A Place For Us Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Liza Gyllenhaal So Near

  “Intriguing . . . a real page-turner!”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Where is the truth in the midst of a family tragedy? Liza Gyllenhaal plumbs the complexity of human emotions in this wonderful novel. With sensitivity and compassion, she creates characters that will pull at your heart on their journey through grief. I loved reading So Near, a truly believable and compelling story.”

  —Katharine Davis, author of A Slender Thread

  Local Knowledge

  “A bighearted debut.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “This is a book to savor. . . . Selling real estate is the surface story, but as you peel back the layers throughout the chapters you realize it is about family relationships, old friends, and new friends.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A damn fine novel. . . . Gyllenhaal truly makes the Berkshire setting jump to life. And she is terrific with character—I particularly admired the way she wove personality into action—so that the behavior of her characters in her setting seems natural, unforced, and often really compelling. In a way, this is what really makes a novel like Local Knowledge exciting—I constantly felt as if I knew the people on the page, so I was captivated by their story. . . . I really look forward to her next novel.”

  —John Katzenbach, bestselling author of What Comes Next

  “Gripping and deeply perceptive, this powerful debut novel reveals the pleasures and struggles of true friendship and the painful decisions we often make for acceptance and love. Small-town life and work are rendered in vivid detail, as are the memorable characters, who come alive in the hands of a gifted new writer.”

  —Ben Sherwood, author of Charlie St. Cloud

  “A powerful and deeply moving novel about the lies we tell ourselves, the moral corners we cut, and the loved ones we betray to get what we want. Gyllenhaal has X-ray vision into the human heart and a sharp eye for contemporary mores and social maneuvering. She knows women and men and children, and pins them to the page with some of the most dazzling prose I’ve read in a long time.”

  —Ellen Feldman, author of Next to Love

  “Liza Gyllenhaal’s new novel invites instant immersion. . . . With insight and sensitivity, Liza Gyllenhaal deftly draws the reader of Local Knowledge down through the layers and layers of intimate entanglements her characters have with each other, the land, and the new and old ways of life. I highly recommend Local Knowledge to anyone who loves good writing, a good story, and hopes to come away from a book with a deeper understanding of others’ lives and choices.”

  —Tina Welling, author of Cowboys Never Cry

  “Enjoyable and intriguing. . . . Gyllenhaal has a magnificent grasp of small-town dynamics. . . . Gyllenhaal breaks the mold of expectation by weaving in complex interactions over years of shared economic and emotional struggles. That weaving is both figurative and literal. The alternating story line is far more effective than [the] typical flashback passages of many novels. The background chapters flow beautifully with the present and explain the long-standing tensions among Maddie, Paul, and Luke. . . . [T]hrough Gyllenhaal’s superb skill there is an almost poetic quality to how the events of the past tie into the fragile relationships of the present.”

  —Jody Kordana, Berkshire Eagle

  “How accomplished this first novel is. . . . A rich, authentic read . . . with a tightly focused cast of characters once again proving the old adage that less is more . . . a timely enough message if ever there was one.”

  —Berkshire Living

  Written by today’s freshest new talents and selected by New American Library, NAL Accent novels touch on subjects close to a woman’s heart, from friendship to family to finding our place in the world. The Conversation Guides included in each book are intended to enrich the individual reading experience, as well as encourage us to explore these topics together—because books, and life, are meant for sharing.

  Visit us online at www.penguin.com.

  ALSO BY LIZA GYLLENHAAL

  So Near

  Local Knowledge

  A Place for Us

  LIZA GYLLENHAAL

  NAL Accent

  Published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 707 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3008, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books, Rosebank Office Park, 181 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North 2193, South Africa

  Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, March 2013

  Copyright © Liza Gyllenhaal Bennett, 2013

  Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA: Gyllenhaal, Liza.

  A place for us/Liza Gyllenhaal.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-451-23923-5

  1. Families—Massachusetts—Fiction. 2. Rich people—Fiction. 3. Life change events—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3607.Y53P58 2013

  813'.6—dc23 2012036845

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  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, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  For W.E.B., as always

  Contents

  Praise for Liza Gyllenhaal

  Also by Liza Gyllenhaal

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part Three

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Auth
or

  Conversation Guide

  A Conversation With Liza Gyllenhaal

  Questions For Discussion

  Part One

  1

  After all this time it shouldn’t have made a damned bit of difference, Brook Bostock told herself. She and Michael had been married for fifteen years, for heaven’s sake! Happy years, she told herself, as she stood there staring blankly out the kitchen window. She barely noticed the morning snow sifting like confectioners’ sugar over the lightly browned back lawn. Or the way the sun, luminous behind the clouds, glazed the distant hills an icy pink. Her world had gone suddenly gray. She’d ended her call to Alice, but still held the phone in her hands, cradled against her chest. It always took her a while to register pain. Her first reaction to bad news was usually: It’s fine. I’ll be fine. Even on that horrible Tuesday when she’d watched the collapsing World Trade Center towers from their sixth-floor loft on Warren Street. She remembered pulling Tilly into her arms and whispering aloud to the darkening morning: It’s fine. We’re fine. We’re all going to be just fine.

  She sighed now, trying not to cry. It hurt! Oh, how it hurt. And it was so ridiculous! After all these years. All their wonderful times together. Michael. Liam. Tilly. The whole life they had built as a family in Barnsbury, Massachusetts. And all it had taken was a couple of words from her business partner and best friend for everything to be cast into doubt. They’d been talking about David, Alice’s soon-to-be third husband and perhaps tenth great, undying love, and the engagement–cum–holiday party that Brook was throwing in their honor that night at Alice’s weekend place in Rhinebeck.

  “I just really, really need for it to work this time,” Alice had told her. “And I’m picking up these weird vibes. Like the fairy dust is starting to wear off—and David’s beginning to see the real me.”

  “Which is okay,” Brook had replied. “Which is great. Because the real you is such a wonderful person.”

  How many times had they had this conversation over the course of their friendship? It was all part of what Brook saw as Alice’s self-fulfilling roller coaster of romantic failure: the initial ridiculously high hopes, followed by the exhilarating sexual twists and turns, giving way to the ups and downs of everyday life and the gradual leveling off to boredom, leading up to a clickety-clack of suspicion and distrust, ending with a teeth-rattling descent into screaming recriminations and the screeching of brakes. Ride over. And it worried Brook that Alice was already starting to foresee the relationship’s demise, before most of their friends had even had a chance to get to know David and Alice as a couple.

  “Yeah, well, your own fairy dust probably won’t ever wear off. Money doesn’t get stretch marks.”

  “Alice!” Brook said, shocked. Though they were able to kid occasionally about the vast differences in their social and financial standing, for the most part they avoided talking about Brook’s trust fund. It had bankrolled their business in the beginning and helped keep them afloat during the lean months after 9/11. But R.S.V.P. was firmly on its own financial feet now, and Brook was so proud of the event-planning business she and Alice had started together a few years out of college. It was a bad sign—one of desperation on Alice’s part, really—that she would drag such a sensitive issue into her own marital worries.

  “Sorry. I’m a nervous wreck. Pay no attention to me. You know Michael’s always loved you for yourself alone, and not your golden hair—or whatever.”

  “Yellow hair,” Brook told her, “if you mean the Yeats poem. ‘Only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone, and not your yellow hair.’” She and Alice had first met in a European literature course at Vassar. It had always been a minor bone of contention between them that Brook could quote long passages of poetry by heart and that Alice had the memory of a sieve. But why had Brook felt the need to flaunt that right then? If only she’d been more sensitive. Maybe if she’d been less harried, she would have taken a more supportive tone. But she had a hundred things to do before she and Michael could leave for Rhinebeck that afternoon. And Christmas was only three days away! She had lists and yellow stickies all over her workroom off the kitchen.

  The truth was, she should never have volunteered to put on this party for Alice right before the holidays. It occurred to her that it had been her way of helping to prop up Alice’s sagging confidence in David. That she, too, really, really needed Alice’s third marriage to work. She was mulling this over and at the same time mentally ticking through her immediate to-dos—sheets for Liam’s bedroom, cash for Phoebe, Tilly’s supper—so she only half heard what Alice said next. It took her a second or two to register it fully.

  “. . . when I told him that night what it meant to be a Pendleton and he just kind of cocked his head and smiled.”

  “What? You told him that night?” And she’d felt her jaw tighten and her whole body stiffen as if bracing for a blow. Because there had been only one that night for Brook and Michael. The first night. The night they saw each other across a crowded benefit auction R.S.V.P. was handling and sensed instantly they were meant to be together. Before either knew anything at all about the other. It had just been some kind of kismet, they both agreed later. Something cosmic and beyond their control.

  “Oh, please, don’t sound that way.”

  “I don’t think I’m sounding any particular way. It’s just that you know perfectly well I thought that he didn’t know anything about my background. And for a month you listened to me go on and on about how wonderful it was—finally—not to have my family play any kind of a role in—”

  “Yes, I heard you go on and on. Because you’ve always been a total nutcase on the subject. And, yes, I let you think what you wanted, because it was pretty clear to me how you felt about the guy. Plus, I could tell Michael was totally into you, too. And he still is. It’s disgusting how happy the two of you still are! So what’s the big deal?”

  Of course, Alice was right. This was not a big deal. Unless Brook allowed herself to buy into Alice’s unhappiness. Because that’s all this was about, really: Alice being nervous and self-doubting and needing to have everyone around her share in her angst. In fact, she might very well be working herself up into the kind of highly volatile state that Brook had seen many times before. During these episodes, Alice tended to suck in—and then spit out—anything that got in her way. Well, Brook, for one, intended to stay well clear of Alice’s destructive path.

  She put the receiver back onto its base and took another deep breath. The pain seemed to be easing a little. How stupid, she told herself. Silly to get so worked up. After all these wonderful years.

  • • •

  “You’re late,” Tilly said as she climbed into the backseat of the Volvo wagon. Brook’s ten-year-old daughter dropped her ice skates into the cargo area and pulled off the bright red wool hat that made her look a little like Pippi Longstocking. Her fine light brown hair floated around her face. Brook reached over the seat back to tuck a loose strand behind her daughter’s left ear and—zap!—an electrical charge snapped at her fingertips.

  “Ouch!” Tilly said, pulling back. “What’s the matter? Do I look weird?” She had Michael’s dark brown, luminous eyes.

  “No,” Brook said, facing forward again. She had to keep reminding herself that Tilly didn’t much like being touched these days. Though her daughter was naturally kind and tolerant, Brook could feel the way Tilly froze when she hugged her in front of her friends, or even when she kissed her good night in front of no one. It was about growing up, Brook knew. Claiming her independence. It was surely a good sign, a testament to Tilly’s maturity, but Brook couldn’t help that it made her feel sad. Especially today, when she needed someone to hold—or, perhaps more truthfully, someone to hold her.

  “I have to swing around to the bank,” Brook said. “Should we stop at Louie’s and pick up one of those frozen pizzas you like? Or I have turkey burgers ready if you and Phoebe would prefer those.”

  “Oh, that’s right!” Ti
lly said. “We’re having a sleepover!”

  Though Phoebe Lansing was, technically, Tilly’s babysitter, Brook had long since stopped referring to her in that way. Not only would Tilly consider the term grossly inaccurate, but Phoebe’s role in the Bostock household was larger and more amorphous than that. The Bostocks had a regular cleaning lady, but Brook enjoyed working with Phoebe on special household projects, such as repapering the shelves in the linen closet or reorganizing the butler’s pantry. When Brook entertained on a large scale, Phoebe would help out in the kitchen. And she filled in occasionally when Brook needed extra hands for R.S.V.P. events in the area.

  A local Barnsbury girl who had been one of Liam’s classmates in elementary school, Phoebe always seemed to be there when Brook needed her. And, though she’d never really dwelled on the subject, Brook sensed that Phoebe looked up to her. Or, perhaps more accurately, looked to her for guidance in certain areas. Phoebe’s parents were divorced and, an only child, she lived in a clapboarded Cape Cod cottage in town with her mother, an administrative assistant at the local high school. Wanda Lansing was perfectly nice, Brook felt, but there was something a little beaten-down and unhappy about her. Yet Phoebe was such an energetic and positive person! She was like Brook in that way; optimism seemed to be Phoebe’s default setting.

  “Phoebe will just be staying until Liam gets home—so it won’t actually be a sleepover.”

  “When’s he getting back?” Tilly asked as Brook turned right onto Route 31 out of the Deer Mountain school complex.

  “Late tonight. Carey’s brother is driving them up. Liam said they’d stop somewhere for dinner along the way, so they won’t get here until eleven or so, I guess. I’ve made up the third-floor guest room for them.” Just thinking about her son’s return automatically made Brook feel better. She knew she probably worried about Liam too much for her own good—not to mention his. But she had reason to worry more than even Michael realized. And she couldn’t help but feel that Liam was truly safe only when she had him within shouting distance.