I didn’t let on how much I liked her because you seemed a bit jealous of her time with me and thought we drank too much, although I gave her very little as far as female friendships go. She was the one friend from college I stayed in touch with after we graduated. Family was too important to you-either of us could risk how the whole truth about mine might change the way you saw me. The lie was necessary, like the scattering of other lies I’d told so that you didn’t suspect just how fucked up my family was. I’m still not sure how we got there, he and I. We’d communicated mostly through our answering machines, and even then it had become a series of stale, generic exchanges that I would have been embarrassed for you to hear. The truth was we hadn’t spoken much since you and I met. He didn’t return my message informing him I wouldn’t be home for Thanksgiving that year, but I lied to you and said he was happy I’d met someone, and that he sends his best wishes to your family. My parents had never even mentioned their wedding. You gave your parents a card every year on their anniversary. You knew your mother’s banana bread recipe.

You went home every other weekend to help your dad around the house. You phoned home every night and I would listen from the hallway, wish‑ing I could hear what your mother said that made you laugh like you did. You called your little sister “darling” and she adored you. ) My mother wouldn’t have been someone you gossiped about among yourselves none of you had an appetite for anything but the pleasant. Cecilia, of course, was never discussed you’d thoughtfully prefaced this with them before you brought me home.

Their unquestioning acceptance about where my father was, and the lack of judgment when he declined their invitation to visit for the holidays, was a kindness I was grateful for. Sometimes it felt like she loved me as much as she loved you. The way your mother touched the ends of my hair made me want to crawl onto her lap. Their house smelled like warm, laundered linens, always, and I never wanted to leave when we visited. The generous gifts, the airplane tickets to be with you all somewhere sunny on vacation. This might not have been as important to other people, but with you came a family. Things that come to mind when I think about the beginning of us:

She lives in Toronto, where she and her partner are raising their two young children. Prior to Penguin, she worked in public relations. Audrain previously worked as the publicity director of Penguin Books Canada. The following is excerpted from Ashley Audrain's debut novel, The Push, about a woman whose experience of motherhood is not at all what she had hoped.

The push ashley audrain review