Spotlight & Giveaway: A Family Affair by Robyn Carr

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Robyn Carr’s new release: A Family Affair

An exceptional storyteller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Robyn Carr beautifully captures the emotionally charged, complex dynamics that come with being part of any family.

 
Readers will laugh and shed a few tears as they discover what it means to be loved, supported and accepted by the people who mean the most.
 
Carr’s next trade original novel following Sunrise on Half Moon Bay. When a woman notices a young pregant woman attending her husband’s funeral she realizes his mid-life crisis went far beyond his weekend warrior lifestyle.
 
But Carr’s story of a family dealing with their grief is full of surprises and as everyone examines their own beliefs and behavior they become closer than they ever thought possible. Carr tackles the serious issues women face with humor and heart.
 
Life’s biggest dilemmas can provide its sweetest rewards
 

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from A Family Affair 

The truth hit her at her husband’s funeral. That’s when Anna became suddenly and painfully aware of that thing she’d been missing, that reality. When she saw the pregnant woman with one of the assistants from her husband’s office she knew. All she was lacking were the facts.
The woman looked so young, not yet thirty. Maybe thirty-five if she was very young looking for her age. She was poised and distant, not mingling. There was a radiance about her, that motherly glow. The assistant, whose name Anna did not re¬member, escorted the woman. Anna watched as they greeted a few people, made a couple of introductions and then they stayed back.
Could it be or was Anna imagining things? She was filled with guilty doubt—of course she was being reactive.
But no, she was sure. That woman was carrying her hus¬band’s child. The temptation to go to her and introduce her¬self and ask her how she had known Chad was strong, but just then Jessie, her oldest daughter, touched her arm and said, “We’re supposed to be over here.” And Anna had nodded and followed her.
Anna and Chad had been going through one of their serious rough patches. She thought it was about the fourth notewor¬thy one in thirty-five years and she had insisted on counsel¬ing. Of course she had. Chad was a psychologist. He counseled people for a living and he knew all the tricks. According to what she knew from friends and what Chad had told her, that number of marital disruptions over several decades barely sur¬passed interesting. Few marriages even lasted that long these days. She knew only too well that marriage was a rocky road and it had nothing to do with how smart or simple, how suc-cessful or religious, you were. She also knew, from personal experience, that just because you were an expert in relation¬ships, it didn’t necessarily give you an edge on keeping your own marriage healthy. So, they’d been struggling, had been seeing a counselor, dealing with Chad’s overall discontent, something vague and filmy. He wasn’t happy. He was feeling unfulfilled. He was bored and his life lacked excitement. He was seeking something more.
Fitting, then, that he died while white-water rafting. Bet that was exciting.
It was as if Chad was having a giant midlife crisis, a tad late for a man of sixty-two. He kept asking, Is this all there is? Ninety-eight percent of the population would give an arm and a leg to live as they did. But since Chad was often melo¬dramatic and moody, she let it slide. Is this all there is indeed? Perfect health, great and successful work, good retirement sav¬ings, strong family ties, quality friends? Yes, Chad, this is it. Why isn’t that enough for you?
As Anna had come to realize, this is what a man does when he’s attracted to another woman. Act like you’ve been suffer¬ing. Suddenly find your life and your marriage are severely lacking. It’s not your fault and you must have been unhappy for years and years, so the obvious solution is to move on. Get yourself something new. Wait, correction—your wife must have failed somehow and now you should find another, bet¬ter woman. God forbid you honor your commitment and stay with a woman you find slightly less than perfect! The number of times in her life she had heard it said of the unfaithful hus-band that there must have been something missing at home; it all made her want to throw up. And now she was here to honor the great man’s wonderful life.
During the service, Anna turned around a couple of times to see if the pregnant woman was emotional. Remarkably, she didn’t seem to be. She appeared serene. Maybe that wasn’t Chad’s baby swelling her middle. Maybe she was a client? The assistant with her…what was her name? She was older and kept leaning toward the younger woman’s ear, whispering.
“What are you looking at?” Jessie asked. “Don’t stare!”
“Sorry. You’re right. I’m just so tired.”
Tired from spending days putting together a video montage from old photos for Chad’s celebration of life, making funeral arrangements, selecting an urn for his ashes, making phone calls, choosing a dress, hiring a caterer, so many details. And on top of all that, not sleeping. But she’d done it, compiled their memories, the very best ones, and did what she did best: she made him look like a god. Like the perfect husband and father. Which he was not, but let’s not speak ill of the dead.
Unless his pregnant girlfriend came to the funeral. That was a good enough reason.
A firm hand pressed down on her shoulder and she turned to look up into the dark eyes of Joe, her friend for over thirty years. Chad’s friend first, then their friend, then couple friends, until Joe and Arlene divorced. Never just her friend, though she’d always loved him as much as Chad had. He was a great guy. She hugged him, holding on extra long. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” she said, longing to talk with him for an hour or six. “This is more grueling than it looks. Emotionally taxing.”
“I can imagine.”
Just then all of her children surrounded them. Joe hugged Jessie, who, at thirty-one, was a beautiful woman; then twenty-eight-year-old Mike, who was the image of his hand¬some father. Joe then turned to lovely Bess, short for Eliza¬beth, the baby at twenty-four. He didn’t hug Bess because she didn’t like being touched without warning. After a moment passed, Bess opened her arms to him and everyone nearby visibly relaxed.
There was a little small talk—sorry for your loss, call on me for anything, if there’s any way I can help, if there’s any¬thing you need—all that sort of thing. For Joe these were not empty offers. Anna knew he would deliver if needed.
Chad had been widely loved and why not? He was great fun, smart, funny, had a tongue smooth as silk and always knew the right thing to say. Anna was equally well loved and respected. As a couple they were popular and often envied—they were attractive, successful, entertaining and stable. In fact, if their circle of friends had any idea what shit they’d been going through lately, they’d be shocked. But they were careful to keep their issues to themselves.
Joe was one of the few men who was on par with Chad personality wise, equally successful. He was a devoted friend. Chad had gone to high school with Joe; they’d played ball to¬gether and stayed friends through college, though their paths had diverged. Chad taught and then got his master’s in coun¬seling followed by a PhD; Joe got his PhD and taught history and some theology at Stanford. The men only saw each other a few times a year but both always said it was as if no time had passed. They could still laugh like boys. Anna saw Joe less often than Chad did but with her the feeling was the same.
The celebration of life was not held in a funeral parlor or church but rather in a fancy clubhouse in an upscale Mill Valley community. It was furnished with comfortable sofas, chairs, small round accent tables, thick carpet and carefully chosen art. Its primary purpose was for hosting parties. Resi¬dents in the community could rent it for events, which Anna had done. There was a huge viewing screen upon which the pictures of Chad’s life played, a hundred and fifty of them, carefully and lovingly chosen by Anna with a little help from the kids. Every picture had Chad in it, starting from old child¬hood prints she’d inherited from Chad’s mother years ago. She’d glance up to see one of him in a high school football uniform looking the worse for wear with a big grin on his dirty face; she caught a huge blowup of their wedding picture; there was one soon after of him with baby Jessie asleep on his chest. There were many pictures of Chad alone, a few of Chad and Anna, one of a young Anna gazing lovingly up into Chad’s face, several family groupings. The focus was Chad, his life, his accomplishments, his achievements, his happiness, a few of the important people in his life. Chad, Chad, Chad. Just like before he died.
Things had been tense lately, but she remembered those younger years fondly because, although it hadn’t been easy, they had been deeply in love. They met through what can only be described as fate, as destiny. In fact, their meeting was a legendary family story. Anna had been in San Francisco, shop-ping on her lunch hour down at Fisherman’s Wharf. Shopping but not buying, which was typical for her as she had been and still was very frugal. She loved the sea lions, enjoyed watch¬ing tourists, sometimes found bargains at Pier 1, enjoyed the occasional meal on the pier.
On that day, something strange happened. She heard a pan¬icked cry rise from the crowd of tourists on the pier, saw a food truck trundling across the pier without a driver, picking up speed. A man in work clothes and apron was chasing the truck. She only had seconds to take it in. It seemed the food truck, its awning out and moving fast, was headed toward a group of people. Right before her eyes the truck knocked a man off the pier before the truck was stopped by a barricade.
The man, completely unaware, flew off the dock and into the water below, startling a large number of fat sea lions who had been sunning themselves nearby.
The sea lions scrambled into the water and the man was flailing around in a panic. Someone yelled, “He can’t swim!” Hardly giving it a thought, Anna dropped her purse, kicked off her shoes and jumped off the pier, swimming to the man. Getting to him was no challenge; she practically landed on top of him. But he was hysterical and splashing, kicking and sputtering. “You’re okay, come on,” she said, grabbing his shirt by the collar. But he fought harder and sank, nearly pulling her under with him.
She slapped him in the face and that startled him enough he could let himself be rescued. She slid her arm around his neck and began pulling him to the dock where a couple of men seemed to be standing by to pull him in.
There was a lot of commotion, not to mention honking noises from sea lions. Anna was shivering in her wet clothes and all she could think at the time was how was she going to locate a change of clothes for her afternoon at work. Then there were emergency vehicles and a handsome young police officer draped a blanket around her shoulders and took a re¬port. The near drowning victim was taken away in an ambu¬lance and Anna was given a ride to her apartment by the cute policeman. She was delighted and surprised when the police officer called her a week later. She almost hyperventilated in hope that he’d ask her out.
“The man you pulled out of the water has been in touch. He wants your name,” the officer said.
“He isn’t going to sue me, is he?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” he said with a laugh. “He seems very grateful. He won’t have any trouble tracking you down but I said I’d ask. He probably wants to thank you.”
The man’s name was Chad. He was finishing up his PhD at Berkeley while she was working in a law office in the Bay Area. She was twenty-three and he was twenty-seven and she was not prepared for how handsome he was and of course much better put together than when he was dragged out of the water.
He took her to dinner and, as she recalled, their first date was almost like an interview. He wanted to know everything about her and was utterly amazed to learn she’d had a job as a lifeguard in a community pool for exactly one summer when she was a teenager and yet jumped in to save him with total confidence. They fell in love almost instantly. The first time they made love, he asked her to marry him. She didn’t say yes right away, but they knew from the start they were made for each other. What they didn’t know was how many fights they’d have. Very few big fights but many small ones; she thought of them as bickering. They fought about what was on the pizza; a scrape on the side of the car that was not her fault, not even remotely; what kind of vacation they should have and where they should go. As Anna recalled, they always went where Chad wanted to go. They fought about what movie to see, where to eat, what was grumbled under his or her breath.
They fought seriously about his affair. That was in the dis¬tant past but it took a long time to get over. Years. But when they finally pledged to stay married, to do their best to make it good, they fell into bed and had the best sex of their lives. And they had Elizabeth.
That experience was how she knew that all the excuses for this current marital rift, no matter what he called it, was probably about another woman and not them growing apart or having divergent needs. He wouldn’t admit it and she had no proof, but she had better than average instincts. She be¬lieved he’d gotten all excited at the prospect of falling in love and was rewriting their history to make that acceptable. He was looking for an excuse that would make it reasonable to step outside the bonds of marriage. She could feel it; he’d been involved with someone else.

Excerpted from A Family Affair by Robyn Carr. Copyright © 2022 by Robyn Carr. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

Excerpt. ©Robyn Carr. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 

Giveaway: 3 Finished copies of A Family Affair by Robyn Carr – US / CA only

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About the book:

Anna McNichol knows how to take charge. Raised by a single mother, she’s worked to ensure her three children have every advantage she didn’t. And while her marriage has its problems, she values commitment and believes in “till death do us part.” Now an empty nester, she’s at the peak of her career and ready to seize the opportunity to focus on her future.

But life can change in an instant, and when her husband dies suddenly, Anna’s carefully constructed world falls apart. The mysterious young woman at the memorial service confirms her husband had been keeping secrets, and Anna is determined to get to the truth.

For once, she doesn’t have the answers. Her kids are struggling with their grief, her mother’s health is in decline and Anna needs closure. Faced with one challenge after another, she finds support from an unexpected source. And as she puts her life back together, Anna realizes the McNichols may not be perfect but they’ll always be family, and family is forever.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Robyn Carr is an award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty novels, including highly praised women’s fiction such as Four Friends, The Summer That Made Us and The View from Alameda Island, as well as the critically acclaimed Virgin River, Thunder Point and Sullivan’s Crossing series. Virgin River is now a Netflix original series. Robyn lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can visit her website at robyncarr.com.
 
Buy: https://bookshop.org/books/a-family-affair-9780778331919/9780778331742