The Half Life by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online

peach-flavored beer and lifted the glass to the light, admiring its color, before drinking it down. Then she slipped her phone into her purse and her keys into her pocket. She packed what she needed into a grocery bag and went to collect her daughter.
    â€œMama!” Nola hurtled herself into Piper’s arms like a guided missile. Laughing, Piper hugged her, brushing a springy curl from her forehead. Nola gazed up at her intently. “But why are you home? Nanna says . . .”—she paused, spread her chubby fingers, each one tipped with pink polish, and considered them—“four more days?”
    â€œI came home early. I missed my big girl!”
    â€œMissed you too,” Nola said, and though she wasn’t much of a cuddler—self-contained and self-soothing, she was Tosh’s daughter that way—she threw her arms around her mother’s neck and allowed herself to be kissed and then carried to the rental car and buckled into the backseat for the drive to the hotel.
    Piper slid her key card into the door of the room she booked that morning, and Nola threw herself onto the canopied bed, bouncing vigorously. “None of that,” Piper said, tossing Nola her swimsuit. Her little girl’s eyes got big. “We can go swimming?”
    â€œWe can.” Piper pulled on her own suit, put a bathrobe on top, took Nola by the hand, and walked her to the elevator, then to the locker room and into the warm, shallow waters of the pool. Nola giggled, delighted and wriggling, kicking her plump, sturdy legs as she clung to the silver banister of the stairs, blowing bubbles the way she’d been taught. Piper watched, weary and heartsore but hopeful too, that the two of them would get through this, that they wouldn’t lose Tosh as much as see him reinvented, that they would all come through.
All will be well, and all will be well
, she thought, which is what her own mother used to tell her . . . and then, when Nola’s kicks flagged, she scooped her girl into her arms and paddled with her through the water, until their fingertips were pruney and the attendant dimmed the lights and Piper knew it was time to go home.

What if the one you love is the one who got away?
    Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are just eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy’s taken back to a doctor and Rachel’s sent back to her bed, they think they’ll never see each other again.
    Rachel grows up wanting for nothing in a fancy Florida suburb, the popular and protected daughter of two doting parents. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent that will let him become one of the best runners of his generation.
    Over the next three decades, their paths cross in magical and ordinary ways. They make grand plans and dream big dreams as they grow together and apart in starts and stops. Through it all, Andy and Rachel never stop thinking about that night in the hospital waiting room all of those years ago, a chance encounter that changed the course of both of their lives.
    In this captivating, often witty tale about the bonds between women and men, love and fate, and the truth about happy endings, Jennifer Weiner delivers two of her most memorable characters and a love story you’ll never forget.
    Read on for a sneak peek at Jennifer Weiner’s newest novel, Who Do You Love
    Available August 2015 from Atria Books

Prologue
    Rachel
    2014
    â€œRachel?”
    I don’t answer. If you build it, they will come. If you ignore them, they will go away.
    Knock knock knock, and then my name again. “Rachel, are you in there?”
    I twist myself more deeply into the sheets. The sheets are fancy, linen, part of the wedding haul, and they’ve only