by Lian Dolan
The sisters agreed to cooperate with a candid portrait of themselves through Serena’s eyes. “Let’s get this out there publicly so we can move forward privately,” Tricia said. Maggie wanted to know if they would be on the cover of the magazine and Liza insisted they mention the gallery in the article, adding, “We want our fifteen minutes to mean something.” Serena had headed back to DC after Labor Day to write the piece, but promised Liza, Maggie, and Tricia they could read it first. “No hatchet job. I envisioned that this piece would be about searching for William Sweeney. But now, I think it will be about finding you all. I am going to have to take a hard look at Maggie’s big Fourth of July announcement because that was not cool.”
Serena agreed to trade her share of the house for limited use of their father’s intellectual property in her work. She knew she wanted to use chunks of Never Not Nothing and Snap in her writing, which she now admitted was a memoir. Tricia knew if Serena had the rights to use the excerpts, the publication of her memoir would be more valuable, splashier. They worked out the deal on a cocktail napkin. One pink-hued summer afternoon on the patio of Willow Lane over a toast, the four sisters had taken their first steps forward together in unison.
The only hurdle left was Mitch and Birdie Tucker. Serena wanted her father’s blessing. She knew she had to write about her childhood and her feelings of disconnect, the DNA test and its revelations, her failure to talk to her birth father before his death, and the subsequent building of the relationship with her sisters. Serena, the writer, needed to put the events of last year down on paper to make any sense of it, but she wanted to avoid dragging her father through her truth. Serena was less concerned about her mother. Frankly, she was certain that Birdie would enjoy the notoriety. It would set her slightly above and to the left of the other members of the Hobe Sound Beach & Tennis Club. For Birdie Tucker, that was her preferred perch.
She flew to Florida to talk with her father in person. To Serena’s relief, her insurance-selling father, after a lifetime of high-level discretion with his clients and low-level deception from his wife, agreed to the entire plan, but with one caveat. He insisted that he and Birdie could reconnect with the Sweeney sisters and establish some kind of relationship before the media push began. “We want to get to know your sisters,” Mitch said so plainly to Serena that it broke her heart.
Serena had approached Liza, Maggie, and Tricia with the request, apologizing in advance for any anger it might trigger. “I hate to even ask, and in no way do I want to be disrespectful to your mother, but it seems to be important to my father to meet you all and reach détente,” Serena said one fall weekend in Southport when they gathered to do the photo shoot for the Vanity Fair piece. It was Maggie who answered for all the sisters when she threw up her hands and said, “What the hell? Why not?”
They all laughed.
“It’s not a terrible idea,” Tricia had said at the photo shoot, always thinking strategically before emotionally. “I know your parents have said that they’ll do no interviews or make any statements, but your mother and father will be the subject of a lot of attention, whether they want it or not. I think it will go a long way if we can extend an olive branch.”
And so it was that Birdie Tucker, the mom next door, the real Elspeth, and her understanding husband, Mitchell Tucker, model train collector, came to be standing in the front hall of Willow Lane to have Thanksgiving with the Sweeney sisters.
“What do you need me to do?” Serena asked as she entered the kitchen. After an hour of chitchat and crudités, the guests in the living room had settled into polite conversation verging on genuinely warm. Mitch found a kindred spirit in Anders, who also loved trains, and Cap, who focused on mutual friends and the latest news from the Yacht Club. Tricia and Raj organized the touch-football game, which included Tim, the twins, and both dogs in fresh bandanas. Liza passed hors d’oeuvres and continuously checked the oven to avoid getting stuck talking to the Tuckers for any length of time, thinking of Serena’s parents as faux in-laws, the awful kind, not the stalwarts that Lolly and Whit Senior had become. Plus, Birdie would always be the calculating “slender cypher” from Million Zillion to Liza, even though she’d never admit that to Serena.
But Maggie, who found Birdie to be a worthy adversary, rose to the occasion by exaggerating her position as artist-in-residence in Mill River and describing Tim’s brewpub like it was a Michelin-starred restaurant. “Bringing the Sweeney swagger,” Maggie whispered to Liza on one of her sweeps with the vegan stuffed mushrooms.
Looking around the room watching her old family and her new family engage, Serena relaxed for the first time in months.
But now, it was go time. The fifteen minutes prior to sitting at the table together that could make or break Thanksgiving. No one could manage the clock like Liza. While she had tried “inclusion” as a theme this year, allowing guests to bring the random food they wanted to eat, she wasn’t going to serve lukewarm mashed potatoes or underdone turkey to Birdie Tucker or anyone else. While Tim carved the grilled turkey and Raj carved the roasted turkey side by side in the dining room, Liza executed her serving plan.
In the kitchen, the three sisters were veterans of dozens of successful Thanksgivings together, where the side dishes made it to the table piping hot and the cranberry sauce was perfectly tart. Liza was pulling casserole dishes out of the oven and handing them off to Vivi and Fitz to run to the buffet table. Maggie, never one for taxing herself or diving into manual labor, was assigning the proper serving utensils to the dishes as they went out the door. Tricia was at the sink, loading up the dishwasher with first course plates and leftover pots and pans. She’d run the load during dinner then unload it after, so she could execute the same process again. She was a master dishwasher.
The three sisters moved with the kind of choreography that was the result of years of being in the kitchen together, putting out meals big and small. Serena stood in the middle of the organized bustle and asked again, “What do you need me to do?”
Liza, the general, was holding a baking dish of mashed sweet potatoes, hot out of the oven. She looked around the kitchen for a task for Serena. She spotted the shaved Brussels sprouts salad and pomegranate vinaigrette that Anders had contributed. “How are you at tossing salad?”
“Fairly competent,” Serena said, not sure what the standards were in the Sweeney household.
“We’ve never served salad before at Thanksgiving. We’ve always been root vegetable people. So, new frontier for us. Can you handle that?”
Liza pointed Serena in the direction of the wooden salad bowl in the cabinet.
Maggie handed her the silver tongs.
And Tricia said, “Don’t overdress it.”
Serena was assembling the salad when Liza had another thought. “When you’re done with that, can you put the place cards around the table? They’re on the end of the buffet, next to the candlesticks. That can be your job from now on.”
From now on. “Got it.”
Acknowledgments
One of the great delights of writing this book was the opportunity to work with my editor, Rachel Kahan. I’m honored to be part of the William Morrow imprint and I appreciate the support of Gena Lanzi, Alivia Lopez, Jennifer Hart, and Tavia Kowalchuk.
More thanks and gratitude to my agent, Yfat Reiss Gendell, who provides equal parts encouragement and tough love. Her team at Foundry Literary + Media is topnotch.
Writing is a solitary business which is why you need all the help you can get to get it done. I’m lucky to have circles of support. Thank you to the following:
My writing teacher and top-tier reader Erika Mailman for her honesty and her enthusiasm and writer Allison Singh Gee for pep talks, coffee, and commentary. You both made a difference.
My Southport Squad, Lucinda Sill Morrison, and Sheila Lahey Duffy, for being old friends, early readers and advocates.
My legal team, aka, my sister-in-law Mary McGuire Dolan, Esq. and my niece Meghan Dolan Saporita, Esq. for their c
ontract law advice and Fairfield County shopping knowledge, and my niece Katherine Dolan Nordenson for her encouragement. Also, Devon Palma of Campolo, Middleton & McCormick for her estate law expertise.
My fellow Roger Ludlow Flying Tigers and longtime friends, Alyssa Burger Isreal, and Elizabeth Csapo Greene, for driving me around Connecticut and for making the best playlists. My Tuesday Night Mahjong Crew of Robbie Ross Finnegan, Ryan Newman, and Peggy Flynn who provided emotional support and snacks. My Satellite Sister and the original Sweeney sister, Sarah Sweeney, for loaning me her last name.
My first writing home, Prospect Park Books in Pasadena, especially Colleen Dunn Bates, publisher/friend/neighbor for a decade of support. Cheers to the women of PPB, including Patty O’Sullivan, Dorie Bailey, and Caitlin Ek. My spiritual home, Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, for being the best indie bookstore on the block. I’m grateful for booksellers like Allison Hill and the entire Vroman’s staff. My writing retreat hosts, Writing Between The Vines, founder Marcy Gordon and the folks at Horse & Plow Vineyard in Sonoma County for providing solitude and wine at a critical time in the book’s creation.
My bookish Satellite Sisterhood—the readers, the listeners, the book clubs, the service organizations and all the women who stopped me in the produce section of the grocery store to ask me when my next book was coming out—for keeping me at the keyboard.
My four sisters, three brothers and their families, I promise all the names have been changed. Remember, no free copies.
Finally, my husband, Berick Treidler, and my sons, Brookes and Colin. Thank you for everything. Every. Little. Thing.
About the Author
LIAN DOLAN is a writer and podcaster. She is the host of Satellite Sisters, an award-winning podcast she created with her four real-life sisters. She is the author of two bestselling novels, Helen of Pasadena and Elizabeth the First Wife, and the coauthor of two collections of essays, Satellite Sisters’ UnCommon Senses and You’re the Best: A Celebration of Friendship. She has written columns for O, The Oprah Magazine and Working Mother and is currently a columnist for Pasadena Magazine. A graduate of Pomona College, she lives in Pasadena, California, with her husband, two sons, and a big German shepherd.
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Also by Lian Dolan
Helen of Pasadena
Elizabeth the First Wife
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the sweeney sisters. Copyright © 2020 by Lian Dolan. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover illustration by Jessie Ford
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition APRIL 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-290906-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-290904-6
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