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  Outstanding praise for the novels of Holly Chamberlin!

  SUMMER FRIENDS

  “A thoughtful novel.”

  —ShelfAwareness

  “A great summer read.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Touching.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  THE FAMILY BEACH HOUSE

  “Explores questions about the meaning of home, family dynamics and tolerance.”

  —The Bangor Daily News

  “A dramatic and moving portrait of several generations of a family and each person’s place within it.”

  —Booklist

  “An enjoyable summer read, but it’s more. It is a novel for all seasons that adds to the enduring excitement of Ogunquit.”

  —The Maine Sunday Telegram

  “The Family Beach House is an exploration of life in its middle stages and the wisdom that comes from truly understanding yourself. It builds to a quietly satisfying end that neatly ties up the characters’ futures. Southern Maine readers will delight in the references to local restaurants, museums and destinations woven throughout the book. Fans of Ogunquit will be particularly thrilled as the town itself provides a rich and vibrant backdrop for the McQueens’ story.”

  —Seacoastoline.com

  Books by Holly Chamberlin

  LIVING SINGLE

  THE SUMMER OF US

  BABYLAND

  BACK IN THE GAME

  THE FRIENDS WE KEEP

  TUSCAN HOLIDAY

  ONE WEEK IN DECEMBER

  THE FAMILY BEACH HOUSE

  SUMMER FRIENDS

  LAST SUMMER

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Living Single

  Holly Chamberlin

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Books by Holly Chamberlin

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Epilogue

  A READING GROUP GUIDE - LIVING SINGLE

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  As always, for Stephen.

  And this time also for Donna.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank the Women’s Lunch Place for its wonderful work with the homeless and poor women of Boston. She would like to honor the memory of her beloved friend, Fifi. Finally, she would like to thank her editor, John Scognamiglio, for giving her this opportunity and his endless support.

  Prologue

  This is the story of a year in the life of a thirty-two-year-old single woman. It’s my story and I’m telling it because I need to tell it. Also, because I want to.

  Consider it a cautionary tale. Consider it a good laugh. Consider it a little of both.

  My name is Erin Weston. I recently celebrated—a slightly optimistic way of putting it—my thirty-third birthday.

  Jesus Christ was crucified at the age of thirty-three. Not being a rabble-rouser, I’m hoping for a far less spectacularly troublesome year. After last year, I could use the rest.

  Anyway, I made it out alive and yes, even well. Imagine that.

  Overall, life’s been good to me, though on occasion its macabre sense of humor is distressing.

  But enough summarizing. My story begins last January, exactly a year ago to this day.

  I hope you like it.

  Chapter One

  January, Boston

  January in Boston is probably like January everywhere in America. At least in the sense of its being a month of grand resolutions and well-meant gestures—as well as a month of postholiday disappointment and incipient depression as the resolutions and gestures begin to break down.

  Nice time of the year to be born.

  I’d just turned thirty-two. And I was a workaholic.

  Not really. Though sometimes, especially on those days when I was the only one left in my downtown Boston office after six-thirty, I’d get all panicky and think that if I wasn’t very careful I could very easily slip over the line and go from being your typical hardworking single woman to being a painfully skinny spinster, scarily devoted to her filing system and not so secretly in love with her abusive, Scotch-swilling boss.

  Or, maybe I would go the other way. Maybe I would wind up a coldhearted, hard-assed, too-tanned, slave-driver type female executive with helmet hair, no husband, and surprisingly few girlfriends.

  But I was determined not to allow that slippage to occur, either way. Absolutely not. Because I’d decided I wanted something significantly different for my life.

  I wanted legitimacy. The kind that, for a woman, doesn’t come even with a solid career.

  And my career was solid. In fact, my annual review was scheduled for the following day. If it went well, there was a chance—slim, but I was hoping—that I would be named a senior account executive at EastWind Communications. That’s the marketing/PR firm where I’d worked for the past five years. It’s a smallish firm, owned by a guy named Terry Bolinger, and its work focuses on nonprofits and organizations that barely make a profit.

  I liked being at EastWind.

  More information. I lived—and still live—in the South End, officially an historic district of Boston. I own a condo in what was once, way back in the nineteenth century, a single-family brick house. Think New York brownstones but brick. Thanks to the building department’s controls, the structure is still charming, as is the entire block, with its
brick sidewalks, huge old trees, and lovely, well-tended front gardens.

  I had—and still have—a cat named Fuzzer. And yes, on occasion I was definitely frightened of becoming a looney cat lady. Especially if the single situation persisted for much longer.

  Which, I vowed upon turning thirty-two, it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. Because things were going to change. Five, ten, twenty years ahead when I looked back on my life, I was going to refer to this as The Year. The year I met my husband, the man of my dreams.

  Tall or medium height, it didn’t matter. Neither did hair or eye color. He’d have a fine intelligence and a large sense of humor, i.e., he would appreciate the Three Stooges as well as Jerry Seinfeld, and Margaret Cho as well as Monty Python’s Flying Circus. He would be kind and loving and he’d be a hardworking man, as laziness is, for me, the ultimate turnoff. Above all he would have a huge capacity for love and devotion and treat me like a great gift and be respectful of my parents and tolerate with grace—if not really like—my more difficult friends and family members.

  The man of my dreams.

  Well. That was the hope, anyway. That I’d meet my husband in the very near future. I didn’t have much of a plan. I didn’t even make an official resolution. I’d never gotten very far with resolutions. In fact, the last official resolution I’d made—at least, the last resolution I’d remembered making—was during my sophomore year in college when for some unaccountable reason I was dating a born-again Christian and inspired by lust I resolved to spend my life as a missionary in some “godless savage land.” Those were his words.

  Okay, I knew why I was dating the guy. He was gorgeous. Extremely disturbed, but very, very nice to look at. Which is pretty much all I got to do because, you know, those born-again Christian types aren’t into premarital sex. Catholics aren’t either, but we all cheat. We’re all going to Hell, but it just might be worth it.

  Anyway, though my common sense and my experience in the dating trenches and my recently acquired cynicism about everything romantic told me I was nuts to be thinking in terms of finally meeting Mr. Right, my heart, that disturbingly powerful organ, told me otherwise. It told me that if I just approached it with openness, I would, indeed, meet my very own hero.

  Okay, sure, delude yourself. Knock yourself out. It’s your funeral, Erin.

  That was Reason. It spoke to me several times a day. Often, it interrupted my sleep. It just had to share its opinions; it just had to pass judgment.

  It was one of those workaholic days.

  The phone rang just as I was about to pack up for the fifteen-minute walk home. I debated whether to answer it. I checked my watch. Six-forty-five. Not an unheard-of time for a disgruntled client to call and lodge a lengthy complaint. Then again, maybe it was bad karma not to take the call, being on the verge—possibly—of becoming a senior account executive. I was—am—nothing if not responsible.

  I picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Erin Weston.”

  “Hi. It’s me, Abby.”

  Relief.

  “Hi. I wasn’t going to pick up the phone. After-hours cranky clients.”

  Abby laughed. “Tell me about it.”

  Abby worked—and still works—as a fund raiser for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A career in development or, if you like, advancement, sounds all sophisticated and civilized until you start to hear stories about the people Abby has to deal with on a daily basis. Mainly, the outrageously childish women of the Brahman set. My take on the situation is that these women have far too much money and far too much free time on their hands. My Grandmother Morelli had a favorite saying, one she usually delivered with an ominous look at my habitually out-of-work cousin Buster: “The devil finds work for idle hands.”

  Anyway, how Abby hadn’t already put one of those vicious, gossipy, nastily meddlesome ladies—potential donors, all—out of her misery, I just didn’t know.

  Well, I did know. Abby was genuinely nice. The genuinely nice person is a rarity. I am nice but perhaps not genuinely. I mean, I’d never laugh openly at someone with a silly walk but you can be sure I’m guffawing inside.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “I thought you might want to have dinner. I know it’s last minute, but ...”

  “I’d love to,” I said and I meant it. Spending time with Abby would be a great way to ignore my mounting nervousness about the next day’s review. It also would be a chance to talk about my mother and her latest escapades. Selfish reasons, mostly, for wanting to get together with a friend, but understandable.

  “Great,” she said. “I was thinking Biba. Is that okay?”

  It was. I agreed to meet Abby in half an hour—she was cabbing over to Boylston Street from Huntington and Massachusetts Avenue—and hung up.

  From my office on Boylston Street, Biba was only a three-minute walk. I decided that instead of hanging around the deserted office, I’d take a brisk walk through the Common. Not that my office was in any way unpleasant. The entire EastWind Communications floor had been redesigned about a year earlier. The space was well-lit and nicely decorated in calming beige and taupe with artful splashes of warm colors, deep reds and yellows. My own office boasted a hypermodern beechwood and black leather couch and two matching chairs for clients. And I had a large, south-facing window with a ficus jungle in colorful Aztec-influenced pots.

  Still, I was a big fan of walking, not as much for the exercise as for the stimulation of urban sights and sounds. Plus, the Common is such a beautiful place to walk, rich with history. Back in colonial seventeenth century, the land was the common grazing ground for local farmers. As Boston grew and became less rural, more urban, somebody had the wisdom to preserve the land as a public park. Now, it’s laced with tree-lined paths, scattered with monuments to the heroes of liberty, and largely safe at night.

  I bundled into my brown mouton coat, a piece I’d bought ten years before in The Antique Boutique in New York. The coat, which I call the Bear, is the warmest coat on the face of this Earth. Over the years I’d managed to find an almost perfectly matching hat. A cream-colored wool scarf, brown leather gloves, and I was ready.

  The air was cold and clear, and even though the holiday lights had been removed from the trees, and the annual ice sculptures had melted or been chipped away by bored kids, there lingered the scent of celebration. And the enticing, romantic scent of smoke from the fireplaces in the homes along Beacon Street. It’s one of the few joys of winter in Boston: A lungful of cold, crisp air laced with a hint of cozy hearth.

  I was not alone in enjoying the evening. It seemed lots of people had chosen to cut through the Common on their way home or to meet friends. In spite of the freezing weather, a couple embraced on the little bridge. In the spring and summer, tourists ride the stately swan boats back and forth under that bridge. I imagined for a moment that the scene was frozen on canvas. I even gave the painting a title: “The Dream.”

  Sentimental? Sure.

  Then—I heard excited shouts and laughter coming from the Frog Pond, frozen over for late fall and winter. It’s the city’s most popular and picturesque skating venue, a brainchild of our mayor.

  I decided to watch the skaters for a few minutes. It had been a long time since I’d worn skates—white, with rabbit fur pom-poms—and it would probably be a long time before I ever wore them again. When it comes to most sports, I am strictly a spectator. I do après ski quite skillfully.

  The Frog Pond was jammed with skaters. Lots of couples. Mostly young, one probably in their seventies, looking spry and healthy, typical hardy New Englanders. A boy about twelve, wearing a striped Dr. Seuss Cat-in-the-Hat hat, shot around the slower skaters, zipping backward, then forward again, making loop-the-loops. A girl about ten in a fancy red velvet skating costume, trimmed in white fur, did careful pirouettes at the exact center of the rink. A group of teenagers, baggy pants wet from trailing on the ice, hauled each other around the rink by the hand. Fell on each other. Screamed and hooted with hormonal glee.

>   It made me smile. Fun is catching. Two golden retrievers bounded around and around the frozen pond, barking excitedly, agreeing with me.

  Then, I spotted a family of four. Father, mother, two little kids, maybe five and seven. All members of the same team, all bundled to the teeth in shiny ski jackets and mile-long scarfs and fuzzy woolen mittens and goofy, brightly colored knit hats. Laughing. Hanging on to each other, grabbing arms and legs. The father catching the mother as she slipped, kissing her on the nose.

  And suddenly, I didn’t feel like smiling anymore. This happy family had so much. I didn’t begrudge them their riches. I just ...

  So simple. It should have been so simple to fall in love, marry, build a family. But sometimes it seemed so impossible, such a far-away dream. How did you start the process? Was there a magic word or ritual? Did you just have to want it badly enough?

  Would it be too insane, I wondered, to go up to the wife/mother of that happy family and ask her for some pointers?

  Reason told me, Sure. Go ahead. Make a jerk of yourself.

  Here’s the bitch of it. At twenty-one, the dream—husband, family, a lovely house with a dog in the yard, a cat on the hearth, an antique mirror over the beautifully upholstered couch—seemed too mundane and dead-end to consider.

  I was different.

  It wasn’t something I could explain very easily. I just wanted something—else.

  That dream of husband and house seemed so easy to acquire, so unquestioned. Everybody did it. Why would I want what everybody else had? Wasn’t I glad to be different, to go my own way, make my own life, all independent?

  Okay. I was young. I thought I’d chart a new course. I thought I’d be some kind of new woman. I thought too many women fell for the dream that started with the white gown, princess for a day, and ended bitterly in divorce court. Didn’t almost all women fall into marriage and family, only to learn that the dream’s daily trappings were stifling to the self and the soul?