The Women After Me

Janelle Sutton has a question she can’t seem to leave alone: What did she have that I didn’t?

Janelle Sutton has spent years wondering why the men she loved always seemed to move on differently than she did.

Some disappeared only to show up with someone new. Some gave another woman the commitment Janelle had wanted from them. Others seemed willing to make changes, cross distances, or build futures that once sounded impossible.

Eventually, Janelle started looking at the women.

At first, she only wanted answers. She checked a profile, looked through a few pictures, or searched for something that could help her understand what had changed. Sometimes what she found confirmed what she'd suspected. Other times, one answer only gave her something else to question.

Before long, it wasn't only the women who came after her. Janelle found herself looking backward too, comparing herself to women who had been loved by the same men before she ever entered their lives.

Were they prettier? Easier to love? Did they ask for less? Give more? Was it timing, distance, chemistry, or something about Janelle that she couldn't see for herself?

Then Nicholas Reed comes back into her life.

Nick isn't a stranger. He's someone Janelle knew long before dating became complicated, and reconnecting with him feels different because of it. Their friendship quickly becomes harder to define, and when Janelle realizes they aren't looking for the same thing, she is left with a familiar question she doesn't want to be asking again.

The rest of her life doesn't stop while she searches for the answer. Janelle has a career she's worked hard for, a home she loves, and three close friends whose lives are changing right alongside hers. She is the person people depend on, the friend who listens, and a woman who has learned how to keep going even when something hurts.

But there are parts of her life that are becoming harder to explain, even to herself.

The more Janelle revisits the relationships that shaped her, the more complicated the past becomes. There are things she remembers differently now, questions she never got answered, and discoveries that make some of the explanations she accepted years ago harder to believe.

Janelle has spent a long time believing that if she could understand what those women had that she didn't, she could finally understand what went wrong.

She never considered that she might be asking the wrong question.