Introduction

The small town of Barrington, with its picturesque cottages, breathtaking gardens and friendly neighbors, is very appealing. Things are going swimmingly for Lang Eldridge, an unlikely cancer survivor who is marking the one-year anniversary of her “death sentence.” She spent her supposed final year of life making sure her beloved husband, Jack, could survive without her. A caramel cake is in the freezer for his first birthday without her and love letters for every occasion are carefully written and tied with a pink ribbon. But just as she is packing for their celebratory trip, Jack drops dead on the tennis court. Devastated and reeling from shock, Lang realizes all of her perfect arrangements are in utter disarray. A mute stray dog posts itself on her front porch and a grammar-butchering fashion plate, A.J. Cole, practically takes up residence, regularly revealing too much information to loner Lang. Her son, Teddy, a tennis has-been, has his own ideas of how she should manage her life, and they don’t include cavorting about with a veterinarian who resembles Wimpy. Lillian, Lang’s long-lost mother, reappears and is as obnoxious as ever, waving to the pews at Jack’s funeral like she is Miss America. Lang’s granddaughter, Katie D, is a consistent bright spot, and Lang can’t imagine her life without her. As she realizes Jack wasn’t exactly the person she thought he was, she discovers a secret he carried to his grave could ruin her life. If she lets it. Compared to the Mitford Years by Jan Karon and Good Grief by Lolly Winston, Making Arrangements features “rich sassy writing with characters you’ll want to slap.” It is a story of family life and friendship, about mothers of both grown and young children, and how strangers (even the most irritating) can evolve into sisters. Relationships of all sorts can bloom into love (at any age) and the love between family, between mothers and children, grandparents and grandchildren, and sisters, is worth sustaining.

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Excerpt

Chapter One

Lang leaned on the shovel and tried to slow her breath.

She should be packing for their celebratory trip for her one-year remission, not trying to divide a wayward clump of Lenten roses. Jack could easily dig up the stubborn plant when he got home. But he’d been doing her bidding all year, and she was tired of asking.

The spot right above her left temple itched, and she snatched the brim of her white floppy hat and flung it to the ground. There was no one nearby to see her scalp, but she looked around furtively anyway, just in case. The bristle of new growth on her head had eased into something besides baldness—not quite hair, but not prickly, either. She rubbed her palm over her scalp, feeling the knobs and hollows she’d never known existed when she had hair. Lang heard the mailman idle his engine and made out the boxy vehicle through the magnolia branches. She shoved the hat back on her head.

Lang pictured the love letters she’d written Jack after the cancer had returned, stacked and tied with the pink grosgrain ribbon. Just when she’d made it to the five-year mark and was finally beginning to take full breaths of air again, not reading something into every single cramp and itch, it had come back. The doctors hadn’t even given her twelve months.

Yet here she was, one full year later. Lang didn’t want to tempt fate, but she couldn’t help but feel smug knowing that the letters she’d written to ease him through that first year without her were tucked away, unopened.

She knew them all by heart, their occasions labeled neatly on the envelope: Christmas. Your birthday. My death.

Dear Jack,

I shouldn’t feel glad at all after the news.

But I do. I’m grateful for the warning. That it wasn’t sudden. That I have a chance to prepare you.

I hate to miss the next part, the one that was supposed to be so golden. Eggs Benedict late on a Tuesday morning. Napping after lunch like cats in the afternoon sun.

No regrets, except I wish I’d eaten béarnaise sauce on everything. Condensed milk, too. Not worried about the size of my hips.

I sit here, reeling from the doctor’s words. Only four more seasons on earth, at best?

You have that long as well, to get used to the idea.

Love,

Lang

She’d debated the line about her hips in the first letter, the one she’d written after getting the bad news. But she left it in, almost defiantly. He worried enough about her hips for both of them.

A scarlet cardinal skimmed across the yard and perched on the feeder, dapper and energetic. She scanned the garden for his mate and found the drab-feathered female scuttling in the dry, brown magnolia leaves, searching for food. Lang and Jack Eldridge if they were birds. The long, curled leaves rattled sporadically, and Lang looked at the thick, twisted trunk of the tree, its lower branches spread out and covering the ground like a skirt.

Lang placed the shiny tip of the shovel against the thick creamy stalks of the Lenten rose and lifted up the dense foliage with her tennis shoe. Two mourning doves startled her when they suddenly flew out from under the magnolia branches, beating their wings frantically to hoist their heavy bodies into the air.

She waited for her breath to slow, then put all her weight on the shovel, balancing carefully as the earth gave way and the metal easily slid in the damp November ground. She hadn’t smelled the earth in over a year. She closed her eyes and breathed in the rich, damp scent of dirt.

She held on to the shovel for support and tried to remember if she’d washed her nightgown as she gazed up at the house. Her great-grandfather had built it before the Civil War, and it had housed both Confederate and Union troops during various points of the war. He had rebuilt it after it had burned in a drunken brawl during the Union occupation, and although it was over 150 years old, Fancy, her grandmother, had always called it “the new house,” so she did as well.

She had promised Jack she would be packed by the time he came home from tennis—he would kill her if she still had laundry to do. She tried to deepen her breath as she squinted at the siding—chipping already. Two years ago, Jack had hired Teddy, their son, to paint it the same pale butter color her great-grandmother had chosen.

Teddy-to-the-Rescue was the name of that business the two of them had started—one of many. Jack had assured her that they were fine, that none of the businesses required much capital, and that they needed the tax write-offs. Not one of the businesses had panned out, especially Teddy’s Tennis Tots, which had basically been a practice net set up in the driveway. She’d told them it made her think of “tater tots,” and they had both laughed and rolled their eyes. “Of course, she would think of food,” they had said in unison.

They had been sued over that one—apparently Teddy stole the idea from another tennis pro. She was glad Jack managed their finances—keeping up with all the paperwork seemed overwhelming to her.

She carefully angled the shovel straight down so she wouldn’t shear the roots, and then rested her foot on the blade, leaning onto it heavily for a minute. She should have clipped greenery instead of digging. This was too much.

Lang pulled the shovel up from the ground and felt a snag in her belly, like the long seam holding her together might split. She lifted her shirt to see if the barely knitted edges of skin had ripped apart.

She shouldn’t have. Her belly looked like some bloated sea creature, pale and damaged, and she looked around again to make sure no one had seen.

She staggered over to the primitive wooden bench Jack had built for her garden, leaving the shovel stabbed in the ground. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

Are there any similarities between Lang's blind trust with her finances and her trust in general?

Were you enraged at Lang’s lack of involvement in her own finances? Why? Do you think this is more generational? Did you notice this same level of financial one-sidedness with your own parents, or your grandparents?

Teddy is not a beloved character, but Lang still loves him deeply. Do you think the fact that Jack insisted his son leave the flowers and take up tennis made Lang more forgiving of Teddy’s shortcomings?

Do you think she felt guilty over not standing up to her husband when he shamed Teddy over playing with flowers?

AJ is a flawed and laughable character. Would you want her for a friend? Why or why not?

If your learned your grandchild/niece/nephew/cousin was not related by blood, would it make a difference? At what point in the relationship could you walk away? Could you forgive the unforgivable in order to preserve a relationship with that child?

What do you think about Teddy walking away from Katie D? Do you think Sarah should have told him he was not the father earlier?

At what point could you walk away from Katie D if you were in the same situation as Lang? As Teddy?

Would you tell Katie D who her biological father really is? Why? Why not?

If you could change something about this book, what would it be and why?

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