The Accidental Book Club

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)

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

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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.

For Scott

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.

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.”

J
ean 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 cheesecake 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.”

Dorothy tried to corral her frizzy graying hair behind one ear. Jean noticed a small hole in the armpit of her dress when she lifted her arm. Newly divorced and left with five out-of-control boys to wrangle, Dorothy was doing good to just get dressed in the mornings. Some meetings, Jean thought, Dorothy looked as if she might nod off right there at the table. “Ugh, don’t mention his name. And, technically, Elan dumped me.”

The door opened again and May came in, and not long after, so did Janet, reminding Jean of a doe the way she practically tiptoed into the room, looking apologetic, round-eyed, and afraid.

“Hey, Dot, I saw Elan and his stripper at the furniture store—did I tell you that?” Loretta called from the other room.

May, licking her thumb, which she’d accidentally pressed into a cheesecake bite while uncovering it, gave Jean a quick sideways hug, then headed straight toward the dining room. “What were you looking for at the furniture store, Loretta? Something for your reading room?”

“Oh, you know, that damn recliner of Chuck’s has crapped out again. The man’s killed more chairs than shoes—I can tell you that much. I should have asked Elan’s stripper if she was shopping for a new pole,” she called to Dorothy.

“You know, Dorothy, you should really see about going to the rally with us on Saturday . . . ,” Mitzi was saying, but Dorothy had plopped into a chair and was patting the back of her hair distractedly. Tired, Jean thought. She just looked so tired.

“More power to her. If she’s stupid enough to think he won’t cheat on her after he cheated on me with her, she deserves what she gets,” Dorothy said.

May returned to the kitchen and surveyed the counter. “Oooh, that casserole looks delicious. What’s in it?”

“That’s cowboy casserole,” someone—Jean couldn’t determine who—shouted from the dining room, and she heard scrapes of wood on the floor as they made their way toward the food.

“Come in, come in,” Jean said to poor, hovering Janet. Then she set out the plates as everyone else busied themselves with catching up while pulling plastic wrap off dishes, rummaging for serving spoons, and pouring wine.

As she always did, Jean took a moment to lean back against the counter and just listen. The house was far too quiet with Wayne gone, but it seemed she never noticed until it was full again. Wayne had liked to entertain. Back when the kids were young and they felt like they had all the time in the world, they put off having parties, but when they did have one, it was a
party
—so loud everyone had to shout to be heard. Wayne’s laughter carried the party to success.

She probably wouldn’t be able to handle a party without Wayne’s laughter now. She’d passed up the few invitations she’d been offered since he died. But this . . . This was a close second. This was the kind of party she could control, rather than a party that would take control of her. That was what she needed more than anything in her life right now. She’d been out of control for so long—everything had been out of her control. This felt good.

If two years ago someone had told Jean that a day would come when her only thought would be whether the roasted red peppers would be a good enough addition to the macaroni and cheese, she never would have believed it.

Jean pulled the macaroni and cheese out of the oven and added it to the buffet, and the ladies began loading up their plates, the conversation slowly and naturally turning toward the book, as it always did.

“I didn’t want this one to end,” Janet practically whispered over her plate, which had teeny mounds of food on it, more like samplings than actual portions. Jean had noticed this about Janet, who was so heavy, most of her bottom fell over the sides of the dining room chairs, her ankles often looking spotty and blue underneath the cuffs of her pants as she stood up to leave. “What a realistic look at love.”

Dorothy made a noise. “In my experience, a realistic look at love is when your husband of thirty years follows his doohickey to a woman who uses the word
whatevs
in every sentence.”

“Not every man is like that. You got a bad one is all,” May said. “I agree with Janet. I thought this was realistic. And . . . pretty.”

“Pretty? How is mental illness pretty?” Mitzi asked, jumping right in, as always.

May shrugged, her delicate shoulders pushing up her spirals. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the writing that’s pretty. It seemed like it had something more to say. I keep wondering what I would have done if I were Madeleine.”

“I didn’t realize that a
marriage plot
was an actual term,” Loretta said. “I just thought it was a good title.”

Mitzi nodded. “A literary term, right? I didn’t know that, either.”

“I’m pretty sure it was a term used in the 1800s, because it was a kind of new idea back then,” Janet said. “I think maybe the title was supposed to be a double entendre.” She stumbled over the ending of the word and immediately ducked down to her plate again.

Jean took a sip of wine. “It was nice to read a meaty romance,” she said. “I guess you can call it a romance?”

“Beats me. I don’t write ’em; I just love reading ’em,” Loretta said.

“Well, I think so,” Mitzi said. “If a marriage plot is literally about the plot, and the plot is about marriage, then isn’t it romance?”

“Not in my marriage, it wasn’t,” Dorothy grumbled. “And that sentence made my brain hurt, Mitzi.”

“Mine too,” Loretta said.

May nodded. “We may be overthinking things. More wine!”

“Either way, I would read more of this guy’s books,” Jean said.

“Hey, Jean, why didn’t we ever read
Middlesex
?” Dorothy asked. “I think we may be the only book club in the world that didn’t.”

“And it has Loretta’s favorite word right there in the title,” May said.

“What?
Middle?
Absolutely! I love the word
middle
. Especially when the other words are
fireman
and
sexy cowboy
,” Loretta said, and held her wineglass up, toast-style. May giggled and clinked her glass against Loretta’s.

“Well, I wouldn’t read more,” Dorothy said. “I didn’t like it.”

“Oh, Dot, you just didn’t like it because you’re burned by romance right now,” Mitzi said. Mitzi had a way of speaking bluntly to Dorothy, and sometimes Jean thought she was right on the edge of rude. But Dorothy didn’t seem to mind.
Our friendship is honest,
she’d been known to say.
As honest as a slap in the face.

Dorothy shook her head. “I didn’t like Madeleine. I thought she was . . . I don’t know. Annoying.”