Introduction

You are obese, Mrs. Moriarty.”Peggy Moriarty is stunned. She knows she’s let herself go a bit, but she thinks her young, skinny doctor is exaggerating. Her husband’s death fourteen years ago left her to raise their twins, Grace and Greg, alone. But now that they’re teenagers, doing their own things, her only hobby is watching Messages from Beyond, a show about a medium who connects the grieving with their deceased loved ones.When the twins leave for college, they give Peggy a gift certificate for an exercise class. At first, Peggy is insulted. But once the sting wears off, she realizes if she gets in shape, she might gain the confidence she needs to go on her favorite TV show and talk to her husband one last time.With help from her new friends at the gym and Carmen Tavarez, the mother of Grace’s boyfriend, Peggy begins to emerge from her prolonged grief and spread her wings. She may soon discover that her sum is more than a mother, a widow, and her body.

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Excerpt

Chapter 1

This is the day I start my diet, Peggy thinks when she wakes up. It’s what she tells herself every morning, but today she means it.

Yesterday, her new physician, Dr. Richardson, pointed at her medical chart. “You are obese, Mrs. Moriarty.”

Obese! At most, she needs to lose thirty to forty pounds. That does not make her obese. Obese is her old next-door neighbor, Lannie Fitzgerald, who had to have her clothes specially made and drove around the supermarket in one of those motorized carts. Peggy is a long way from that.

Her former physician, Dr. Sheridan, never would have told Peggy she was overweight. She was kind, always asking about Peggy’s twins during the exam. Skinny doctor Dr. Richardson, in contrast, made no small talk and didn’t even address Peggy by her first name, making her feel old—and fat. Frankly, Peggy is stunned that Dr. Sheridan handed over her practice to such a rude, impersonal young thing. Peggy doesn’t want a doctor who’s insensitive and prone to exaggeration.

Maybe she should find a new doctor. Yes, that is exactly what she will do today.

Downstairs, footsteps cross the hardwood floor. Peggy glances at the clock. It’s 7:17. She struggles to get out of bed, shuffles into the bathroom, and lumbers downstairs to say goodbye to Grace and Greg before they leave for school. As she reaches the last step, her daughter’s boyfriend, Julian, beeps his horn three times in quick succession.

Talk about rude. That boy has no manners. She has told him several times not to wake up the entire neighborhood when he comes to pick up the twins.

Peggy steps into the hall and almost trips over her son, who is bending over, picking up his book bag. It’s in the exact same place where he dumped it yesterday afternoon. “Did you do your homework?”

“I’ve got it covered, Ma.” He kisses her forehead. “See you tonight.”

Got it covered. Peggy’s not sure what that means and is about to ask for clarification when the horn blares again. Greg calls his sister’s name, grabs his Hudson High letterman jacket off the bench, and opens the front door. He doesn’t close it behind him, and Peggy can hear Julian’s stereo. In fact, she’s sure the entire neighborhood can hear Julian’s music. Every morning, it’s the same damn song, “Lose Yourself.”

Peggy once asked Julian to turn it down, and he shook his head. “Eminem has to be played with the volume up, Mrs. M.” Mrs. M. As if they have an amicable relationship.

Peggy pulls the door shut so she doesn’t have to listen to the noise. She should write a letter to the entire neighborhood, apologizing for Julian’s thoughtless behavior. Better yet, she should drag Julian in here by his completely inappropriate ponytail and have him write the letter.

If Patrick were still alive, he would have had a serious talk with Julian the first time the boy showed up to pick up Grace. Peggy imagines Patrick stepping much too close to Julian and speaking in a low soft voice. “If my daughter ever has a problem with you, you’re going to have a problem with me.”

She can see Julian’s smug look transforming to one of fear as he stutters one of the inane phrases he’s overly fond of. “It’s all good, sir.” Yes, he would definitely address Patrick as sir and not as Mr. M.

In the kitchen, Grace leans into the refrigerator, studying its contents. She is wearing the outfit Peggy got her for her birthday last week—a high-waisted black skirt and short red cardigan that together accentuate her tiny waist. When she first saw them, Grace claimed the clothes were frumpy and would make her look middle-aged.

“That outfit looks great on you,” Peggy says. She can’t see Grace’s expression, but she imagines it conveys disagreement. “What are you looking for?”

“Something healthy,” Grace snaps. She shifts the carton of chocolate milk and then the two-liter bottle of Pepsi and pulls out a small cup of pudding from the back of the top shelf. “We have pudding but no yogurt?”

The horn blares again. If Peggy were dressed, she’d march outside and give Julian a piece of her mind. Grace leans down and pulls open the fruit drawer, where a lone apple rolls around. She grabs it and runs out the door, shouting a farewell to Peggy, who follows her daughter to the door and watches until Julian’s black Mustang disappears down the street. With the kids gone, the house is quiet and still. Like every other morning after they leave, Peggy misses the commotion.

A moment later, her phone whistles with a text from Grace: Greek yogurt, almonds, bananas, spinach for salad, cheese.

Maybe after Peggy finds a new doctor, she will go grocery shopping. Yes, that’s exactly what she will do. Now that Grace and Greg are older, she has a hard time filling her days and worries about what she’ll do next year when they’re away at college. Although she has been a stay-at-home mom since right before the twins were born, she never wanted to be one. It was Patrick’s idea. When he died, Grace and Greg were only four, and Peggy thought it was important to be home with them—and lord knows, that was what Patrick would have wanted. It was one of the reasons his life insurance policy was so big. She can’t imagine going back to work now. Not only are her skills outdated, but she also can’t imagine who would hire a woman who’s been out of the workforce for over eighteen years.

Pleased that she has two items on her agenda today, Peggy settles into her morning. She fires up her laptop and opens a package of brown-sugar Pop-Tarts. She pulls out two before she remembers she’s supposed to start her diet, so she puts one back in the box and the other in the toaster. As she waits for the sugary pastry to heat, she makes a cup of coffee and adds a shot of vanilla caramel creamer. She sits at the counter with her breakfast and logs into her health plan’s website to search for a new doctor. She would be fine with not having a doctor at all except that she will eventually run out of refills for her blood-pressure prescription.

Peggy wishes the provider directories included photographs of the physicians. She doesn’t want a skinny young thing like Dr. Richardson. A doctor with some meat on her bones and gray at her roots would be just fine. Because there are no pictures on the website, Peggy uses first names to estimate age. She skips right over Dr. Courtney Callahan because no one her age is named Courtney. The same goes for Dr. Brittany Kaplan.

Dr. Nancy Levy. Yes, she sounds like she is right around Peggy’s age, a few years short of the half-century mark. Maybe this Dr. Levy is even older. Peggy sees the Accepting New Patients icon and calls to make an appointment. The soonest they can get her in for a physical is June 16, four months from now. Peggy books it and cancels her appointment with Dr. Richardson for next month.

Now that she doesn’t have to lose five pounds in the next few weeks, she toasts a second Pop-Tart and moves from the kitchen to the couch to catch up on her favorite show, Messages from Beyond. It’s about a housewife in Tampa who claims that she can communicate with the dead. Peggy doesn’t like watching it when the kids are home because they make fun of it and say the medium, Lynda McGarry, is a fraud. Maybe she is, but Peggy likes to think the woman is legit because it allows her to believe that someday, somehow, Patrick will be in touch, and more than anything, Peggy wants to talk to him. In Peggy’s favorite episode, Lynda connected a widow from California with her husband, who’d been killed in an automobile crash. He spoke about the first time he’d ever told his wife he loved her, on their second date, at the top of a Ferris wheel. Through Lynda, he said he would love her forever and promised that someday they would be reunited.

More than once, Peggy has fantasized about being on the show and having Lynda reach Patrick. He would tell Peggy he loves her and to keep an eye on the kids. She can hear him clearly. Head on a swivel, Pegsta. Can’t be too careful. You got to watch them at all times. If she listens closely, she can hear his Long Island accent.

She wanted to go with him on his trip to San Francisco, but he thought the kids were too young to leave with a sitter for a few nights and insisted she stay home. They fought about it for weeks. Thank God she wasn’t on that plane with him. What would have become of her children? Since then, she’s barely taken her eyes off them. Even when they don’t know it, she’s watching them. Today, after her show ends, she returns to the kitchen, pours another cup of coffee, toasts another Pop-Tart, and logs on to Instagram to search for their latest photos. It’s her favorite part of her morning ritual. She scrolls through several shots before coming to one of Grace, posted forty-five minutes ago. In the picture, Grace is wearing a bright-blue skirt she most definitely did not leave the house in—a skirt Peggy has never seen before. It’s so short that she’s sure the principal will be calling or emailing to discuss it. Grace is also wearing a sweater with a plunging neckline revealing more cleavage than Peggy realized her daughter had. She’s sitting on a table in the cafeteria with Julian, whose hand rests high on her exposed thigh.

As Peggy looks at the snapshot, rage gushes through her, and she accidentally bites her tongue while chewing her Pop-Tart. She gulps her coffee while thinking about how to handle this. The answer comes to her quickly. She edges off the stool and wobbles upstairs to get dressed.

Less than a half hour later, she’s standing in the school office, demanding that the secretary page Grace. The secretary’s high-pitched voice soon sounds over the PA system. “Grace Moriarty, please come to the office immediately. Grace Moriarty, to the office.”

As Peggy waits for her daughter, she momentarily thinks that perhaps she should have waited until Grace got home from school to address this. Then Grace rushes through the door. The skirt is even shorter than Peggy thought.

Grace looks at the secretary. “What’s going on?”

The secretary shrugs and points at Peggy, who is leaning against the wall on the other side of the room.

“Mom, is everything all right?”

“Where are the clothes you left the house in this morning?”

Grace squeezes her eyes shut and opens them wide. “What?”

“Where did you get that skirt?”

The phone in the office rings, but the secretary makes no move to answer it. Peggy shoots her a pointed look, and the secretary grabs the receiver. “Hudson High.”

“I want you to go the restroom and change back into what you were wearing when you left the house this morning.” Peggy keeps her voice low.

Grace’s eyes well up with tears. “Mom, you’re embarrassing me. Just go home.”

“Change, come back here, and hand me the outfit you’re wearing.”

The secretary finishes the phone call. She and Grace stare at Peggy with expressions of disbelief.

“It’s the middle of English. I have to get back to class.” Grace steps toward the door.

“I will follow you to your English class.” Peggy means it. She imagines all the students looking up at her with their mouths gaping. Grace would never forgive her.

Grace freezes. She’s trying to figure out if I’m serious, Peggy thinks. Go ahead—test me.

The office door squeaks open, and Julian appears. He does a double take when he sees Peggy and hurries to Grace’s side. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Julian,” Peggy answers.

The secretary smiles at Julian. Her big, goofy grin annoys Peggy because it’s completely inappropriate for the situation.

“My mother’s a psycho,” Grace says to Julian, storming by Peggy and out the office door. Julian follows close behind her.

The secretary studies Peggy without saying anything.

“That wasn’t what she was wearing when she left the house,” Peggy says.

“I gathered that.” The secretary straightens a pile of papers while continuing to watch Peggy as if she’s thinking, That’s Grace and Greg’s mom, overreacting again.

More than one parent at this school has told her that she is too strict with the twins. “You need to give them space.” That’s what she often hears. But no, she doesn’t. She knows how quickly life can change. She learned that thirteen years ago when Patrick boarded the plane for California.

The secretary clears her throat. “All the girls wear outfits like that. Really, I’ve seen a lot worse.”

Peggy doesn’t care what anyone else is wearing or what anyone else thinks. She doesn’t want her daughter dressing in skimpy skirts and sweaters with plunging necklines. She wishes the secretary would stop staring at her. She’s sick of the way people in this Massachusetts town look at her with their judgmental eyes. People in the Midwest, where she grew up, would never be so rude.

Peggy leaves the office to wait for Grace in the hallway. The bell rings, and soon, waves of laughing students stream by. Grace approaches from the other end of the hall in the black skirt and red sweater that Peggy bought her. She is almost running. “What are you doing out here? Why didn’t you stay in the office? Haven’t you embarrassed me enough?” Grace flings the plastic bag with the offending clothes at Peggy.

“Where did you get that outfit?”

“Oh my God, Mom. Just go home.”

Some of the kids in the hallway slow down to watch Peggy and Grace. Peggy steps backward and leans against the lockers. “Not until you tell me where you got that outfit.”

Grace folds her arms across her chest. “Carmen bought it for me. She took me shopping for my birthday.”

Peggy knows all of Grace’s and Greg’s friends. She has never heard that name before. “Carmen?”

Grace sighs. “Julian’s mother.”

Peggy doesn’t like her children being disrespectful. She taught them to call their friends’ parents Mr. and Mrs. “Don’t refer to her by her first name, Grace. To you, she is Mrs. Tavarez.”

Grace throws up her hands. “She’s the one who told me to call her Carmen. She said Mrs. Tavarez is Julian’s grandmother.”

Of course, Julian’s mother is that mother.

As Peggy leaves the school, she runs into Greg’s girlfriend, Allison Parker. “Hi, Mrs. Moriarty.” Allison beams. “What brings you here?”

Peggy notes Allison’s friendly smile and cute preppie clothing—a skirt that hits her knees and a blouse under a classic cardigan. “I had to see Grace.”

“Did you find her? I think she has Spanish now.”

“We spoke,” Peggy says.

A bell rings. “I’d better get to class,” Allison says. “Nice seeing you.”

On the drive across town, Peggy can’t help thinking how much easier her life would be if Allison were her daughter instead of Grace. She feels guilty for the thought, and when she gets home, she immediately toasts another Pop-Tart, her fourth on this first day of her diet. She devours it while watching a second episode of Messages from Beyond. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. How does the title More Than relate to the book?

2. Discuss how Peggy reshapes her life both intentionally and unintentionally throughout the story. Which change was most meaningful? Most unexpected?

3. Peggy struggles with letting go as her children head off to college. How does her relationship change with Grace and Greg? Do these relationships change in different ways? Are you surprised with the evolution of one more than the other?

4. Forgiveness and letting go are major themes throughout this story. How does Peggy finally decide to move on after so many years? How do Grace and Greg resolve their relationships with Peggy? With Patrick?

5. Peggy and Patrick regularly argued about her desire to work. Do you think if they hadn’t been arguing about that, she would have worked outside the home after his death?

6. Do you think Peggy and Patrick’s relationship would have lasted had Patrick not died? What do you and your partner disagree about?

7. Before Patrick’s death, Peggy felt her life was consumed by taking care of her children and she was losing her sense of self. Can you think of an example when you felt you were giving too much to your family? How do you practice self-care? Is it easy for you to ask for help? What advice would you give to Peggy?

8. How does Peggy's view of Lynda McGarry change throughout her own journey? Would Peggy have been able to heal her wounds without Lynda?

9. Do you believe Lynda has the ability to communicate with the dead?

10. In the beginning of the story Peggy doesn’t trust Julian, but over the course of the novel she realizes she judged him unfairly. Is Peggy's changing view of Julian related to her changing relationship with her own children? Her relationship with Carmen?

11. At the beginning of the novel, Peggy is reluctant to attend boot camp. By the end of the novel, it’s become a big part of her life. What changed? Would she have been as successful in boot camp if Roni and Carmen hadn’t befriended her?

12. Peggy, Roni, and Carmen are all very different, yet their friendship works. What is it that makes your friendships works?

13. Do you think Henry is a good match for Peggy? Why or why not?

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