When We Fall - Softcover

Liebert, Emily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451419456 ISBN 13: 9780451419453

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

A new friendship forces a widow looking for a fresh start to confront her past in this compelling novel from the award-winning author of Some Women.

While Allison Parker once savored the dynamic pace of city life, it has sadly lost its allure since her husband’s untimely death. Now, back to her hometown in the suburbs of New York accompanied by her ten-year-old son, Logan, Allison is ready to focus on her art career. She doesn’t anticipate that her past will resurface. But when the wife of her husband’s best friend from summer camp takes her under her wing, things begin to spin out of control.

At one time, Charlotte Crane thought she had it all—a devoted husband, a beautiful little girl, and enough financial security to never have to worry. But behind her “perfect” facade lies a strained marriage and a fractured relationship with her sister. When “new girl” Allison arrives in Wincourt, Charlotte welcomes the chance to build a friendship. Before long, Charlotte begins to see her life through Allison’s eyes, and the cracks in her seemingly flawless existence become impossible to ignore.

As Allison heals from the loss of her husband—even wondering if she might be ready to date again—Charlotte feels more distant from her loved ones than ever before. The emerging friendship between the two women appears to be just the antidote both of them so desperately need...until everything falls apart.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Emily Liebert is the award-winning author of Some Women, Those Secrets We Keep, When We Fall, You Knew Me When, and the nonfiction book Facebook Fairytales. She’s been featured on Today, The Rachael Ray Show, and Anderson Cooper 360°, and in InStyle, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune, among other national media outlets.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof*** 

Copyright © 2014 Emily Liebert 

“But I don’t want fruit for breakfast, Mom!” Gia planted her chubby elbows on the granite countertop and scowled at Charlotte. “I want pancakes. With lots of syrup.”

“Gia, we don’t have time for pancakes today. Mommy has an appointment at ten thirty with Aunt Elizabeth. Maria will be here any minute. And I still have to shower. So please eat the fruit, sweetheart.” Charlotte darted around the kitchen in her silk La Perla robe, tearing through her morning to-do list. Let dog out in backyard. Feed dog. Give dog fresh water. Make list for supermarket. Load dishwasher. Gather dry cleaning to be dropped off. “It’s good for you, Gia. Fruit is good for you.” The first day of school couldn’t arrive soon enough.

Gia folded her arms across her chest and shook her head defiantly. “Fruit has a ton of carbs in it.” She pushed the plate away from her as if to declare pancakes carb free.

“Who told you that?” Charlotte glanced at her nine-year-old daughter, the apparent nutrition expert, in her oversized Justin Bieber nightshirt.

“Olivia’s mom. She knows everything about healthy stuff. She’s really skinny.”

“Is that so?” Olivia’s mom, Avery—who was precisely the type of person to have a name like Avery before names like Avery were even trendy—was really skinny. Too skinny, actually.

“Yup. She said I have to eat only protein and vegetables if I want to look like her.”

“Interesting.” Charlotte didn’t appreciate the unsolicited advice from skele-mommy. “Well, I think you look perfect just the way you are.”

In Charlotte’s opinion, prepubescent girls were not meant to be starving themselves or adhering to stringent dietary restrictions. There’d been none of that in her day. Charlotte had been pleasantly plump, as her maternal grandmother had affectionately referred to her, until she was at least fourteen, at which time she’d shed most of the baby fat. After that, her physique had been what one might call “sturdy” or “solid.” Fat wasn’t the right word. But thin wasn’t either. And skinnywas out of the question, given her genetic inheritance. Charlotte’s own mother, while striking in many ways, had thighs so substantial she used to brag, “I could crush a can of creamed corn between these babies!” And her father’s protruding paunch preceded his entrance into every room. The writing was on the wall.

Still, by the time Charlotte was a freshman at Cornell University, she’d found a way to tame her voluptuous figure with control-top stockings and other gut-sucking paraphernalia. And by the time vanity had really set in, she’d found a way to stick her finger down her throat following every meal. It wasn’t ideal, but it was a means to an end: finding a rich, handsome husband to take care of her.

“Then why are you making me eat fruit?” Gia arched an eyebrow, a signature gesture that evoked her father. The same father who’d insisted that Gia was “unnecessarily overweight” and that if she didn’t slim down she’d be tormented by the kids at school. He’d suggested that the sooner she learned to adjust her diet to reflect the crawling metabolism she’d been bestowed with—a dig at Charlotte’s side of the family—her life and theirs (that part had been left unspoken) would be much easier.

Of course, Charlie had a point. Charlotte didn’t want Gia to be persecuted by her classmates any more than he did. But she also didn’t want Gia to grow up insecure about her body, desperate to conceal her ample rear end and padded midsection, as Charlotte had. It was easy for Charlie to set forth directives, especially when the onus was on Charlotte to follow them. He wasn’t the one who had to put a plate of fruit in front of Gia every morning. Or make up excuses to leave the playground early, before the ice-cream truck arrived, so that she didn’t have to deny her daughter the simple childhood pleasure of a snow cone. So what if she was a little overweight? She was only nine, for God’s sake! Nine-year-olds deserved to eat snow cones!

“I’m not making you, Gia. Clearly you haven’t taken one bite. Can you please just eat it, so I can get ready? You can have pancakes tomorrow. I promise.” Charlotte sat down at the kitchen table—adjacent to the breakfast bar, where Gia was perched on a barstool—sinking her tired body into one of the six cushioned chairs upholstered in deluxe celadon linen. She surveyed her Architectural Digest–worthy kitchen with its stark white frameless cabinets, black granite worktops crafted from volcanically formed natural stone, top-of-the-line stainless-steel appliances, and the pièce de résistance—an Italian glass chandelier, a modern interpretation of vintage Murano, that she and Charlie had purchased on their honeymoon in Florence—to preside over it all. She knew she was blessed.

“I don’t want pancakes tomorrow. I. Want. Them. Now!”

Charlotte sighed. She didn’t have the energy to fight with Gia. Not today. Especially since it wasn’t her battle; it was Charlie’s. She still had to deal with her sister, and it wasn’t even nine a.m. And that would extract every morsel of vitality from her being. It always did.

“Fine, sweetheart. Whatever you want.” She stood again, defeated, walked toward the freezer, retrieved two Eggo buttermilk pancakes, slid them into the toaster oven, and swiped the bottle of syrup from the refrigerator, setting it on the counter in front of her triumphant offspring.

“Great.” Gia revealed a complacent grin and dropped her arms to her sides. She’d won and she knew it. Granted, Charlotte hadn’t put up much of a fight, but then, she rarely did. She was the pushover parent. The good cop, if you will. Something for which she knew Charlie resented her.

It was impossible to pinpoint when things had turned for her and Charlie. There wasn’t a day or a month or even a year when their relationship had suddenly morphed from two people so madly in love it felt incomprehensible that they’d ever been able to breathe without each other to two people passing through the hallways of their house and their lives with little more than a quick conversation, a peripheral smile, and a chaste peck on the lips. What she wouldn’t give to return to that dispassionate contentedness. Now things were different. Most days, it felt as if she were dangling from the roof of the tallest skyscraper, which had been erected with layer upon layer of resentment. One rancorous floor on top of another, the windows welded shut to constrain the dense fog of suffocating bitterness. After all, it was one thing to be miserable. But quite another for people to know about it.

It would have been easy enough to blame their troubles on parenthood, a common scapegoat and credible culprit in destroying marriages, transforming them from spicy to icy faster than you can say “breast pump.” But that wasn’t the entirety of it. Charlotte would have loved more children. Gia hadn’t been an easy baby, but wasn’t there some sort of memory-erasing serum that obliterated all the physical and emotional pain inherent in childbirth and child rearing in those first few years? The sleepless nights. The hundred-and-four-degree fevers. The projectile vomit. The lavalike poops that seemed to erupt...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0451419456
• ISBN 13: 9780451419453
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland