The Secret of Joy

IT’S NOT A SECRET ANYMORE …
MELISSA SENATE’S THE SECRET OF
JOY
IS WINNING RAVES!

“A wonderfully heartfelt story about hope, possibilities, and the yearning for real connections.
The Secret of Joy
will take you on a much-needed vacation, while sneaking vital life lessons in when you’re not looking.”

—Caprice Crane, international bestselling
author of
Family Affair

“
The Secret of Joy
is a heartwarming story that hits all the right notes. Senate has you cheering for more.”

—Cara Lockwood,
USA Today
bestselling
author of
I Do (But I Don’t)

Critics adore the bestselling novels of
Melissa Senate

“Smart, funny …”—
USA Today

“Warm, witty.”—
Booklist

“Endearing.”—
The New York Post

“An absolute delight.”—
The Daily Buzz

“Tantalizing … entertaining.”—
Publishers Weekly

“Cheeky.”—
Newsweek

“Fresh and lively.”—
The Boston Globe

The Secret of Joy
is also available as an eBook

THE SECRET OF JOY

A NOVEL

MELISSA SENATE

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 © 2009 by Melissa Senate

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

First Downtown Press trade paperback edition November 2009

DOWNTOWN PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Senate, Melissa.
   The secret of joy / Melissa Senate.—1st Downtown Press trade pbk. ed.
      p. cm.
   1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Maine—Fiction. 3. Chick lit. I. Title.
   PS3619.E658S43 2009
   813’.6—dc22                                                               2009020034

ISBN 978-1-4391-0717-1
ISBN 978-1-4391-6659-8 (ebook)

For my mother

acknowledgments

I wrote this book during one upside-down year and have many to thank for their support and good cheer. (Wow, that was unintentionally Seussesque.)

First, to my editor, Jennifer Heddle, for
everything
, including that amazing editorial letter, the perfect title, and the cover of all covers.

To superagents Kim Witherspoon and Alexis Hurley of Ink-Well Management, for assuring me (and quite rightly so!) that I’d find a happy new home.

To my family, for their willingness to drive eight hours to Maine with dogs and small children—and extra thanks to my mother, for journeying with me to Wiscasset one beautiful summer day.

To my friends Lee Nichols Naftali and Elizabeth Hope, for all the coffee and Indian food and
talking
.

To Adam Kempler, for always giving me the extra time I needed to write.

To the administration, staff, and teachers at my son’s school:
Catherine Glaude, Raelene Bean, Jen Beaudoin, Cheryl McGilvery, Meg Pachuta, Valle Gooch and Margi Moran. Your above-and-beyond kindness and generosity enabled me to know my son’s heart, mind, and psyche (and hip) were being well cared for during a very tough year of wheelchairs, casts, braces, and sitting out. I could not have lost myself in a fictional world and written this novel without that comfort.

And to Max, who inspires me every minute of every day. You are the definition of a great kid.

THE SECRET OF JOY

prologue

When Rebecca Strand was five years old, she saved her money—quarters from drying dishes, a dollar bill for the one tooth she’d lost so far—to buy a sister. She had in mind someone like her best friend Charlotte’s nine-year-old sister, Olivia, nice enough to French-braid their hair and teach them how to play Miss Mary Mack, yet tough enough to chase down the block bully who twice tried to pee away their chalk-drawn hopscotch board.

Rebecca had brought her Curious George piggy bank to her parents for help in counting what she had. “Do I have enough?” she’d asked. “Grandma Mildred said kids cost money.”

Her mother, unaware that Rebecca
did
have a sister (no one knew, except Rebecca’s father, of course), sat Rebecca on her lap and told her about the birds and the bees. That yes, kids cost money, but the reason Rebecca didn’t have a sister—or a brother—was because God hadn’t blessed them with one.

Now, more than twenty years later, Rebecca tried to remember if her father had looked pained as her mother explained what God and biology had to do with each other. If he’d excused himself from the room. Or if he’d just stood there, smiling as always.

one

The moment Rebecca did learn she had a half sister she never knew existed—a twenty-six-year-old half sister—she was twirling (just one twirl, really) in a hand-me-down wedding gown and her beat-up Dansko clogs in her father’s hospital room. The dress wasn’t hers. It belonged to Michael’s mother. And though Rebecca wasn’t entirely sure she loved Michael Whitman, her boyfriend of two years, she adored his larger-than-life mother with her
Real Housewives
overly long blond hair, showy jewelry, and supersized heart. According to Rebecca’s married friend Charlotte, being fond of a man’s mother ranked high up on the pro side for marrying him.

Glenda Whitman had driven close to two hours from Connecticut today when she heard that Rebecca’s father had taken a turn for the worse. She’d whisked Rebecca off for a quick bite because “I know you need your lunch hour to see your dad,” then mentioned that the dress bag she was schlepping around was for Rebecca, that maybe it was time she and Michael got serious about being serious. Rebecca
had unzipped just the top and saw something very white and very satiny.

“I’m making a statement,” Glenda had said, laying the garment bag over Rebecca’s arm before kissing her on both cheeks and dashing off on her heels with a tossed back, “I’ve always wanted a daughter just like you.”

I once had a mother just like you
, Rebecca had thought. In your face in a good way. Funny, kind, bighearted. A know-it-all who really did know it all.
“She was a menschy yenta,”
her Jewish father always said of her Christian mother.
“The best kind.”

Her mom would have loved Glenda Whitman. Michael, not so much.

With the garment bag weighing a thousand pounds on her arm, Rebecca went to NewYork-Presbyterian to see her father. The hospital was like a palace, all atriums and marble and glass-enclosed wings overlooking the East River. She hated the place.

“Fancy shindig tonight?” her father whispered, eyeing the dress bag. His voice, once so radio-announcer strong, was now nothing more than a hoarse whisper. He lay in the standard-issue cot, IVs and poles aplenty, beeping constant, a Mets cap covering what was left of his sparse brown hair. There were flowers in vases everywhere, so many that they lined the wall underneath the window.

“Michael’s mother is making a statement,” Rebecca said with a bit of a smile, a bit of a shrug, smoothing the down comforter over her father’s slight form. “She thinks it’s time we got engaged.” She rolled her eyes, then pulled a pair of
SmartWool socks from her tote bag. “I got you the best socks, Dad. They are so warm.”

He smiled and tried to kick his feet out from under the comforter, but the lightweight down barely moved. That was how little strength he had left. As she slipped the thick blue and white marled socks on her dad’s skinny feet, he said, “Try on the dress for me, Becs. This’ll be my only chance to see my baby girl in a wedding gown.”

She kept the
Oh, God, do I have to?
to herself. Her father had days, maybe a week, left on this earth, and if he wanted to see his only child in a long white dress, so be it.

Days left
. The relentless truth of it made Rebecca burst into tears everywhere since she’d gotten the news of his collapse three days ago—at work with clients, in the supermarket while checking eggs for cracks, on the subway, and this morning while watching a man she barely knew from her apartment building hoist his two-year-old daughter onto his shoulders as they headed out.

“Be right back,” she said, tears pooling in her eyes. There was no “Be right back” with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She could be right back in a split second and he could be gone.

She went into the small bathroom and took off her Whitman, Goldberg & Whitman–approved gray pantsuit and slipped into the wedding gown. It was one size too big, but beautiful, simple, perfect. A strapless princess dress, not too poufy, not too plain. She stepped back into her comfy commuting clogs to make herself a little taller (she was only five feet two) so that the gown wouldn’t trail on the well-worn tile floor.

She stared at herself in the mirror above the sink, almost
surprised to see she looked exactly the same. Yup, there was the same shoulder-length, wavy, chestnut-brown hair. Same pale brown eyes. Same fair skin, paler these past few days, since her father had been admitted and would not be discharged.

She felt like the gown was getting tighter, squeezing her.

“Becs?” her dad called.

I do, I don’t, I do, I don’t
, she thought as she came out. She should want to marry Michael Whitman, handsome young partner at Whitman, Goldberg & Whitman (not that he’d asked). But every special occasion, holiday, and birthday, she held her breath until she opened his gift and breathed a sigh of relief at the doorstopper edition of
How to Be a More Effective Paralegal
or the charm bracelet with charms that made no sense to her. A tiny silver tennis racquet? Rebecca had never even held a tennis racquet. Last month, for her twenty-eighth birthday, she’d almost hyperventilated over the small jewelry box he’d handed her until she’d opened it to find exquisite diamond stud earrings, a half-carat each.

“You’re beautiful, Becs,” her father whispered, but then his gaze strayed over to the wall, his attention on the little poster of fire-safety rules. He turned back to her. “You should know that you’re—” He clamped his mouth shut, then let out a deep breath. “That you’re not going to be all alone when I go.” His voice cracked, and he coughed, and Rebecca sat down on the edge of his bed and took his hand.

“Michael’s a good guy.” Her dad didn’t need to know about her ambivalence. Michael
was
a good guy.

“I don’t mean him.” He burst into tears and covered his face with his hands. “Rebecca—I …”

“Dad?”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he said, dabbing at his eyes. “I’m just so damned emotional. Pour me some eggnog, will you?”

Rebecca headed over to the minifridge. It was only mid-September, but eggnog had started appearing in the supermarket along with the giant bags of Halloween candy that Rebecca easily ignored. As if she could pop fun-size 3 Musketeers bars in her mouth when her father was dying.