Introduction

The poignant story of what happens when a woman who thinks she's lost everything has the chance to love again.

Leo has long joked that, in the event of his death, he wants his best friend Garrett, a lifelong bachelor, to marry his wife, Audrey. One drunken night, he goes so far as to make Garrett promise to do so. Then, twelve years later, Leo, a veteran firefighter, dies in a skiing accident.

As Audrey navigates her new role as widow and single parent, Garrett quits his job in Boston and buys a one-way ticket out west. Before long, Audrey's feelings for Garrett become more than platonic, and Garrett finds himself falling for Audrey, her boys, and their life together in Portland. When Audrey finds out about the drunken pact from years ago, though, the harmless promise that brought Garrett into her world becomes the obstacle to his remaining in it.

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Excerpt

Leo

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I know Garrett never thought I was serious when I told him, If I die, I need you to marry Audrey. Make my wife your bride—she’s meant to be a bride, not my widow. And I know she didn’t think I was either, but I’d never been more serious about a thing in my life. I was a firefighter; I risked my life every day. Surely I couldn’t be the only guy in the department who thought about such a thing. And then, after 9/11, I knew asking him had been the right decision, and I felt even better about it. Of course I did. Garrett is my best friend. We met in 1983, when we were fourteen, and it’s as true now as it was then. I had other friends, good friends. I had Gallagher at the firehouse—easily worth ten men—but Garrett is like a brother to me. It’s as simple as that.

The three of us had joked about it for years. How many times did Audrey shout to me, when Garrett called, “Leo, it’s my second husband! You going to pick up?” Then she’d say to him, “Bye, sweetie, here he is,” and he and I would talk. My love, my everything, the mother of my sons—of course I wanted a plan in place. Of course she didn’t expect me to die. It was all in good fun. I didn’t think about them being intimate. I couldn’t. I only thought that if Audrey and the boys were left on their own, if I had anything to say about it, Garrett was the one person I’d choose to take care of them. I wouldn’t be around to know about any of the rest, which they would figure out.

You have these precious, priceless responsibilities in life, the sources of pride you’ve created, earned, acquired: your children, money and property and assets, pets, even—treasures that demand you nurture and protect them properly—and in the event that you no longer can, you leave them in the hands of someone who can’t possibly replace you. Assigning the job of the best care and love only you can give to someone who isn’t you—that’s the stuff of madness. When Audrey and I finally bit the bullet and wrote up our wills, everyone we considered seemed newly and certainly too flawed, crazy and unworthy to care for the boys. The list of family and friends we had to choose from got very short very quickly, but we conceded to name her conservative brother and sister-in-law, then my sister and brother-in-law as backup, all of them on the other side of the country. When Christopher was still a baby, we wrote up specific instructions and extracted promises, requiring attendance to Catholic school and exposure to open (progressive) political minds. Of course they’d agreed. If they’d ever be forced into the roles of guardians, we would never know if they honored our wishes or not.

Audrey and I had been married for six years when Garrett spent Y2K with us in Portland. It was the first time we’d seen him since our wedding. He’d been my best man.

“I bought my ticket and I’m flying out,” he told me in November. He was in graduate school again, his second stint. “It’s about time I come to Portland, and if it’s all over with the millennium, I’m going

out with you two.”

On New Year’s Eve, we got a sitter and had an early dinner downtown in time to be home and drink with the New York countdown. All was relief when the world didn’t end. Audrey was pregnant with Andrew and begged off to bed at ten-thirty, kissing us both, and Garrett and I stayed up. Christopher and Brian were still so little and would be awake early.

So as 1999 shed its skin and became 2000, we sat in the backyard smoking cigars by the fire pit, and I got drunk and sentimental. It was a dry, clear, cold night, a rare thing during Portland’s December. I was overcome the way people are. On such a night, with such a friend.

Garrett and his women. That’s what we’d been talking about. You could set your calendar by them. Anywhere from eighteen to twenty months—or less, but never for two years—he’d be with someone, and then he would end it. After a period of solitude, like a cleansing fast, he’d be on the market again. I could tell the ages of some of his lovers from their names alone. He’d been with an Acacia, two Zoës, a Piper. During that visit he was with a Nichole.

“And she’s a student?” I said.

“She’s a graduate student,” Garrett said. “She’s not my graduate student. She’s a big girl. Jesus, Leo, I’m not going to let my dick get me arrested, or cost me my job.”

“Why don’t you find a nice Mavis, or an Edith?” I said. “What about an Opal?”

“What’s going on here?” His voice got flat. “What’s with the shitty judgment? I’m telling you about this woman, Nichole, who I’m very happy with, and you’re being kind of a prick.”

I had to tread lighter. The year and a half of what Garrett considered happiness, replaced by another of the same length, but with a different woman, wasn’t what he would call a problem.

So while we argued about his future with Nichole, I pushed.

“You know they want to marry you, right?” I said. “After a few months in, they imagine themselves years down the road with you, living in the brownstone, with a library full of books from floor to ceiling, maybe a basset hound—no, a terrier. You, smoking a pipe, wearing your glasses and sweater vest.”

“What the fuck?” he said. “I would never wear a sweater vest or smoke a pipe.”

“Not now.” I giggled. “Later. In the happily-ever-after. Maybe even the occasional cardigan.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “You’re tittering. You titterer.”

I sprayed my drink from my mouth and folded into a hysterical pile until I managed to speak again. “Titterer!” I said. “You’re the titterer!” We often reduced ourselves to juvenile behavior when we were together, even then, when we were successful adult men. There’s no denying that.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, and stumbled inside for paper, a pen, and a flashlight. At the kitchen counter, I scribbled on the sheet of paper. When I got outside, I shoved the paper and pen at him. “I need a

favor. Sign this.”

“Sign what? I can’t sign something in the dark,” he said. “Man, you’re wasted.”

I flashed the light on the page. “This,” I said. “It says, ‘I, Garrett Reese, in the event of the death of Leo McGeary, promise to marry Audrey McGeary.’ All you have to do is sign it.”

“What are you talking about? You’re off your rocker,” he laughed. “You’re loaded.”

“Just sign it.” I shoved the paper at him again. I poked his arm with the pen. “I love that woman, and if I die on her, I need you to take care of her, to take care of my family. You’re the only person I’d trust to do that.”

Garrett took a puff off his cigar. “You stupid fuck.” He was still laughing. “I have a life. And you’re not going to die, but if you do, what if I’m married? I love your wife, but not like that. I’m not your plan B man, I’m my own plan A—Jesus. You call this a favor?”

“I don’t sit on my ass for a living,” I said. “I need some insurance and I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for your wedding. You want to keep discussing that probability? And you would figure out how to love her like that. Pretty easily, I’d expect. Let’s not talk about it.

“If you’re married when I’m dead, I can’t hold you to a promise that you can’t keep. There’ll only be so much I can do at that point.”

He took the paper and rested it on his leg in the dark.

“Move the goddamn light so I can see.” He scanned the words I’d scrawled. “You’re smashed,” he said. “I’m with Nichole, remember? You’re going to have to find someone else to give this to.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “I’m not going to die tomorrow. Nichole’s got nothing to worry about. Will you sign it already and I’ll bring us more drinks.”

“I’m only doing this to get you off my fucking back. It’s the new millennium for God’s sake, and you’re being morbid as hell. Refill me.” He signed the paper and handed it back. “It’s your word against

mine, dead man. That doesn’t even look like my signature.”

“Thank you,” I said. I took the paper. “I really mean it. That’s a load off. Hand me your glass. Stand up. Give me a hug.”

He did, and our embrace manifested all the years of our friendship.

“I love you, brother,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

“Love you too, man,” he said.

Leo Thomas McGeary 1969–2012

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Copyright 2015 by Polly Dugan

Excerpted by permission of the publisher, Little, Brown and Company view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Dugan uses rotating narration to take us inside the minds of her characters. Compare how each family member (including honorary family member Garrett) processes grief and loss in his or her own way. Which character were you able to relate to the most? Whose transformation, or growth, over the course of the novel was the most satisfying? How come?

2. Reflect on how you felt about Garrett when you first met him, and how you felt about him at the end of the book. Did your stance on him change? How so, and why?

3. Consider an example of when you’ve made a promise to a friend never expecting to have to carry through on it. What was it? What were the circumstances? How would your life have changed had you been put in a position that required you to fulfill that promise?

4. How did the multiple perspectives on Leo’s death and life in its aftermath color your read? Imagine if the story had only been told from Audrey’s point-of-view. How do you think it would have changed the story?
5. Consider the way the novel comes to a close. Were you surprised by the ending? Satisfied by it? Discuss alternate ways it could have ended.

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