The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PUBLISHED BY G . P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2011 by Eleanor Brown
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Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Eleanor, date.
The weird sisters / Eleanor Brown. p. cm.
eISBN: 9781101486993
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Terminally ill parents—Fiction. 3. Middle-aged women—
Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.R6965E
813’.6—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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TO CHRIS
For springtime, for a rock-and-roll show, forever
But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim’s Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, “Would you like anything to read?”
—DYLAN THOMAS, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth
PROLOGUE
We came home because we were failures. We wouldn’t admit that, of course, not at first, not to ourselves, and certainly not to anyone else. We said we came home because our mother was ill, because we needed a break, a momentary pause before setting off for the Next Big Thing. But the truth was, we had failed, and rather than let anyone else know, we crafted careful excuses and alibis, and wrapped them around ourselves like a cloak to