One

A Piece of Normal
by Sandi Kahn Shelton

Dear Lily ...

At age thirty-four, Lily Brown has her life just the way she likes it. And what's not to like? She's got a great job as an advice columnist for the local newspaper, an adorable four-year-old son, and an ex-husband, Teddy, who still thinks she's wonderful. She even lives in the same beach house where she grew up, with a great view of Long Island Sound and plenty of beach roses to smell.

So what if she won't let herself date anyone until she finds a new girlfriend for Teddy, who happens to still be hung up on her? So what if she hasn't changed a thing in her parents' house, even twelve years after their tragic deaths? So what if it's been ten years since she's heard from her younger sister, Dana, who stormed out of the house in a rage when she was a teenager? Lily is fine.

But it's funny how life has a way of upsetting even the most perfectly laid-out plans, and when one night Lily finds herself painting ghastly orange highlights into her lovely auburn hair, even she suspects that she's been in something of a rut. And then, when her long-lost little sister shows up, bringing with her the fun and drama and hell-raising spontaneity Lily has missed, her life suddenly takes a turn for the unexpected.

To Lily's chagrin, Dana's energy seems to enthrall everyone, especially Teddy. As the tension between the sisters escalates, Dana reveals decades-old family secrets that she's been burdened with all these years, and Dear Lily must heed her own advice about accepting life's messiness and chaos.

With her trademark blend of sparkling wit and characters you can't forget, Sandi Kahn Shelton tells a compelling and universal story of two sisters who learn what they need to let go of, and what they have to hold on to as tightly as they can.

Chapter 1

Speaking of kisses, I know this may sound weird, but in the past month, I have set up three first dates for Teddy, my ex-husband. I'm not sure he's had any kisses — restorative or otherwise — from any of the three women, but at least on tonight's date, he called to say the woman actually liked what he calls his First Date Outfit, the purple shirt with the orange hummingbirds. If you ask me, the hummingbird shirt is a test he unconsciously gives women, and frankly, it's often lethal. If he detects even the slightest wince when a woman first sees it (and he has a finely tuned wince detector, believe me), he won't ever call her again. Of course this latest woman loved it: he was dating the receptionist from my work, Kendall, and if there's anything she would respect, it's a man who can confidently pull off wearing anything purple. She likes unconventional types.

That's the good news. The bad news, I suppose, is that it's only ten minutes until nine and he's already back at my house, drinking wine and getting ready for the post-date analysis.

Until Teddy arrived a few minutes ago, I'm afraid I had been conducting a dangerous experiment in the upstairs bathroom, totally unlike anything I've ever done in my life: giving myself blond highlights with one of those do-it-yourself kits. I had just finished putting white goop on the last strand of hair at the very back of my head, craning my neck around so I could see it in the mirror, when I heard the back doorbell ring and then heard Teddy calling, "Lily? Lil, you decent?"

I ran to the top of the stairs and stage-whispered, "No, I'm not decent — don't come up." I didn't want to yell for fear of waking up our four-year-old son, Simon, who actually can sleep through anything, including possibly a helicopter landing on the roof — but you never know. I'd just spent an hour singing songs and reading him stories to help him fall asleep, and I wanted to make sure he would stay asleep. Sometimes, you know, just the whiff of intensity in a parent's voice can bring a kid to full alert status, if he suspects that all the fun is happening without him.

"Well, get decent and come on down here," Teddy called up way too loudly. "I've brought us some wine."

I gave my reflection one last desperate, prayers-to-the-universe look — I looked kind of bizarre, really, with all those white stripes all over my brown curls, like somebody in a community theater production playing a ninety-year-old woman — and then, because I didn't want Teddy to know what I'd been doing since he'd immediately see how desperate I am to change my life, I put a towel over the whole mess and went down to hear about his date with Kendall.

It's one of those unseasonably warm nights in early June, so he and I go sit out in the rocking chairs on my back porch, which looks out over a little inlet on the Long Island Sound, in Branford, Connecticut. Everybody in the six houses along our little bay colony — unofficially called Scallop Bay because of its shape — seems to be outside tonight, as though they're all here to usher in the first warm nights of late spring. You can see their silhouettes against the lit-up windows, hear their bug zappers and the strains of music from their stereos, make out the jumpy flames of their candles. The air tonight smells like a combination of dead fish and low tide, a smell that Teddy hates (he thinks the Environmental Protection Agency should be out here every day, measuring our air currents and possibly bringing in buses to evacuate us away from this odor) — but to me it's just the backdrop smell of ordinary beach life. That's probably because I've lived here in this converted beach cottage, a hulking blue duplex that backs up to the Sound, for most of my life — lived here, in fact, even before I was born. I tell people that I was once an egg and a sperm cell here, my essence riding around in my mother and father, and one day, perhaps due to my subliminal urging, they hooked up so that I could get started. This smell, this air, even these splinters on the porch: this is all probably encoded somewhere in my DNA.

"So why in the world are you back here so soon?" I ask Teddy. I accept the glass of merlot he's holding out to me and try surreptitiously to straighten the towel wrapped around my head. My scalp is itching something fierce. What do they make hair color out of, anyway — ground-up fire ants? "This hardly even qualifies as a full date, you know," I say. "I think legally you're still in the first half, and we may have to send you back in."

"Lily," he says, giving me his deadpan look and tuning up his whine. "I'm not going back in. Your friend Kendall is out of her mind, as I'm sure you knew. You planned this date for your own sadistic amusement, didn't you?"

This is exactly what he said about the last two dates: Jillian, my hairdresser, and Norma, who works the drive-through at my bank. Both of them are sweet and attractive and actively looking for a nice man, but with both of them, I was accused of sadistic intentions. Jillian, Teddy said, announced at the outset of the date that she had PMS and also that she'd once had Botox injections, two things he didn't want to hear about; and Norma's crime — I forget Norma's exact crime, but I think she told him she never liked Meryl Streep movies. And — well, neither of them raved about the First Date Outfit.

"Oh, Teddy, for God's sake. All your really good people these days are out of their minds in one way or another," I say. "Come on. You've got to get a grip."

"I know, I know. It's me, isn't it?" he says mournfully. "I'm really not meant for getting along with the other humans." This is one of his favorite topics — Teddy Kingsley, adrift in the world of crazy people, the sole voice of reason howling alone in the wind. He's a New Age psychotherapist, and he spends his days with well-meaning though often eccentric people who optimistically ask for Reiki and Rolfing and aromatherapy and crystals, which he doles out with doses of calm, measured gloom. I've actually heard him say to clients, "Well, this may not work as well as you hope . . ." — which cracks me up every time. He thinks positive thinking and affirmations are a waste of human energy. True happiness, he says, comes from lowered expectations.

"Listen, you big galoot, the time of everybody being fully sane has long passed," I tell him cheerfully. "Forget that. The modern-day quest is just to find people whose insanities fit together nicely with our own. Now tell me what happened with Kendall so you can get back and continue your date. She's probably waiting for you in a parking lot somewhere. Believe me, Jillian and Norma may have been mistakes, and I'm sorry for that, but I think Kendall is your woman."

Copyright © 2006 by Sandi Kahn Shelton. Excerpted by permission of Shaye Areheart Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Sandi Kahn Shelton is the author of What Comes After Crazy and a feature writer for the New Haven Register. A former "Wit's End" columnist for Working Mother magazine, she is a frequent contributor to several magazines, including Woman's Day, Family Circle, Redbook, and Salon. The author of three previous books on parenting, she is a mother of three and lives in Guilford, Connecticut, with her journalist husband.