanity.

Miriam jumped up from the couch. ‘Where can you see the gate camera? The kitchen?’

Karolina merely nodded. It was starting to feel like she would never escape this nightmare.

‘It’s just two Girl Scouts!’ Miriam called. ‘Can I buzz them in?’

‘No cookies at a time like this!’ Emily called back. ‘The last thing she needs is an endless stream of empty calories!’

Karolina took a sip of water. ‘I guess not even the cops can say no to Girl Scouts.’

Miriam walked back in and shot Emily a disgusted look. ‘I buzzed them in. You can’t refuse a cookie solicitation, it brings seven years of bad luck.’