The Accidental Book Club Read online

  Praise for The Sister Season

  “A really wonderful book and a pleasure to read.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Jen Lancaster

  “Emotionally honest and psychologically astute, The Sister Season is ultimately an uplifting story about the pull of the past, the need for forgiveness, and the redemptive power of familial love.”

  —Liza Gyllenhaal, author of A Place for Us

  “The Sister Season is a powerful, honest look at the harm that ripples out from every unkindness, and the strength inherent in the sisterly bond.”

  —Heidi Jon Schmidt, author of The Harbormaster’s Daughter

  “The perfect book to curl up with on a nice snowy day!”

  —Open Book Society

  “Jennifer Scott deserves accolades. . . . These sisters have to learn to face each other with care . . . forgive (although one could never forget what they have endured), and be there for each other as well as their mom. The book is carefully crafted, with pivotal moments carefully placed in a solid plot that moves. . . . Nice writing and very appropriate themes as the holidays approach for families of all!”

  —The Best Reviews

  “A fantastic story about the (often dysfunctional) ties of family.”

  —Examiner.com

  “Scott did a great job with these characters . . . illustrating the way sister dynamics can be so complicated.”

  —Book Addiction

  Praise for the YA Novels of JENNIFER SCOTT Writing as JENNIFER BROWN

  “A compulsive read.”

  —Gail Giles, author of Right Behind You and What Happened to Cass McBride?

  “Authentic and relevant . . . one to top the charts.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The book’s power—and its value—comes from the honest portrayal of characters.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A nuanced novel. . . . Brown creates multifaceted characters as well as realistic, insightful descriptions.”

  —Booklist

  “Thousand Words is a powerful, timely, and compulsively readable story. . . . This is an excellent choice for book discussions and a must-purchase for all libraries.”

  —VOYA (starred review)

  Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

  Visit us online at penguin.com.

  Other Books by Jennifer Scott

  The Sister Season

  Other Books by Jennifer Scott Writing as Jennifer Brown

  Hate List

  Bitter End

  Perfect Escape

  Thousand Words

  Torn Away

  NAL Accent

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Jennifer Brown, 2014

  Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Scott, Jennifer, 1972–

  The accidental book club/Jennifer Scott.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-61491-4 (eBook)

  1. Book clubs (Discussion groups)—Fiction. 2. Middle-aged women—Fiction. 3. Widows—Fiction. 4. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.C66555A64 2014

  813'.6—dc23 2014000337

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Scott

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  It takes so many people to put together a book, it’s sort of like a book club all its own. I’d like to give special thanks to these, the members of The Accidental Book Club’s book club.

  Thank you to Cori Deyoe, my trusted agent and beautiful friend. For you, I will bring out the fancy veggie tray.

  Thank you to my amazing editor, Sandy Harding, whose advice and suggestions made me fall even more in love with my characters. Also, huge thanks to Elizabeth Bistrow, Kara Welsh, Claire Zion, Daniel Walsh, Jane Steele, and everyone else at NAL who had their hands and hearts in my manuscript. Cheesecake squares for all!

  A special thanks goes to Maryellen O’Boyle, who makes covers so beautiful I want to sleep with them under my pillow. I’ll break out the chocolate wine for you.

  Thank you to the many book clubs I’ve visited for inviting me into your libraries, bookstores, offices, and homes, and for sharing your thoughts, your best dishes, and your wine with me. You are all the best book club I’ve ever been to. I made secret-recipe macadamia-nut brownies just for you.

  Thank you, and bread with real butter, to my mom, Bonnie McMullen, for taking me to libraries and always indulging my love of reading.

  And, of course, thank you to my family. Scott, Paige, Weston, and Rand, you are the roasted red peppers in my macaroni and cheese. I would be so plain without you.

  Contents

  PRAISE FOR JENNIFER SCOTT

  OTHER BOOKS BY JENNIFER SCOTT

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CONVERSATION GUIDE

  PROLOGUE

  May 2


  NEW YORK, NY—Crowds are lining up across the country for the midnight release of Pulitzer Prize–winning author R. Sebastian Thackeray III’s newest novel, Blame.

  “We’ve been here since nine o’clock this morning,” thirty-four-year-old mother of two Wendy McMickle said. “There were a lot of people already here. Somebody said the woman in the front of the line got here two days ago. I feel like we’re meeting the president or something.”

  Blame, which chronicles the struggles of three generations of suffering women, is the most highly anticipated novel of the year, with sales expected to be well into the millions.

  Bookstore owner Lavitia Jones called the release of a Thackeray book “Christmas, no matter what day of the year it is.”

  “We will sell as many books tonight as we did during all of the previous quarter,” Jones said. “People have been calling for months asking about it. Everybody wants Blame. The reviews have all been so great. Some say Thackeray will win a Nobel for this one, and I would say he deserves it.”

  While some feminist groups are questioning the novel’s bleak look at women, reviews have lauded Blame as the only true great American novel to have ever been written, with one reviewer proclaiming it “so honest, it will break your heart with clarity,” and another calling Thackeray “a leading light of human behavior.”

  “Yes, I’ve read Blame,” Jones said. “I don’t want to give any spoilers, but just expect your eyes to be opened. Everything you ever thought about life will be proven false; mark my words.”

  Thackeray himself, however, is too humble to talk of big prizes and record-breaking sales. The author is notoriously reclusive, rarely granting interviews or making appearances, and that doesn’t appear to have changed with the release of his newest tome. Thackeray does not participate in social media, has no Web site, and is said to refuse fan mail. So it is anyone’s guess what he makes of Blame’s initial success, though in the past he has been known to call his work simply “common sense in pretty packages.”

  “Whatever you call it, I want it,” McMickle said. “I have been dying to read this book since I heard he was writing it. I’m pretty sure I’ve read everything he’s ever written. If he wrote a grocery list, I’d read that too. I even named my son Sebastian. He’s just that amazing.”

  ONE

  Jean Vison dumped a fistful of chopped roasted red peppers into a pan of macaroni and cheese, and stirred, hoping doing so would make her dish pass as “gourmet.” This was her battle the second Tuesday of every month—calling on her minimal Food Network knowledge in an attempt to upscale her simple cooking and make it book club–worthy. Make it an offering that could sit alongside Dorothy’s chicken with lemon caper sauce or May’s salsa cruda or Janet’s crème fraîche something-or-other without Jean feeling embarrassed. Whereas her friends seemed to have actual recipes that called for fennel bulbs and chili threads and things scooped into quenelles, Jean seemed to rely on simply tossing soggy clumps of jarred peppers into her pasta and hoping for the best. She’d never been anyone’s chef.

  Besides, it was a book club, she told herself. They were there for the books, not the food. But she knew that was a lie. Her book club may have once been about rekindling a love of reading, not to mention a welcome distraction from her lonely life, but it was now as much about the saffron risotto and the flourless tortes, and even the macaroni and cheese with soggy peppers, as it was about reading. Not that she was complaining. The meals were always amazing—sometimes far more amazing than the book they’d read. Sometimes they spent more time talking about how to get the brown sugar icing just right on Mitzi’s bananas Foster bars than they did about plot development or symbolism. And the sitting and talking while digging into a quiche so velvety it felt like sin was really the only thing that kept Jean going most months.

  It was never just quiche or capers or a balsamic drizzle. It was one of Dorothy’s clan of riotous sons in jail once again for stealing a DVD player (“A DVD player, for crying out loud,” Dorothy had railed. “You’d think if he was going to risk jail time, he’d at least be smart enough to steal better technology.”). It was Dorothy’s divorce and her ex’s new girlfriend, who wore a thong to the country club pool despite being far beyond thong age and, to hear Dorothy tell it, had “more hail damage on those thighs than a used-car lot in the springtime.” It was Mitzi’s political rants. It was Loretta’s off-color jokes that made everyone choke on their Sangiovese. It was poor, skittish Janet, so nervous she chewed her top lip flaky and chapped, her raw fingers making the fork or the book page or the ice in her water glass shiver while she tried desperately to join in the conversation. It was May’s dating woes.

  It was the way nobody ever mentioned Wayne.

  It was the way Jean never even thought of him during those meetings.

  For two hours, once a month, Jean wasn’t Wayne’s widow. She was just Jean, the one who thought a shaved piece of mushroom or a chopped shallot elevated her cooking. She was just Jean, the one who bought three expensive bottles of Shiraz to go with May’s venison cutlets, the one who carried a printed list of all the bestsellers in a fat notebook where she kept a record of attendance, as if anyone bothered to worry about attendance. She was just Jean, the one who had it all quietly and delicately under control.

  On a whim, she dumped a carton of feta cheese into the pasta and stirred. Now it was Greek macaroni and cheese. Now she had a foreign country to pin it to, which automatically made it exotic. If only she had some fennel to add—not that she could guess what that would do to make a difference in flavor, just that she’d heard a TV chef once say that feta cheese and fennel were like peanut butter and jelly. She knew much more about peanut butter and jelly than fennel and feta, but nobody needed to know that.

  She popped the macaroni into the oven, uncorked the first bottle of Signorello, and placed it on the island, surrounding it with a cluster of sparkling wineglasses.

  “Halloo?” called Loretta, Jean’s next-door neighbor and best friend of many years, from the front door. Loretta was, technically, the oldest of the group, but in numerals only. She liked to call herself “a born-again twentysomething,” and proved it just about every time she opened her heavily lipsticked mouth.

  “In the kitchen,” Jean called back, and poured a bowlful of chocolate candies, which she slid into the middle of the massive dining room table. These would go untouched at first, but if the conversation was lively enough and long enough, they would soon be devoured, yet nobody would admit to having eaten a single one. She double-checked the notes that she had placed at her seat, double-checked that she had her copy of The Marriage Plot at easy disposal. She had so many thoughts about this book, so many things she wanted to say. She was excited about their meeting today. She turned back toward the kitchen in time to see Loretta pull a giant loaf of some sort of bread out of a paper bag.

  “Let me tell you, Jeanie,” she said, holding the loaf between fingernails manicured to match the deep red of her lipstick, “this bread is better than sex. The best thing I’ve put in my mouth since college. And, trust me, I put some pretty amazing things in my mouth in college. A whole phone book of amazing things, from Adam all the way to Zachariah.”

  Jean lifted the loaf to her nose. It smelled sweet and like something else—maybe anise?—and like it might just go perfectly with her macaroni and cheese. “Butter,” she said, and went to the refrigerator to find a stick.

  Meanwhile, Loretta had poured herself a healthy glass of wine and had commandeered her usual spot at the dining room table, just at Jean’s right. “I’m starving,” she moaned, plucking at the front of her button-down to get it just perfect. “Whatever you’re cooking smells wonderful.”

  “Greek macaroni and cheese,” Jean called from the kitchen, where she was rummaging for a butter dish, and smiled. Yes, it did sound gourmet when she said it out loud like that.

  “Well, then opa! I hope May brings some of those chee
secake things again,” Loretta said. “I’d like to walk barefoot through a field of those.”

  Jean popped her head around the corner. “Let me know if you run across a cheesecake field and I’ll be first in line to buy it. And I’m sure she will. You practically ordered her to never bring anything but.”

  “For good reason. Those are worth the extra protein.”

  Jean snickered. May was legendary for two things—her beautiful, white-blond, thick, curly hair and her food, which always contained equal parts food and beautiful, white-blond, thick, curly hairs. Loretta had been known to call her out on it on multiple occasions, but May, God bless her, only chuckled and told Loretta to “can it and make her own dessert,” and they went back to their lunching and book dishing and pulling hairs out of delicious cheesecake.

  There was a knock on the door, followed by the sound of it opening, and Jean could hear animated chatter coming from the entryway. Dorothy and Mitzi, friends and coworkers at American Dollar Bank, rounded the corner, juggling their dishes and books. Mitzi, the younger of the two, and life-dedicated conservative radio talk show listener, was going on, as usual, about something that sounded political.

  “Hello,” Jean called out when they reached the kitchen, but neither of them had heard her over their own talking, and simply went on about their conversation, distractedly setting their dishes next to Loretta’s bread and uncovering them.

  “Good riddance, that’s what I say. We can’t allow ourselves to continue to be governed by males who can’t keep their pants buckled. I can’t believe voters are so stupid as to keep him in office for as long as they have . . . ,” Mitzi continued.

  “I sure didn’t vote for him,” Dorothy said.

  “Well, of course not, because you have a brain. That’s why you dumped Elan.”