BREWSTER, MA, 2021
This is a story that I wrote alone but not on my own. I owe a debt of gratitude first to my agent, Jeff Kleinman, who always settles for more, and the kind hearts and sharp minds at Folio Lit, and then to my editor, Kathy Sagan, whom I feel I knew before I met her, and all the team at Mira/HarperCollins. I can never repay The Ragdale Foundation, home of my writer’s heart, where portions of this book were written in 2019, especially Amy Sinclair, Linda Williams, Regin Igloria and Jeff Meeuwsen. I also wish to acknowledge the Turkeyland Cove Foundation on Martha’s Vineyard, where I wrote the first words of this story a year and a month ago today. To my friends and colleagues at Miami University of Ohio, especially Keith Tuma, Laura Van Prooyen and Hoa Nguyen, to my boyfriend, Chris Brent, my beloved sis, Pamela English, my best pal, Ann Wertz Garvin, my true friends Moira McDermott and Holly Robinson, my brother Bobby, all my love for bucking me up when I thought all was lost. Oh brave old world, that has such people in it. Always, there is my own darling crew, Rob Allegretti, Dan Brent-Allegretti, Martin Brent, Francie Brent, Mia Brent, Merit Brent, Will Brent, Marta Brent and Atticus Brent—as well as my fab daughters-in-law Kat Hodge Allegretti and Olivia Brent, and my brand-new grandson, Henry, with a special hug for Merit and Martin for the forty-two times I made them listen to parts of this book, and for my little Marta, who thinks everything I do is really very good. Each one of you is my only. There is one more person I wish to mention. I don’t know her name. Years ago, I was standing in the coffee line at a hotel where I was giving a speech when the woman in front of me dropped her book. I picked it up and asked if she was at the convention but she said, no, she came every week, to visit her son at the nearby prison where he was serving a long sentence. In a drug-induced psychosis, he’d killed the only girl he ever loved. This mom was a lovely person. He was her only child, her only relative on earth. And I wondered, could you still love the one you loved most in the world after he had done the worst thing? Then I realized, you would be the only one who could. How many times I thought of that woman I cannot say, but I put off writing a story so anguishing. Finally, however, it wouldn’t let me alone. But in this story, I exercised the artist’s right to correct history, as I wish, for her, I could correct life. Finally, this is a work of fiction. All the people and places in it, even the ones with real names, are portrayed here not as they actually exist, but as I imagined them. There are certain to be plenty of errors, and all of them are mine.