Everyone clapped and cheered around them.

Luke held her away from him and stared into her eyes, his filled with wonder and excitement. “I . . . I can’t believe this. I’m . . . ecstatic. You’re carrying our child. Are you okay?”

“Yes. You’ve made me so happy.”

He cupped her face and kissed her softly. “I will always find a way to make you happy.”

She believed him. And he did.

Reading Group Guide

1. Sarah manages to have a big job and raise her children. In what ways are women expected to do both competently while men are sometimes given more latitude with regard to balancing their work life and their family life?
2. Is Sarah doing herself a disservice by putting herself in the background publicly? Why do you feel she insists on this intense privacy?
3. At the start of the novel, Margaret refuses to see her son, Sean, in anything but a perfect light. Why do you think sometimes parents are willing to overlook or ignore terrible behavior in their children?
4. Do you feel sorry for Margaret? Why or why not?
5. At one point Luke comments on people who “care more about money” than anything else, even family. Why do you think people grow to have that perspective? What is it that makes some people value wealth over everything else?
6. Sarah is taken by Sean when she is younger, helping him succeed, even marrying him and saving his business. Why are women so apt to behave this way?
7. Margaret has been married three times and seems to think nothing of it, essentially living off her spouses. Yet, she condemns Sarah for making her own way in business. Why do you think this double standard still exists?
8. At the start of the novel Luke bemoans the fact that most of the women he’s met are opportunistic and after his money. Yet it stands to reason he chose these women to begin with. What in his character might make him find women like this initially appealing?
9. Luke has a fair amount of loyalty to Sean and his memory, even though they had ceased truly being close years before. Are there people in your life who you are loyal to more because of history than present-day friendship?
10. Sarah withholds the truth about Sean, their marriage, his involvement at the company, and even covers up the details surrounding the accident that killed him. Is it sometimes better to lie or withhold the truth for the sake of the feelings of others, as Sarah does with Margaret about Sean? Or, are lies always bad things?
11. The original title of the novel was Lies and Family Ties. Are family ties sometimes based on lies? And what do you think of this title?

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my wonderfully talented and amazing editor, Lucia Macro, for finding the heart of this story in the rough draft of a story I’d written a long time ago. The rewrite you proposed seemed like a daunting task, but it was so worth it. You knew there was more here than what I’d put on the page. It was a lot of hard work during a pandemic, but you stuck with me—like you always do—and Sarah and Luke got the love story I wanted for them.