We Were Supposed to Be Rich by Now

At 21, Jenna Patel and her three closest friends wrote down what thirty-five was supposed to look like: salaries, houses, marriages, children, travel, net worth. Fifteen years later, a reunion turns the list into a scoreboard, and Jenna is certain she has lost. She is renting after a broken engagement while Saskia Reed has the glossy company, the confidence and the life everyone assumed would work out. Then Saskia admits Housekind is drowning in debt and makes a proposal: the four of them should buy the business together before someone else does. Up close, the lives Jenna envied begin to look different. One friend is exhausted by the motherhood she performs for everyone else. Another has money, status and almost no one left to share them with. And the deeper Jenna looks into Housekind, the harder it becomes to separate opportunity from friendship, guilt and old competition. Her house deposit could help save Saskia’s company. But when Jenna’s name starts appearing where she never agreed it should, the question is no longer whether she can afford to invest. It is what else Saskia has already decided for her.