Chapters (75)
- Cover
- Back Cover Text
- Praise
- Booklist
- About the Author
- Dedication
- Quote
- Prologue
- Part One
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- Part Two
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- Part Three
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Part Four
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- Part Five
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- Part Six
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- Part Seven
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Part Eight
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- Part Nine
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- Part Ten
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- Part Eleven
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- Part Twelve
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- Part Thirteen
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- AUTHOR NOTE
- Reader’s Guide
- Questions for Discussion
- The Heirloom Garden
- Abby
I straighten the sign, running my hand over the letters.
Rules.
This summer cottage was a place whose only rules were to be happy.
I stop on the last rule of the cottage, the one Nate refused to recite so many years ago. My heart races as I read it, tears springing to my eyes, blurring the words.
SHAKE THE SAND FROM YOUR FEET,
BUT NEVER SHAKE THE MEMORIES
OF OUR SUMMER COTTAGE.
IT IS FAMILY.
Part One
Rule #1:
Leave Your Troubles at the Door
ONE
February 2019
“I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can.”
My attorney Trish, who not only happens to be one of the finest divorce lawyers in Chicago but also my best friend from college, stares at me, unblinking in disbelief.
“I can’t.”
“Sign. The papers. Adie. Lou.”
She says this slowly, in a tone like the one my dad used when he caught me trying to sneak in the cottage past curfew.
“I can’t,” I repeat. They are the only words I can muster.
“You can,” she says.
She continues to stare, her brown eyes that match the frames of her expensive tortoiseshell reading glasses still unblinking. Trish graduated top of our undergrad class and her law class at Northwestern. Her gaze had broken some of the most ruthless divorce attorneys and husbands in Chicago.
She doesn’t just stare, I finally realize. She punctures your soul.
“You’re freaking me out,” I finally say, after an uncomfortable pause. “You haven’t blinked in a minute. You look like a snake.”
“I am,” Trish says. “That’s why I’m a great lawyer.” She stops. “Actually, you’re freaking me out. What’s going on, Adie Lou?”
She sits back in the banquette at RL, the posh Ralph Lauren restaurant on Michigan Avenue across from the flagship Polo store, folds her napkin in her lap and then folds her arms over her tailored jacket. The room is beautiful and bustling, and yet still hushed in that way that moneyed places always are. I look around the room. This is where Chicago’s elite gathered. The preppy place where the ladies who lunch lunched (and had a glass or two of champagne), the place where businessmen threw back a whiskey to celebrate a deal, the place where tourists gathered to gawk at those ladies and businessmen...
I stop.
The place where attorneys bring clients to sign divorce papers, I add, so they can’t make a scene.
I set the pen down and push the papers back into the middle of the table, clattering bread plates and utensils together.
“I can see we’re going to need a drink,” Trish says. “Now rather than later.”
“It’s noon.”
“Then we’re going to need a double.” Trish motions at our waiter, who arrives without a sound, like a well-mannered ghost. “Two manhattans.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll be drunk by one,” I say.