Grand Avenue

PRAISE FOR THE POWERFUL NOVELS
OF
NEW YORK TIMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR
JOY FIELDING

GRAND AVENUE

“Fielding elevates her narrative with great, sweeping, surprisingly moving paragraphs devoted to the nature of friendship and family. Don’t forget to keep a family-size box of Kleenex handy in preparation for the tear-jerking finale.”

—Booklist

“[A] romantic drama with a thriller twist.… With her usual page-turning flair, Fielding [writes] a swiftly paced story that acquires real suspense when one of the characters meets a surprising fate and the meaning of friendship is put to the ultimate test.… A tense denouement.”

—
Publishers Weekly

THE FIRST TIME

“Well written and enjoyable.”

—
Quill & Quire

“[An] affecting drama.… Fielding is good at chronicling the messy tangle of family relationships.… A three-tissue finale.”

—Publishers Weekly

“This is rich stuff.… Fielding has created an adept study of three flawed characters who, after years of playing head games, must learn how to communicate.… Fielding has again pushed a seemingly fragile heroine to the brink, only to have her fight back, tooth and nail.”

—Booklist

“A tonic account of how one woman discovers her truest self in the face of supreme disaster.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“After a long string of successful romantic-suspense novels, Joy Fielding gives us something different, a human drama that celebrates life and love. Although you will need a box of Kleenex ready, this marvelous story will leave you cheering, even as you examine your own life and priorities.”

—Romantic Times

ACCLAIM FOR
JOY FIELDING’S PREVIOUS FICTION

“A winner.”

—People

“A page turner … maintains the suspense until the last surprising moment.”

—Maclean’s

“Anybody who’s ever been afraid of losing her looks or her husband, or rattling the skeletons in the family closet, will be hopelessly hooked.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A knockout!”

—The New York Times

“Fielding masterfully manipulates our expectations.”

—The Washington Post

“A drama that hits home.”

—The Cincinnati Enquirer

“Dramatic and heartrending … the emotions are almost tangible.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

A
LSO BY
J
OY
F
IELDING

The First Time
Missing Pieces
Don’t Cry Now
Tell Me No Secrets
See Jane Run
Good Intentions
The Deep End
Life Penalty
The Other Woman
Kiss Mommy Goodbye

Firstly, I’d like to thank all the readers who wrote or e-mailed me after the publication of
The First Time
. It was wonderful hearing from all of you, and especially gratifying that you loved the novel. I hope you’ll feel the same way about
Grand Avenue
, and that you’ll take the time and trouble to let me know your thoughts. They are greatly appreciated.

A special thank you to Jan Evans, a wonderful and generous woman who escorted me through Cincinnati during one of my recent book tours, and who provided me with literally boxes of information about that beautiful city. I hope I got everything right.

A heartfelt thank you to my former editor, Linda Marrow, for her enthusiasm at the beginning of this project, and to my current editor, Emily Bestler, for taking such good care of it. Thanks also to all the terrific and talented people at Pocket—especially copy editor Steve Boldt—for being so helpful and supportive. A special thanks to Judith Curr for being every writer’s dream publisher.

Love, as always, to my regular, and very special, crew—Owen Laster, Larry Mirkin, and Beverley Slopen, and to Warren, Shannon, and Annie. I’m deeply grateful to—and for—all of you.

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Introduction

W
e called ourselves the Grand Dames: four women of varying height, weight, and age, with shockingly little in common, or so it seemed at the time of our initial meeting some twenty-three years ago, other than that we all lived on the same quiet, tree-lined street, were all married to ambitious and successful men, and each had a daughter around the age of two.

The street was named Grand Avenue, and despite the changes the years have brought to Mariemont, the upscale suburb of Cincinnati in which we lived, the street itself has remained remarkably the same: a series of neat wood-framed houses set well back from the road, the road itself winding lazily away from the busy main street it intersects toward the small park at its opposite end. It was in this park—the Grand Parkette, as the town council had christened the tiny triangle of land, unaware of the inherent irony—that we first met almost a quarter of a century ago, four grown women making a beeline for three children’s swings, knowing the loser would be relegated to the sandbox, her disappointed youngster loudly wailing her displeasure for the rest of the world to hear. Not the first time a mother has failed to live up to her daughter’s expectations. Certainly not the last.

I don’t remember who lost that race, or who started talking to whom, or even what that initial conversation was about. I remember only how easily the words flowed amongst us, how seamlessly we moved from
one topic to another, the familiar anecdotes, the understanding smiles, the welcome, if unexpected, intimacy of it all, all the more welcome precisely because it was so unexpected.

More than anything else, I remember the laughter. Even now, so many years later, so many tears later—and despite everything that has happened, the unforeseen, sometimes horrifying detours our lives took—I can still hear it, the undisciplined, yet curiously melodious collection of giggles and guffaws that shuffled between octaves with varying degrees of intensity, each laugh a signature, as different as we were ourselves. Yet, how well those diverse sounds blended together, how harmonious the end result. For years, I carried the sound of that early laughter with me wherever I went. I summoned it at will. It sustained me. Maybe because there was so little of it later on.

We stayed in the park that day until it started raining, a sudden summer shower no one was prepared for, and one of us suggested transferring the impromptu party to someone’s house. It must have been me, because we ended up at my house. Or maybe it was just that my home was closest to the park. I don’t remember. I do remember the four of us happily ensconced in the wood-paneled family room in my basement, shoes off, hair wet, clothes damp, drinking freshly brewed coffee and still laughing, as we watched our daughters parallel play at our feet, guiltily aware that we were having more fun than they were, that our children would just as soon be in their own homes, where they didn’t have to share their toys or compete with strangers for their mothers’ attention.

“We should form a club,” one of the women suggested. “Do this on a regular basis.”

“Great idea,” the rest of us quickly agreed.

To commemorate the occasion, I dug out my husband’s badly neglected Kodak Super 8 movie camera, at which I was as hopeless as I am with its modern counterpart, and the end result was something less than satisfactory, lots of quick, jerky movements and blurred women missing the tops of their heads. A few years ago, I had the film transferred to VHS, and strangely enough, it looks much better. Maybe it’s the improved technology, or my wide-screen TV, ten feet by twelve, that descends from the ceiling with the mere push of a button. Or maybe it’s that my vision has blurred just enough to compensate for my failure as a technician, because the women now seem clear, very much in focus.

Looking at this film today, what strikes me most, what, in fact, never fails to take my breath away, no matter how many times I view it, is not just how ineffably, unbearably young we all were, but how everything we were—and everything we were to become—was already present in those miraculously unlined faces. And yet, if you were to ask me to look into those seemingly happy faces and predict their futures, even now, twenty-three years later, when I know only too well how everything turned out, I couldn’t do it. Even knowing what I know, it is impossible for me to reconcile these women with their fate. Is that the reason I return so often to this tape? Am I looking for answers? Maybe it’s justice I’m seeking. Maybe peace.

Or resolution.

Maybe it’s as simple—and as difficult—as that.

I only know that when I look at these four young women, myself included, our youth captured,
imprisoned
, as it were, on videotape, I see four strangers. Not one feels more familiar to me than the rest. I am as foreign to myself as any of the others.

They say that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. Can anyone staring into the eyes of these four women really pretend to see so deep? And those sweet, innocent babies in their mothers’ arms—is there even one among you who can see beyond those big, tender eyes, who can hear the heart of a monster beating below? I don’t think so.