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Prologue

Being Audrey Hepburn sucked.

“Cat!” Thea Fielding shouted from the back porch, into the pouring rain. “Caaat!”

The gutter leaked a steady sheet of rain onto her head. She almost welcomed it for its cooling effect on her headache, but it was sending icy drops down the back of her neck, making her shiver and curse.

“Cat!” she yelled again. “Goddamn, flea-bitten, ratty old caaaat!”

Through the back door behind her, an unholy wail started up. For a few seconds, three-year-old Benji had forgotten his tantrum in his shock that his mother had turned her back on him, walked out of the kitchen, and slammed the door, leaving him alone. But apparently he’d remembered his grievance.

“Shut up!” another voice called down the stairs, breaking into a squeak on the last word. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

“Nooooooo!” Benji wailed at his brother, Jake. “Youuuuuu shut uuuuup!”

“God, Benji, quit it!” She could imagine Jake’s angular body bending down the narrow staircase to shout through the railings. “You’re so stupid!”

“Cat!” Thea called, hoping she could drown them out. What did she care if the damn cat didn’t come in, if it got soaked and lost and run over by a car? They hadn’t even named the thing. It would be one less thing for her to have to take care of.

Benji was thumping something, or maybe hammering his heels against the kitchen floor. Jake echoed the sound with his feet running back upstairs, no doubt to jam his earbuds into his head so he could tell the truth later when he said he couldn’t hear her. Thea put one hand on the peeling porch post, which moved a little, and leaned farther out into the rain.

Now she really was Audrey Hepburn, crying and yelling at the end ofBreakfast at Tiffany’s. If Audrey had had Thea’s dull brown hair, awkward height, and exhausted, dark eyes, that is. And if she’d had two boys and a useless ex who’d left them all with no warning, leftherwith nothing but what she’d scrounged and kept for herself for fifteen years. Which, from this end of a leaning porch at the wrong end of this Boston suburb, didn’t look like a whole hell of a lot.

She scrunched her hand into a fist as Benji’s yelling passed beyond misery and into anger. He was probably rubbing his head into the macaroni and cheese he’d just thrown on the floor. Which she would now have to clean up. Benjiandthe floor.

Dammit, this was not how her life was supposed to go! She was the smart one! She was going to beat them all! All her teachers had said so. So how did she end up with two kids and a crappy job and—

“Mooooommmm!” Benji’s voice had transcended anger; now it was hitting her where it really hurt: her heart. He sounded lost and pathetic, his sobs body-shaking to both of them. Thea knew how he felt.

She turned back to the house. As she opened the back door, a black streak of matted fur dashed past her into the house, smearing a wet line along her calf. But Benji was crying too hard to touch the cat as it went past.

Thea sat down on the floor, picked Benji up, and deposited him in her lap.

“Okay, buddy,” she murmured, wrapping him up as tight as she could in her arms, mac and cheese be damned. His hot, wet face leaned into her chest, and she felt a juddering sigh escape him. “It’s okay.”

“I want Daddy,” he said.

Thea squeezed her eyes shut, more of her own tears falling down her cheeks. “I know, sweetie.”

Jake didn’t say these things. He didn’t ask for his father. He knew Gabriel wasn’t coming back, and that broke Thea’s spirit more than Benji’s endless hoping.

They’d been like this for a month: the shock of Gabe’s final voicemail, sent from his mother’s home in Ireland because he was too chicken to call her until he was well out of reach. The three of them held in this limbo, waiting for something to happen, for something to get better.

Benji’s head got heavier against her, his sobs subsiding into gulps. She loved him fiercely, and her love for Jake bordered on obsession. He suffered more, and would suffer more, from his father’s desertion. Thea sighed, her fists clenching on Benji’s back.

This has to stop. We have to change. I have to change.

The solution came to her between one heartbeat and the next. As soon as her mind formed the words, she felt the change in her. A thrill of energy that wasn’t anger or fear or panic. She pulled Benji away from her so he was facing her, and began wiping his wet cheeks. His birthmark, which spread down his cheek and would probably need surgery one day, was even darker against his red face.

“Ben-ben,” she said, giving him a big smile that made his eyes widen, “Mommy’s going back to school.”

♦

Liam McConnell stood in the vestry of St. Barnabas’s church, running his hand over his close-shaven chin and feeling at once sick and elated. His father, next to him, was dressed in the same morning suit as Liam but with a more subdued waistcoat—Avery had put Liam in a lavender vest because it and ivory were her colors. He had a suspicion the purple clashed with his hair, but he wasn’t about to say anything.

“I don’t have any great speech for you,” his father said. Like Liam, Pat McConnell had red hair, but his had turned white over the last few years. Dad always said he’d gotten it watching his only son swan off to college when he had a perfectly good job waiting for him at home.

“You don’t need a speech, Dad.” They didn’t see eye to eye on much, but today Liam loved everyone. He had exactly what he wanted: Avery, a career in teaching despite his dad’s best efforts, and a house that would pretty soon be worthy of his new wife. A future doing what he loved, with the woman he loved by his side. “I just hope I’m as happy as you and Mom.”

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