9. Part III is prefaced with a quote by Alfred North Whitehead: “The only joy to be trusted is the joy found on the far side of a broken heart.” What does this mean? How do you think it applies to Amy and Nick? Does your own experience support or contradict this statement?

10. Do you have a former lover or spouse with whom you’ve lost touch? How do you think you would react if you saw her/him? Are there things you wish you could say now that you didn’t say then? Is there a small part of you that is still bitter or regretful because s/he got away?

Excerpt for THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER

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THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER

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Prologue

Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando

The wedding for Colleen Donohue, Lena to her family and friends, and Walter Littleton was ready to begin one spring afternoon. The Lowcountry of South Carolina preened, the temperature in the seventies without a hint of the summer humidity that would arrive soon, the river shimmering with glints of sunlight captured in its crests, the blooms of the azaleas and gardenias competing for attention. The air was soft as cashmere.

For this very day much dreaming and planning had gone on behind the scenes, starting with the gown. Lena’s cream-colored lace dress, originally worn by Aunt Rosalind forty years before, had been remade for Lena’s taller body. Her ethereal and younger sister, Hallie, as the maid of honor, was adorned in a pale pink sheath dress with a circle of baby gardenias on her head, her straight blond hair falling to her shoulders. Lena’s loose curls had been tamed for the day and pinned high under a pearl crown and a veil edged with tiny Swarovski crystals.

It was a small town, Watersend, South Carolina, nestled where the May River met the wide saltwater bay. The wedding was being held in the 1820s stone Episcopal church, full to overflowing. Although they weren’t church members, everyone in town did favors for the Donohues, even the priest—for Mr. Gavin Donohue, to be specific. Lena watched from the bride’s room window as outside the guests arrived in pairs and clusters. The ancient oak trees spread their gnarled limbs, offering shady protection, and sunlight filtering through the Spanish moss turning it to gossamer.

“A mass migration,” Lena said to her mother, Elizabeth, who was fastening the last of the satin buttons at the back of Lena’s dress. “I bet there’s not one person left in town. If a stranger came through, it would look like a ghost town.”