Exclusive Excerpt from THE HALF OF IT by Juliette Fay
We are delighted to feature an exclusive excerpt from THE HALF OF IT by Juliette Fay!
THE HALF OF IT
Fay beautifully navigates the layers of family and friendship, the great loves we lose, the imperfect marriages we manage with grace, and the unexpected miracles that will astonish us.”
—Randy Susan Meyers, international bestselling author of Waisted
One perfect night. Forty years of buried hurt. One chance to make it right. Can the past ever be fixed? With humor, heart, and grace, USA Today bestselling author Juliette Fay delivers a poignant, propulsive novel about settling the past, rekindling lost friendships, and discovering love when you least expect it.
“I’m wondering if we can be friends again.”
When 58-year-old Helen Spencer reviews her life, what she sees are the mistakes. Over the years, things seemed to go sideways incrementally, one little wrong decision at a time. She can even pinpoint where it all started to go awry: a wonderous, romantic night in the woods her senior year of high school with a boy named Cal Crosby. A night she would soon work hard to forget.
Forty years, one marriage, three children, and one grandbaby later, suddenly there he is—Cal Crosby!—right in front of her with grandchildren of his own in tow. The chance to finally get some answers and sort out what happened is within reach. But Helen would much prefer to keep that night and all the fury, hurt, and sorrow that followed tightly locked away where she doesn’t have to face it.
Cal Crosby, however, is ready to talk. He has no idea of the can of worms he’s about to open. In fact, he doesn’t know the half of it.
EXCERPT
Chapter 3
2021
“What? Wait a minute …” says Cal Crosby, fumbling around in the breast pocket of his chamois shirt. He pulls out a pair of cheap readers—possibly women’s, it looks like, with the fake gold trim at the hinges—and pushes them onto his face.
Helen waits, suddenly regretful that she’s outed herself. It was fun to watch him muddle through with the kids and reveal little tidbits, like an apparent falling out with his daughter (Daughter? Cal fucking Crosby is someone’s dad?) without the greasy wad of past events clogging up the works. She was the proverbial fly on the wall. Now she’s a fly on flypaper.
He studies her for only a second before his face freezes in a sort of controlled panic: shock sprinkled liberally with fear … and something else, like his face can’t make up its mind … it almost looks like relief.
“Helen,” he says.
“Hi,” she says.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Holy shit.”
They both turn toward Logan, anticipating his censure, but he gazes up into the trees with what Helen calls the No-Nap Stare. A slow blink. Then another. He’ll be asleep in her arms any second now.
Cal cuts his eyes warily back to Helen. “How’ve you been?”
If that isn’t the stupidest question she’s ever heard.
“Good,” she says. “You?”
He smiles, shaking his head in wonder. “Um … good?”
Damn those soft blue eyes. She can’t help but give a little smile (a cool one, she hopes, or at least not warm). “Great.”
“Hold on. When did you know it was me?”
When you stopped crying, she wants to say. But what is she, a playground bully? A scorned teenage girl? Grow up, she tells herself. Be you now, not you then.
“After things settled down a little.”
“But you didn’t say anything.”
“It was kind of fun to wait and see if you’d figure it out.”
“Which I didn’t because I’m half blind.”
“Nice glasses, by the way.”
He reaches up and pulls the readers off to look at them. “Ah, Jesus, they’re my wife’s.”
Cal Crosby’s wife. Well, what did she expect.
“Will she be upset that you took them?”
“Nah, she’s got a million of them.” He puts them back on and gazes at her. “You look great, by the way. I think that’s what really threw me off. You do not look my age.”
“Yeah, I do. And I am.”
It happened, she suddenly has an urge to say. I am that girl.
“Helen Iannucci,” he murmurs.
And then it’s too real. Him, her. That time, and all that came after.
She was tougher once. A couple of years ago, before the pandemic, maybe, she could have swept it back under the very thick, very dusty rug where it belonged. But she was laid bare by the virus’s unrelenting grind. Losing her mother, then Jim. So much time spent alone, reviewing. It was the reviewing that had gotten to her. And suddenly there isn’t a rug big enough. For any of it.
“I …um …” Logan is sleeping now, and Helen begins to slowly, gently shift him onto the bench between them. “I should get back. She’ll be up any minute, starving, and I didn’t bring any food. I don’t usually stay out this long.”
That isn’t true. On beautiful days like this sometimes she stays out for hours, hiking through the woods, the baby happily babbling on her back. But she woke up in a funk—this is becoming more and more common—and forgot everything, even a spare diaper. She just put the baby in the pack and walked out.
Cal watches her do this. “Oh … sure … okay, thanks for your help. Don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.”
“You would have worked it out. You seem pretty good with them.”
“I’m learning.”
She smiles. “Aren’t we all.”
She stands to go, and he says, “Helen. It was … I mean, it’s really good to see you. I’m glad I know how you turned out.”
You don’t know, she thinks. Not the half of it.
“Same,” she says, and lights one last brief smile before she turns and walks back down the path.
From THE HALF OF IT by Juliette Fay. Copyright © 2023 by Juliette Fay. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
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Juliette Fay is the bestselling author of seven novels, including THE HALF OF IT, CATCH US WHEN WE FALL, CITY OF FLICKERING LIGHT and THE TUMBLING TURNER SISTERS, a USA Today bestseller and Costco Pennie’s Book Club Pick. Previous novels include THE SHORTEST WAY HOME, one of Library Journal’s Top 5 Best Books of 2012: Women’s Fiction; DEEP DOWN TRUE, short-listed for the 2011Women’s Fiction award by the American Library Association; and SHELTER ME, a 2009 Massachusetts Book Award “Must-Read Book” and an Indie Next pick.
Juliette is a graduate of Boston College and Harvard University, and lives in Massachusetts with her family. Visit her at www.juliettefay.com, Facebook: Juliette Fay author, Twitter: @juliettefay, and Instagram: Juliette_Fay.
Category: On Writing
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