Clutch

Five women who became inseparable during their freshman year at a New England college in 2001 have drifted apart over two decades. In fall 2022, Bella, a corporate litigator in Manhattan, texts their group chat insisting that "something must be done" about their four-year separation. Reba, a former management consultant now living in San Francisco, proposes a reunion in Palm Springs for the second weekend of January 2023. Everyone agrees, setting in motion what an omniscient narrator frames as the most consequential quarter of their lives.

The friends arrive from different corners of the country. Bella leaves her husband Bill and two young sons on the Upper East Side. Carson, a writer and tutor living with roommates in Brooklyn, flies with Bella from New York. Hillary, a physician in Chicago, is managing the fallout of her separation from Miles, a former surgical resident with a substance use disorder now in rehab; her mother Sheila is caring for her five-year-old son, Roger. Reba quit her consultancy years ago and is struggling through repeated failed fertility treatments with her husband Terrence. Gregg, a Texas state senator married to tech entrepreneur Zeke Graves, arrives last after missing her flight, telling the group a golfing friend will give her a ride, which Bella interprets as a private jet.

Poolside, the women catch up. Bella describes an upcoming trial she hopes will earn her a partnership at her law firm. They speculate about whether Gregg will run for a newly created congressional seat. Carson reveals she has brought homemade chocolates infused with psilocybin, a psychedelic compound derived from mushrooms, customized by dosage for each woman. She deflects questions about her novel-in-progress, set on a penitentiary island in Washington State. The narrator reveals Carson's hidden connection to the book: Her father is a convicted murderer imprisoned at Monroe Correctional Complex in Eastern Washington, and she has concealed his existence from her friends for twenty years.

On Saturday, Reba confiscates phones and the women take the mushrooms. Each reacts differently: Bella hallucinates and breaks down crying about her son Gus's speech impediment; Carson floats blissfully; Gregg falls asleep. Carson later discovers Gregg spat out the psilocybin. Confronted privately, Gregg reveals she is eight weeks pregnant and may not keep the pregnancy, wanting to protect her options for the congressional race. That evening, Hillary sneaks her phone to take a call about Roger, and Reba chases her around the pool with a cake knife. Gregg defuses the confrontation using de-escalation skills from capitol training. In the aftermath, Hillary reveals Miles is in rehab, not watching Roger as the others assumed. The group dissolves into tears. The weekend closes with a quiet Sunday hike in desert silence.

Back in their separate lives, pressures mount. Bella throws herself into trial preparation. Carson checks the mail obsessively, awaiting a reply from her father at Monroe Correctional, to whom she has sent a letter and her novel. Terrence is laid off in a wave of Bay Area tech layoffs, and Reba makes calls on his behalf, but Bella is consumed by work and Gregg privately refuses to connect anyone she cares about with Zeke, a known tyrant.

The narrator provides backstory on Gregg's political rise: her transition from acting to Austin politics, her viral breastfeeding protest on the senate floor, and two censures. The first came when she banged a cowboy boot on her desk denouncing SB 8, a Texas law offering bounties for reporting suspected abortions. The second, resulting in her temporary expulsion, came when she used both boots during a debate on the abortion trigger ban following the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling, which ended federal abortion protections. Gregg decides she must terminate her pregnancy but cannot do so in Texas. She chooses Carson as her companion because Carson already knows and will not try to change her mind.

Gregg arrives in Brooklyn under an alias. On Monday, Carson accompanies her to a Queens clinic for a dilation and curettage, a surgical abortion procedure. While Gregg is under anesthesia, Carson receives a devastating call: Miles has died of a fentanyl overdose after escaping rehab. Carson starts a group text urging everyone to come to Chicago.

The women converge for the funeral. Bella fakes an illness at work and flies in despite a snowstorm. Unprompted, she delivers a powerful eulogy, recounting how she once talked Hillary out of the bridal suite bathroom thirty minutes before the wedding by coaching her through reasons she loved Miles. She acknowledges the addiction openly, celebrating what was beautiful about the marriage. Afterward, the five friends gather before the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park, holding gloved hands. Hillary, who has not cried all day, sheds a single tear.

In the weeks that follow, Carson's father replies from prison in childlike block letters. Erik Gustavsson has not read her novel, finding it boring, and asks only for commissary money. Carson's hopes for connection collapse. Yet within minutes, her agent emails that the manuscript is "very, very good" and publishers want to bid on it. Gregg, returning to Austin, finds her four corgis hypothermic in the backyard; Zeke blocked the doggy door during a polar vortex as retribution for the abortion. Their confrontation yields only a fragile truce.

Bella's trial collapses on its first day when the client decides to settle, destroying her path to partnership. That afternoon, she discovers Bill's affair with a paralegal who had been posing as the family's babysitter. In a spiral of despair, she overdoses on medications and alcohol and is hospitalized, first at Bellevue and then at a private psychiatric facility for six weeks. During her confinement, Bill and his partner set up house together. When they propose a divorce arrangement, Bella negotiates shrewdly for an all-cash house, alimony, and furnished interiors. Upon discharge, she discovers weeks of unanswered messages from friends. In a cab to the airport for Gregg's fortieth birthday party in Austin, she records a voice memo explaining everything from the collapsed trial to the hospitalization.

Her friends meet her at the gate and hug her harder than they ever have. The party unfolds beneath a moonlight tower in Zilker Park. Gregg has secretly planned to announce her congressional run, but when Zeke takes the stage, he announces that he is running for Congress, claiming Gregg has chosen to stay home with their children. A banner bearing his name drops from the tower, and Gregg, waiting in the wings, is blindsided. At the party, Gregg's astrologer approaches Reba and says, "This time will be different," an unprompted remark about Reba's pregnancy that she has not yet shared with her friends.

The five friends retreat into a bouncy castle. They jump and scream until exhausted, then lie down together as Gregg reveals everything: the abortion, the frozen dogs, Zeke's retaliation, and the political stalemate binding them. Reba calmly offers to drive Gregg to file for divorce on Monday morning. Time seems to decouple from its normal flow. The women are simultaneously eighteen and forty, grieving and celebrating. For every betrayal and crisis, they possess both culpability in how things fall apart and the capacity to reassemble the pieces. As dusk settles, the old moontower above them flickers to life.