The One That Got Away (30 page)

His face is bright with interest. “Yeah? And what did they say?”

“They want to see me after the holidays.”

“No shit! That's fantastic!” Needing some sort of physical outlet for his excitement, he half-hugs, half-drags me until I'm sprawled on top of him, and gives me a rib-crushing hug. “That's amazing, Ree. My brilliant girl. I'm so proud of you.”

“I owe it to you in part,” I say, suddenly shy.

He strokes my hair back from my face. “How so?”

“I remembered when you said that one man's desperate is another man's persistent. You were right. And it did pay off.”

“It usually does,” he says softly, and I know he's thinking about me. “It usually does.”

As it turns out, I don't go to my stepsister Janet's family for Christmas, though the plan is to visit her while I'm on that side of the country.

Instead, December 23 finds me stamping my feet in six inches of snow outside the yellow vaulted arrivals concourse of D.C.'s Reagan Airport while Eamon loads our bags into his brother Colin's scruffy Jeep (which is, oddly, their only discernible resemblance beyond their coloring). After a short drive, during which Colin sells his brother out by telling me all about Eamon's childhood terror of Santa, we pull into the driveway of what is, amusingly enough, a split-level exactly like the one I had pictured. It looks like a house that belongs to a perfect sitcom family.

As I sit there, staring, Eamon and Colin hustle the bags out of the car and up to the porch. When I step out of the car, Eamon is already waiting for me at the front door, silhouetted against the warm gold light spilling from inside. I walk up, slip my arms around his waist, and turn my face up for a kiss.

“Hey, baby,” he says softly. “Mom's got dinner going. You ready to meet the rest of the pack?”

I nod, and we walk inside, together.

For Ginny, who I miss every day. For Wynne, who claimed me as hers. And for Rosie, who loved all three of us.

The first person I need to thank, because I will never be able to thank her enough, is my agent, Meredith Kaffel. I owe so very much to her skill, her brilliance, her thoughtfulness, and her bottomless reserve of patience with me—I simply can't imagine doing this with anyone else.

A huge, bottom-of-the-heart thank-you goes to my wonderful editor, Kara Cesare, for the love she's given this book right from the beginning. It wouldn't be what it is right now were it not for her intuitive understanding of the story I wanted to tell, and her guidance in helping me enrich that story in ways I'd never thought of. I'm truly grateful to work with someone who shares my vision so completely, and pushes me to take it further. Thanks also to Nina Arazoza, Hannah Elnan, Jin Yu, Beth Pearson, Diane Hobbing for the wonderful interior design, Belina Huey for the beautiful cover, and the rest of the Ballantine team.

Another tremendous thank-you goes to my darling friend Liz Scheier. She was my first reader, my first critic, and my biggest cheerleader, and I'm not sure this book would exist without her. For that, I owe her everything. Not to mention the fact that the woman put up with me through two drafts, one agent hunt, one round of publisher submissions, and enough spastic texts and
emails to exonerate her for justifiable homicide—and yet in spite of everything I'm fairly confident she still actually likes me. That right there is a damn miracle.

Next: my beloved husband, Allen. Speaking of patience with me (I'm noticing a recurring theme here), this man has a remarkable supply of it. And of everything else good. Every swoon-inducing man I ever write is going to look a lot like him in the heart area.

Other particular thanks go to Wynne Newman, Lauren Fitzgerald, Laurie Pachence, Jess Rogers, Yumi Kim, and Katie Lantzsch, who all read some chunk or draft along the way and gave me invaluable feedback on it. Also, there have been more than a few moments when I've owed any appearance of sanity to Alison Heller's wise advice and brilliant suggestions.

Very little of my Austin knowledge would have been possible without my ATX girls: Andrea Roe, Erin Williamson, and Karly Hand. Their spectacular hospitality, insight, and tolerance for bizarre follow-up questions were instrumental in helping me bring their wonderful city to life on the page.

I need to give a shout-out to my colleagues and buddies from my writers' group, the Women's Fiction Writers Association—their collective wisdom and support has been a wonderful and unexpected gift. (Especially Jennie Shaw, whose critique of my query letter was invaluable in getting Meredith to pay attention to me in the first place.)

I also need to state that the foundation of any writing ability I have was laid by the teachers of Wakefield School, which I attended from seventh through twelfth grade. The incredible education I received there taught me not just how to write but how to think.

Last but quite obviously not least: the swimmers. Thank you to the brilliant Whitney Hedgepeth of Longhorn Masters (and, of course, Atlanta '96) and heavily chlorinated man-about-town
Mike Gustafson for letting me pester them with questions. And thank you to the entire U.S. National Team for being awesome in the truest sense of the word.

And to all of my friends and family as a whole—and I specifically want to call out Allen's friends and family as part of this, because you've been every bit as wonderful as all those poor slobs who've been stuck with me since early days—thank you, so incredibly much, for your tireless support and enthusiasm throughout this entire process. I love you all.

Hi there, reader friends!

Thank you, so very much, for reading
The One That Got Away
. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it for you. Because I did write it for you, you see. Authors don't write in a vacuum; sharing our stories with the rest of the world is the whole reason we write them in the first place. So I would love to hear from you! Please, track me down (my contact info is below, and you should know that my website has fun freebies to read!) and tell me what you thought of the book. Tell me your own stories about home, or love, or your own One That Got Away. If what I wrote touched you in some way, or made you think about your own life, I'd truly love to hear about it.

Also, if you might be generous enough to take the time, I would be so grateful if you'd consider leaving a review of the book at any retailer or book-sharing site of your choice. You may not realize what a big help those reviews are to authors, but believe me, they are.

Last thing—in the pages beyond this, you'll find some goodies: an essay I wrote about the way the concept of home shapes our lives, and how that became the theme of the book; some fantastic, thought-provoking questions for book club discussion (seriously, these questions are so awesome that I'm dying to hear what every one of you has to say about them—I will show up at
or webcam in to your book club if you'd like me to!); AND an excerpt from my upcoming novel, in which you'll get to know Eamon's older brother, Colin (and catch up with what Sarina and Eamon themselves have been up to since the end of
The One That Got Away
). Enjoy!

    XOXO,

    Bethany

Email me:
[email protected]

Read freebies on my website:
www.bethanychase.com

Chat with me on Twitter:
@MBethanyChase

See the images that inspired the book on Pinterest:
www.pinterest.com/​mbethanychase

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www.facebook.com/​BethanyChaseAuthor

 

A Reader's Guide

I just wanted to write a love story.

As an incurable romantic, I've always had a soft spot for those stories that are as warm and gooey as the center of a molten chocolate cake. My lifelong favorite, over even Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, is the story of
Anne of Green Gables'
Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe. So that's what was foremost in my mind when I started working on
The One That Got Away
. But what I soon began to realize, as the book developed, is that it's equally a story about home.

Home is one of those simple ideas that gets more complicated the harder you think about it. On one hand, it's such a universal concept that, in its broadest terms, it ought to mean the same thing to everyone—a place of shelter, safety, belonging. Just the phrase “keep the home fires burning” conjures a place we can return to after wandering, where someone we love will be waiting…a place that will always be there. But, unthinkable as it is to ourselves as children, what happens to all of us is that our definition of home changes over time. And sometimes it changes more than once. The thing is, though, that each of our homes, and the people who share them with us, shape us in ways it takes years to fully understand.

Most of us begin with the same kind of home: Where we come from. Where we grew up. Our oldest, most fundamental place; the place we really began. It may not have been happy, but it's still our origin, and for better or worse, we can't forget it, or carve away the imprint it left upon us.

For me, this home was the ten acres in the Blue Ridge foothills where my parents built their dream house. Before then, we had been living among clinking sailboat masts and dapper white-clad midshipmen in Annapolis, Maryland, and my six-year-old self utterly failed to see what had so enchanted my mom and dad with this steep and unruly hillside in the boondocks. By the time construction was completed, though, I was as bewitched as they were. And partly because the house had been designed according to my parents' specifications, I was always aware of the way my physical environment reflected who our family was. One big bathroom for the three of us to share, but separate his-and-hers art studios for them. The spacious open-plan living/dining room, because my parents disliked the tradition of separate “formal” rooms that sat mostly unused. The immense windows along the western facade, so we were seldom out of sight of the rippling blue silhouette of the mountain range that formed our horizon, thirty miles away.

My mother took her last breath in that house. Her blinds were often open as she lay in her bed; I can only hope the beauty of the mountains eased her pain. She had bright eyes and a joyful smile, and the kind of laugh that could make friends from all the way across a room. Her warmth drew people to her like a hearth fire in January. Since I was only thirteen when she died, we were robbed of the time for me to grow to appreciate her, not just as my mom, but as the vivid, kind, charming woman I now know she was. But in the time we did have, her love taught me to value myself, and to treasure beauty, and those two things have been at the core of every good decision I've ever made.

My second home, I wasn't looking for. While I was studying
in England during my junior year of college, everything my father had been struggling with at home collapsed. When my winter break came, I had no home to go to. My mother's older sister, without question or hesitation, said, “You come here.” And her house has been my go-home-to place ever since. Because of the woman whose house it is, that place represents as big a part of me as where I came from. My aunt opened both home and heart to me, and her dead sister's girl became her third daughter. With remarkable patience and more than a little tough love, she knocked a navel-gazer, overly prone to whining and stewing, into a decisive and determined adult. I owe more than I can ever convey to my exposure to her challenging, sparky intelligence.

If you're lucky, your own go-home-to place, the place you head for holidays and family weekends or just to take a break from being an adult for a couple of days, is still the same as where you come from. But for many people it's not. Parents move, divorce, die, betray. Your go-home-to place may not even be where your parents or siblings are, but it's a place that brings you comfort when you arrive there. It's the place where you know all the stories and inside jokes that get retold, and where somebody will have your favorite meal waiting for you when you arrive.

Of course, like most of you, I also have my own home now. Mine is a sunny little aerie in Brooklyn, and I share it with my husband, whose dimples are the only thing that can coax me out of bed in the morning, and our cat, who travels from sunbeam to sunbeam as each day glides by. I made it partly with pieces of my other homes: artwork my mother painted, books my aunt has given me, furniture my grandmother bought in the fifties, which is beautifully scuffed with age and with my family's use. But also, my home is made with pieces of who I am now. Artwork
I
drew, books my friends have written. Because I lost my mother's gardens, I cram my windowsills with flowers, and because my husband loves to cook, I grow herbs to use in our meals. This is the
place where I welcome friends and family, both my own and my husband's. And every single inch of it is made of something I love.

Throughout
The One That Got Away
, Sarina is on a journey to find her home. The home she comes from is too laden with painful memories to be a welcoming place any longer, so she's left Virginia behind and made a life for herself in Austin. She's spent much of her adult life trying to find the right go-home-to place, where she truly belongs, and to build her own home at the same time. When the story opens, she believes Noah is the answer to both of those. Except, as Eamon points out, she's never taken any steps to make her home with Noah a reality; she only thinks it's her future because it looks like it should be. So what she has to find the courage to do, in spite of the risks, is to open herself up to the person she's come to realize is the one who really belongs in that future, and in that home.

This is why the home you build yourself, in many ways, is the most rewarding one of all. You can fill it, and populate it, with whatever and whoever you wish. It can be whatever you want it to be, whether it's the place you share with your partner, or your partner plus the colorful chaos of children (or the furry and malodorous chaos of pets), or just the solitary peace of your sofa, a good book and a big glass of wine. This home is the one you fill with your own family, whoever you choose them to be—but the peace is in the choosing.