Read The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters Online
Authors: Lucinda Rosenfeld
Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary, #Family Life, #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Fiction / Contemporary Women, #Fiction / Family Life, #Fiction / Romance - Contemporary
The Pretty One: A Novel About Sisters (32 page)
Debbie, on the other hand, had proven far less willing to absolve. After learning that Gus had had an affair with Mike’s brother, she’d gone ballistic. Never mind that it had been Debbie who had left Gus for Maggie. Somehow, she didn’t see the crimes as equivalent. To Debbie, sleeping with a man was a special kind of betrayal. From what Perri could tell, Debbie and Gus were arguing all the time now, just like they had been the previous year. Another breakup seemed imminent. However, Perri was working behind the scenes to try to prevent that outcome. It wasn’t just the thought of Gus seeking Jeff out again that gave Perri conniptions. Over the past few months, Perri had grown strangely fond of Debbie, who she’d gotten to know
over dinners at the apartment in Washington Heights. (As part of her campaign to win back the love and trust of her sisters, Gus had been taking cooking classes and hosting family dinner parties.) What’s more, Debbie, despite being the far superior player, had agreed to become Perri’s regular hitting partner. Twice a week now, Debbie trekked out to Larchmont to play tennis at Perri’s country club.
In other news, much to Perri’s horror, Olympia and Patrick were thinking of moving to Westchester. Somebody had given Patrick seed money to open a new center for at-risk youth in Mount Vernon, while Olympia had gotten a job in the education department of a small museum up the Hudson. (Viveka had apparently written her a glowing recommendation.) Moreover, to Perri’s amazement (and Olympia’s delight), one of her middle sister’s bunny paintings had been included in a group show at a highly respectable nonprofit space in Chelsea. And since then, several private dealers had approached her about representation.
Even more amazingly, Olympia claimed to be trying to get pregnant again. Although she was coming up on forty herself, she was hoping her eggs were still viable. She desperately wanted Lola to have a sibling—preferably a sister, she’d said. If worse came to worst, Olympia had told Perri, she’d defrost one of the embryos she’d had frozen years earlier at her sperm bank. But she was really hoping to conceive naturally. Olympia had also told Perri that, in her quest to get pregnant, she and Patrick were having an “unbelievable amount of sex.”
Well, lucky her,
Perri thought. In truth, while things were better with Mike, that had been hard for Perri to hear.
Special thanks to my brilliant readers and editors: Judy Clain, Maria Massie, Cressida Leyshon, and Ginia Bellafante; and also Sally Singer, Ann Shin, Nick Varchaver, Sarah Wadelton, Liberty Aldrich, Rosie Dastgir, Steven Cassidy, and Jan Dekker; and finally, my family—especially John, but also my daughters, Bebe and Tiki, my mother, Lucy, and my sister, Sophie—for their love and support.
L
UCINDA
R
OSENFELD
is the author of four novels, including
What She Saw…
and
I’m So Happy for You.
Her writing has appeared in the
New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate,
and many other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and two daughters—and is the youngest of three sisters.
Also by Lucinda Rosenfeld
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Contents
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by Lucinda Rosenfeld
Cover photograph by Cig Harvey
Cover © 2013 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-0-316-21357-8