She looked at the babies around her. Not exactly the audience she’d pictured. Her fingers felt stiff on the guitar strings, so she clenched them and unclenched them, then made a C chord and strummed. “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,” she sang, and the women smiled and oohed in recognition, then grasped their babies’ little fists and swung them together, singing along.

Wow, these women were enthusiastic. And they certainly loved their kids. As far as Claire could tell, they had all stopped working to stay home with them. They were willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money for some live music to strengthen their children’s developing neural pathways (or whatever science said music did for young brains), happy to participate in a sort of ritualized infantalization in the hopes that they were giving their children a good time. Claire widened her eyes and sang, “If you’re happy and you know it, tickle your tummies!” and all the women dutifully tickled their babies, laughing.

Okay, maybe this wasn’t so bad. A bunch of rich women day drinking and gossiping—it was like she’d gotten her own private spin-off of Real Housewives to watch, minus the rage and bloodthirst. But more than that, oh, it felt good to sing again. Since Vagabond had kicked her out, Claire hadn’t even wanted to sing in the shower. Only now was she realizing how much she had missed it, how it was like she had been walking around with only one shoe on and wondering why she felt so off. Claire let herself forget about the banality of the lyrics, allowing the mere act of making music to carry her away. It was a particular skill she’d honed as a teenager at the megachurch that had dominated her town. The first couple of years after she was invited to sing at Sunday services with her worship group, ecstatically performing songs with titles like “His Grace” that she’d written with her friend Lynae, Claire had felt holy onstage. The congregation would cheer and sing along with so much energy and adoration that it drowned out everything else, including the doubts she had at other times. So what if she couldn’t wrap her head around a big man in the sky? That had to be a failure of imagination on her part. She liked believing that Pastor Brian knew what was true—especially since he was the one who kept telling her that she had what it took to make it in Nashville.

But then Thea had come out of the closet, and everyone had been so awful to her, and Claire had begun to wonder how a religion that was ostensibly about love and forgiveness could advocate icing out the best person she knew.

After she’d confessed her doubts to Lynae when they were walking home from practice, Lynae, that bitch, had stood up in prayer circle the next night and said, her cow face pious in the basement light, “Let us pray for Claire, who harbors doubts in her heart. Let us pray that she will once again see the light of Christ.”

So Pastor Brian had asked Claire to meet with him at the coffee shop off the church lobby, and they’d talked about her doubts. He’d offered explanations and platitudes, and none of it had made any sense to her. And then he’d said, “Claire, if you don’t believe, it doesn’t seem right for you to be singing in the worship group.”

She couldn’t lose her music, so she’d spent the rest of high school pretending to be devout, and furtively messaging with Thea on AIM at night, and waiting for the day she too could get out of there. She lived for the moments every Sunday when she could get up onstage and sing and feel like at least part of what she was doing was authentic. Sometimes, she’d picture this guy from her high school when she was supposed to be singing about Jesus. She’d write song lyrics to him, telling everyone else that the song was about Him. (If God did, in fact, exist, she was going to hell for sure for pretending that lyrics like You gave your body / you gave your heart / for me, for me, for me / And I’ve been touched by you were about Jesus, and not lustful fantasies about the asshole to whom she’d eventually lost her virginity in a janitor’s closet at the mall.)

Nope. She wasn’t going back there. She had to keep this playgroup job until she could get some kind of clarity on next steps, even if she felt pathetic doing it. Nearing the end of the playgroup’s allotted music time, she gave her all to “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” as if the spider’s struggles to climb a waterspout were an Odyssean quest. Then she glanced at Amara, who had finally managed to make her child settle down, at least for a few minutes. Unlike the other mothers, who were twisting their fingers in a climbing-spider motion, Amara’s hand was clenched in her lap. Her face was unfocused and suddenly drawn. Under the force of Claire’s gaze, Amara snapped back to attention. But in the second before Amara recovered herself, something unguarded in her eyes flashed out a clear message: Amara couldn’t believe she’d ended up here either.

“And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again,” Claire sang, letting the final chord ring out. “Okay, and looks like that’s our time!”

The sweet, kept women all burst into applause.

“Claire,” Whitney said, “you have such a lovely voice! Thank you. That was so much fun.”

“Do you take requests?” Ellie asked. “Can you do ‘Idaho Eyes’?”

“Yes, Ellie!” said Meredith. “I love that song.”

“Right?” Ellie said.

“Um,” Claire said, making sure to keep her face neutral, even as that familiar pit opened up in her stomach. “I don’t think I know that one.”

“Really?” Ellie said.

“I thought we were supposed to be the lame old ladies!” Meredith said as Ellie giggled.

Whitney got up and started refilling everyone’s wineglasses. Vicki lay down on the rug, holding her baby above her and humming softly to him, as if the two of them existed in a bubble. Gwen lifted up little Reagan-as-in-Ronald, smelling her diaper and then making a relieved face at the apparent lack of stink in it.

“You have to look it up!” Ellie said. “What’s the band, Meredith?”

“Vagabond!”

“Yeah, Vagabond. They’re really fun, but also with some substance to them, you know?”

“All right, let’s not overdo it. They’re fine,” said Amara. She got to her feet and looked at Claire. “You sing beautifully.”

“Thanks,” Claire said, blood rushing to her face.

“Someone watch Charlie for a moment while I go to the bathroom?” Amara asked.

“I’ll do it,” Gwen said, and Amara disappeared down a hallway.

“They’re better than fine,” Meredith said to Ellie, loyally.

“Amara is a bit of a music snob,” said Whitney, emptying the remainder of the wine bottle into her glass, “because she used to work for one of those late-night entertainment shows with a lot of musicians.”

Claire perked up, suddenly cold-blooded, sensing opportunity. As far as demeaning money jobs went, this one was seeming better and better by the minute.