Praise for the Novels
of Yona Zeldis McDonough
You Were Meant for Me
“Intriguing, beautifully told, and keeps you guessing right to the last pages.”
—Sue Margolis, author of Best Supporting Role
“Another engrossing page-turner from an author who warms your heart even as she’s breaking it.”
—Toby Devens, author of Happy Any Day Now
“McDonough weaves her heartfelt story with a deft touch and delivers such quirky, endearing characters that you’ll wish they lived in your own neighborhood.”
—Holly Robinson, author of The Wishing Hill and Beach Plum Island
“A heartfelt, perfectly paced, and deeply satisfying story that explores the beauty and tenacity of love in all its forms.”
—Susan Meissner, author of A Fall of Marigolds
“Abounding with warmth and charm, You Were Meant for Me is a profoundly moving novel that explores the intensity of love and the fallout of heartbreak. It will capture your attention from the very first page and never let go.”
—Emily Liebert, author of When We Fall
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.
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Two of a Kind
“Beautiful and heartfelt. If you’ve ever longed for a second—or third—chance, this book’s for you.”
—Camille Noe Pagán, author of The Art of Forgetting
“A sumptuous romantic feast. Hilarious and heartwarming.”
—Adriana Trigiani, New York Times bestselling author of The Supreme Macaroni Company
“McDonough crafts a complex romantic tale of two families, skillfully developing multidimensional characters. . . . Readers will delight in this layered tale of friendship and love.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Honest and engrossing, this novel explores the intricacies of unexpected attraction, falling in love after losing a spouse, and combining two resistant families. The characters are complex and captivating, adding depth to an already engaging plot, which culminates in a surprising twist. Four and a half stars.”
—Romantic Times
“Every now and then I stumble upon a truly delightful piece of women’s fiction. Two of a Kind falls into that category . . . a one of a kind tale.”
—Fresh Fiction
A Wedding in Great Neck
“A touching, airy novel that manages to meld the concerns of family members spanning four generations into a delightfully well-written story. Readers who enjoy Mary Kay Andrews and Nora Roberts will relate to the Silverstein family as it embraces the deep wells of emotion that seem to surface only at major family events. With an authorial voice that switches deftly between impulsive teen-speak and a stately matriarch’s flashbacks, McDonough’s skill is to be commended. A tender, clever story with emotional heft.”
—Booklist
“In prose as sparkling as a champagne toast, McDonough’s delicious new novel gathers together one extraordinary wedding and two complicated families, and then shows how a single day can change everything. A funny, moving look at the bonds of love, the ties of family, and the yearning for happily ever after.”
—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow
“McDonough limns the ups and downs of family life with a grace that brings to mind Cathleen Schine at her best. . . . A wise and witty novel from an author at the top of her form.”
—Megan McAndrew, author of Dreaming in French
“Emotional and evocative, hilarious and harrowing . . . a must read for every mother and daughter who’ve ever dreamed of, fought over, and loved each other through a wedding day.”
—Pamela Redmond Satran, New York Times bestselling author of The Possibility of You
“Spirited, entertaining, and a delight to read . . . a penetrating glimpse into the lives of one particular family, with its myriad shifting alliances, disappointments, and secrets.”
—Lucy Jackson, author of Posh
“A playful yet touching parsing of the tugs and tangles of familial bonds. This breezy novel offers the reader graceful writing while exploring contemporary suburban turf with an anthropologist’s sharp eye.”
—Sally Koslow, author of Slouching Toward Adulthood:
Observations from the Not-So-Empty Nest
“Yona Zeldis McDonough is a born storyteller. . . . Wedding is a page-turner.”
—Laura Jacobs, author of Women About Town
“With her trademark wit and keen eye, Yona Zeldis McDonough has created a confection that is not only a page-turner but a poignant view of family life.”
—Adriana Trigiani
“An interesting take on the wedding novel that doesn’t place the bride and groom at the center. Fans of women’s fiction about weddings and family drama are sure to enjoy.”
—Library Journal
ALSO BY YONA ZELDIS MCDONOUGH
Two of a Kind
A Wedding in Great Neck
NAL Accent
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014
USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China
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A Penguin Random House Company
First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC
Copyright © Yona Zeldis McDonough, 2014
Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2014
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
McDonough, Yona Zeldis.
You were meant for me / Yona Zeldis McDonough.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-698-15655-5
1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Foundlings—Fiction. 3. Foster parents—Fiction.
4. Birthparents—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.C39Y77 2014
813'.6—dc23 2014016941
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.
Version_1
Contents
Praise
Also by YONA ZELDIS MCDONOUGH
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
; CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
About the Author
Conversation Guide
To my dear friend Patricia Grossman,
for sharing the story that inspired this novel
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For sharing their intelligence, insight, and expertise, I would like to thank Sally Schloss, Sophia Seidner, Marian Thurm, and Dan Turbow. Special thanks go to my always patient but eagle-eyed editor, Tracy Bernstein, and to Judith Ehrlich, whose creativity, passion, and devotion make her a rare gem among agents.
She wove her way—dizzily, giddily even—along the deserted boardwalk. At this hour, everything was shuttered and still; the cold March wind gusted around her, whipping her hair—peroxided almost white, somewhat darker blond roots sprouting at the scalp—into a frenzy. After the hideous ordeal of the last few hours, she felt blissfully light and free, as if she might actually levitate. Of course, her recent chemical infusion—chemical infusion, she liked the sound of that phrase and congratulated herself on having come up with it—was contributing to her euphoria. But that didn’t matter. A high was a high was a high. So what if she ached in ways she had not known it was possible to ache or that blood was still oozing down the insides of her thighs? No one would ever know; that was all behind her now.
She touched her fingers to the metal railing, glazed and slick from the rain that had only just stopped falling. But it was cold, so she pulled her hand away and kept moving. Bits of trash—grease-filmed food wrappers, empty soda cups—were lifted in the air when the wind blew and then dropped down again. She came to a bench on which sat a wet paper bag, its red and white stripes spotlighted by the streetlamp above. Reaching for the bag, she opened it to find the remains of someone’s meal: bacon cheeseburger, French fries in a sticky pool of ketchup. Suddenly, she was ravenous. When was the last time she had eaten? She flopped down on the bench and devoured the food. Had anything ever tasted so good? When it was gone, she was still hungry and began to look around. A brimming garbage can stood nearby, and right on top, as if waiting for her, was a brown bag, this one not even wet, precariously perched on the mound. Inside she found an almost-full container of coffee, cold, of course, but so what? It was light, sweet, and tasted like pure milky heaven as it went down. Next to that was an untouched jelly doughnut. She inhaled it and then licked her fingers, the mingled taste of salt, oil, and powdered sugar unimaginably delicious.
She slowed when she came to an opening in the railing. Beyond that opening lay the empty beach. How desolate it looked. And how beautiful. Veering onto the sand, which was packed and hard from the rain, she made her way toward the water’s edge. The black, foam-tipped waves rose, crested, and crashed onto the shore, wetting the tips of her boots and spraying her shins.
She smiled; the sea was playing with her, inviting her to play back. Humming a little, she danced around the shoreline, feet getting wetter and wetter, until she knelt, unzipped her boots, and then kicked them off entirely. The humming stopped. There was the cold, stinging shock of the water and coarse, gritty sand, but it was a good cold, a bracing, cleansing cold.
She lifted her arms to the sky. Her hands were hidden by the sleeves of her purple down coat; the coat, which she’d spied hanging from a hook in a restaurant and helped herself to, was way too big for her, but she had been drawn by the color—lurid, hideous even—and wore it anyway. She wished she still had that other coat, the camel hair with the fitted princess seams, velvet collar, and buttons like pieces of melted butterscotch. Where was it now anyway? She had thought it prissy at the time, but now she regretted its loss. The luxurious softness of it. The warmth.
A big wave came and soaked her to the waist. The sea was getting more insistent now, its call more urgent. Come in, it seemed to say. Come in. She waded farther out. The cold was punishing, but also invigorating; she welcomed it like purification, a baptism. Infants were baptized. . . . No. Don’t think of that. Don’t. But thought was stubborn, and she thrashed around in the water, trying to escape it. The next wave swelled. This one was the biggest of all, rising in a great, undulant curve. It lifted her high before it broke—and then sucked her cleanly under.
ONE
The supposedly hip place in Midtown was exactly the sort of place Miranda Berenzweig hated: cavernous, dim, and ear-splittingly loud. On one side of the room was a long, sleek bar made of highly polished black marble; on the other, a massive wall of water that rose from the floor like a tsunami. But since Bea was not only a hostess here but also dating the owner, their girl group had been lured by the promise of free food and drink. And look, here was Bea coming toward her.
“Hey,” she said and kissed Miranda on each cheek. “You’re the last one to arrive; everyone else is already ensconced. Follow me.” Miranda was happy to do exactly that; she needed a guide in this latter-day Hades. The percussive beat from the music reverberated in the cavity of her chest and the crush of bodies thwarted her at every turn. But Bea seemed unfazed. Up a flight of black marble steps whose wrought-iron railing pulsated with clusters of tiny white lights and down a short hall to a dark paneled door, which Bea pulled open with a flourish. “The VIP lounge,” she said. “Welcome!”
“We were getting worried about you,” Courtney said. She was five-eleven, and her sleek blond head towered above everyone else’s at the table.
“I was stuck at the office,” Miranda said, shrugging off her coat and sliding into the tufted velvet banquette. “You didn’t start without me, did you?”
“Of course not,” said Lauren, who looked at Bea. “You’ll be able to join us too? Even though you’re working?”
“My shift is just about to end,” Bea said.
Miranda had known Bea, along with Courtney and Lauren, since they had been freshmen at Bennington, and they still met every month or so to catch up on one another’s lives. Tonight Miranda had a piece of good news to share—her first in a while—and when Bea sat down, a tray of pale green appletinis following in her wake, she dove right in.
“You’re looking at the new online food editor of Domestic Goddess,” she announced. “We’re revamping the Web site and I’ll be responsible for all the food-related content.”
“Does this mean you won’t be handling the print edition anymore?” asked Lauren.
“No. The new job is in addition to, not instead of. So it’s a bump up.” Miranda took a sip of her drink—it was perfectly rendered—and smiled.
“Does it come with a raise?” Trust Courtney to bring up the subject of money.
“It most certainly does.” Miranda took a celebratory sip. Ooh, it was good. “A generous one.”
“Well, it’s high time,” said Courtney, who didn’t so much sip as gulp from her glass. “You can finally stop living like a church mouse. Maybe you’ll even move to Manhattan. You’re not doing yourself any good out in the hinterlands.”
Miranda went still. That was not a very tactful—or accurate—thing to say. She
was not poor; she was frugal, which was an entirely different thing. She was diligent about putting money away for the proverbial rainy day, a concept Courtney, with her penchant for Chanel and Christian Louboutin, did not understand. Of course, Courtney was the accessories editor at Soigné magazine; she would claim her indulgences were necessities. “I love Brooklyn,” she said.
“And you have such a great apartment, right near the park and all,” Bea, ever loyal, added.
“It is a nice apartment,” Courtney conceded. “But it’s just so far from everything.”
“Not the things that matter to me,” Miranda said quietly. But the conversation was already moving on, and everyone was congratulating Bea, who’d announced that she was now one of two finalists vying for the part of Maggie in an out-of-town production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Then Lauren told everyone how her youngest child, Max, had just been admitted to a highly regarded pre-K and they all toasted that with another round. Along with the drinks, platters of grilled shrimp, empanadas, and spicy, translucent noodles arrived.
“Here’s to finger painting!” sang out Bea.
Then it was Courtney’s turn. Miranda was seized with the small, petty hope that Courtney’s news did not involve her job; Courtney definitely had the more high-profile position—everyone knew Soigné—and she did not want her own promotion to be upstaged. There had always been a little thread of competition woven into her friendship with Courtney, something not present in her feelings for Bea or Lauren. But Courtney could also be her biggest booster, and it had been through a connection of Courtney’s that Miranda had landed at Domestic Goddess.
“Harris proposed!” Courtney sang out. “We’re getting married!”
“That’s wonderful!” Lauren and Bea started to clap.
“Mazel tov.” Miranda tried to sound genuine though she thought Harris, a pedantic lawyer with a receding hairline and a premature paunch, was hardly a prize.
“Now you’re the only one who’s unattached,” said Courtney to Miranda. “Girls, we have to find someone for Miranda. She’s too special to remain on the vine. Maybe Harris has a friend. I’m going to ask.”
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