Reunion

THERESE FOWLER

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

Copyright © Therese Fowler 2008

Therese Fowler asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560247

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2009 ISBN: 9780007287635

Version: 2018-05-29

This, my second novel, was so much a labor of love: Love for writing and for telling a story that engaged my imagination so thoroughly; love for my new profession and all the excellent people who publish my work; love for the readers whose responses to my first novel, Souvenir, have humbled me beyond words . . . To those readers I send my most heartfelt thanks.

Second novels are, they say, the hardest to write. The quandary is in deciding how similar the second book should be to the first. I decided to approach the matter much the way a singer might when selecting which songs to record for a new CD. Listeners don’t want the same song on every track, but they do need to recognize the sound as uniquely that artist’s. Consider this book my track #2, a contemporary, slightly up-tempo offering that I hope will be as captivating as readers and reviewers say the first track is.

I have to thank my lovely UK editor Maxine Hitchcock, as well as the entire HarperCollins/Avon team, for their faith in my taking this approach.Without Maxine, I would not have UK readers waiting to see whether this book measures up.

Linda Marrow,my US editor, has earned my unwavering respect, affection, and gratitude for her expert editorial guidance and overall wonderfulness.

Speaking of wonderful: my agent,Wendy Sherman, is precisely that. She and Jenny Meyer, who handles most of my foreign rights, are an author’s dream team. It’s my good fortune to be in their capable hands.

I treasure the camaraderie and support of my writing pals, who know better than anyone else the struggles that take place at the keyboard and behind the scenes.

Most of all, I treasure and thank my enthusiastic family (and not only for the unpaid publicity efforts!). My husband Andrew and our four boys get both the pleasures and the pain of living with a “creative type,” and seem to love me just the same.

For Andrew, who reminds me that things always turn out pretty much the way they’re supposed to.

Love to faults is always blind,Always is to joy inclin’d, Lawless, wing’d, and unconfin’d, And Breaks all chains from every mind.

William Blake

CoverTitle PageCopyrightEpigraphProloguePart IChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelvePart IIChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenPart IIIChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeChapter Twenty-FourChapter Twenty-FiveChapter Twenty-SixChapter Twenty-SevenChapter Twenty-EightChapter Twenty-NinePart IVChapter ThirtyChapter Thirty-OneChapter Thirty-TwoChapter Thirty-ThreeChapter Thirty-FourChapter Thirty-FiveChapter Thirty-SixChapter Thirty-SevenEpilogueAbout the AuthorBy The Same AuthorAbout the Publisher

Her name was Harmony Blue. Harmony Blue Kucharski,not Forrester, as it ought to have been by then. Unmarried,nineteen, she lay in her narrow bed in the smallest of therundown rental’s bedrooms. Her groans had already drivenone of her housemates away, leaving only two people to tendher: the midwife, whose name at the time was MeredithJones, and a teenage girl who wanted to be known as Bat.

“I’m looking out for you,” Bat said, sitting on the bed’s edgeand holding her friend’s clammy hand.

Like all of the fledgling adults who came and went here,Bat was hardly capable of looking out for herself. But if herwords had little impact—the young woman hardly cared what