Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [0]
ALSO BY JENNIFER WEINER
Good in Bed
In Her Shoes
Little Earthquakes
Goodnight Nobody
The Guy Not Taken
Certain Girls
Best Friends Forever
Fly Away Home
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Weiner, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Atria Books hardcover edition July 2011
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Designed by Dana Sloan
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weiner, Jennifer.
Then came you : a novel / Jennifer Weiner.—1st Atria books hardcover ed.
p. cm.
1. Motherhood—Fiction. 2. Mothers—Fiction. 3. Infertility—Fiction.
4. Surrogate mothers—Fiction. 5. Birthparents—Fiction. 6. Adoptive parents—Fiction. 7. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.E3935T53 2011
813’.6—dc22 2011014411
ISBN 978-1-4516-1772-6
ISBN 978-1-4516-1774-0 (ebook)
For Phoebe Pearl
“So,” said Estella, “I must be taken as I have been
made. The success is not mine, the failure is not
mine, but the two together make me.”
–CHARLES DICKENS, GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Contents
Part One: Sweet and Sour
Jules
Annie
Bettina
India
Jules
Annie
Bettina
India
Jules
Annie
Bettina
Part Two: Great Expectations
India
Jules
Annie
Bettina
India
Jules
Annie
India
Part Three: Then Came You
Bettina
Jules
India
Bettina
India
Jules
Annie
Bettina
2017
Acknowledgments
PART ONE
Sweet and Sour
JULES
The man in the suit was watching me again.
It was March of my senior year in college, a clear, chilly afternoon, when I felt what was, by then, the familiar weight of a man’s gaze, while I sat by myself in the food court. I looked up from my dinner, and there he was, at the end of the line for the salad place, looking at me the way he had for the past three weeks.
I sighed. The mall was one of my favorite places, and I didn’t want to give it up because of some creep.
I’d found the mall my freshman year. If you walked off campus, across Nassau Street and into a kiosk in the center of town, you could buy a discounted ticket with your student ID, and the bus would take you to a fancy shopping center with a fancy name, the Princeton MarketFair. There were all of the chains: a Pottery Barn and a Restoration Hardware, and Gaps, both Baby and full-grown, a Victoria’s Secret where you could buy your panties and a LensCrafters where you could pick up a pair of sunglasses, all of them in a sprawling, sterile building with marble floors and flattering, pink-tinted lights. At one end of the mall was a big, airy bookstore, with leather armchairs where you could curl up and read. At the other end was a movie theater that showed four-dollar matinees on Mondays. Between them was the food court.
Shortly after my discovery, I’d learned that only losers used public transportation. I’d found this out when I heard two of my classmates scornfully discussing a date that a girl we all knew had been on. “He took her to the movies. On the bus.” Giggle, giggle ... and then a quick look sideways to me, for my approval, because, tall and blond and with two juniors on the varsity crew team vying for my affection, I