Then Came You Read Online Free PDF

girl? I only have boys.” The words came out more ruefully than I’d intended. I’d always wanted a girl, and I’d hoped, privately, that Spencer would be one, and that I could dress her in all the beautiful little pink things I’d looked at when I was buying Frank Junior his tiny jeans and sweatshirts. I’d felt a little sad when they’d told me I was having another boy, because two was our limit, unless Frank won the lottery or I found a way to change his mind. I would have loved a big family, but we couldn’t afford one.
    “Especially if it’s a girl,” said Nancy. I sighed. We’d shared a bedroom until she left for college. She’d watched me dress up my Barbies in outfits I’d sewn myself and cook cakes for Roxie, the cocker spaniel next door, in my Easy-Bake Oven. If anyone in the world knew how much I would have loved having a daughter, it was Nancy.
    “I’ll be fine,” I said, and looked at my mother. “Want to take the boys for pizza? I told them we’d do Chuck E. Cheese.”
    “Oh, right. Let me get my coat.”
    I turned to my sister. “You’re welcome to join us.”
    Nancy rolled her eyes. “Those places make me feel like I’m going to have a seizure. And you know I don’t eat wheat or dairy.”
    Or anything else. “Okay, then. See you soon.”
    I got the boys back in the car, feeling as if a thundercloud had settled in my chest. All I’d wanted was for someone to be happy for me—happy with me, straight-up happy, not happy with questions, or happy with reservations, or happy but confused, or not happy at all . . . and there was no one in my life, including my husband, who fit the bill.

BETTINA
     
    I met my stepmother—not that I would ever dignify the bitch with that title—the spring of my senior year at Vassar. My father placed the call to my dorm room himself, instead of having his assistant call me, and then making me wait on hold until he could come to the phone. Big news, I thought. Important. “Tina,” he said. “There’s someone special I want you to meet.”
    He sent a car to take me home for the weekend. As usual, I asked Manuel to collect me at the coffee shop downtown, even though I wasn’t fooling anyone—in the era of Google and Gawker, all of my classmates who cared to make the effort of typing my name into a search engine knew exactly who I was.
    Manuel drove me to Bridgehampton. The two of them, my father and India, were waiting for me in the doorway of the gray shingled house, like an ad for Cadillacs or Cialis, or for one of those Internet dating services for old people. When I saw him standing there, his arm around her narrow waist, I knew. “This is India,” my father said.
    “The subcontinent?” I asked. India had laughed like she was reading words off a script: “Ha ... ha ... ha.” Then my brothers arrived, Trey pulling up in the minivan he’d bought when his daughter was born, Tommy slouched in the seat beside him, likehe was ashamed to be riding in such a desperately unhip vehicle. My father beamed and dispensed hugs and introductions, and we all went in for dinner.
    I sat quietly, observing, in the big kitchen with its white-painted floors and blue-and-white-striped cushioned benches. My parents had bought the place when I was ten, and my mother had decorated in a nautical theme, all crisp blues and whites and windows shaped like portholes, with canvas slipcovers for the couches and sisal rugs on the floor. I wondered if India was already dreaming of the improvements she’d make, the addition she’d build, the bedrooms she’d annex for her Pilates equipment and her clothes.
    Once the meal was finished and my father and India—quote-unquote—had adjourned to the living room (India in her heels and fancy jeans and the fringed tweed Chanel jacket that she’d worn to pick at a meal of hamburgers and Carvel ice-cream cake), my brothers and I excused ourselves, then snuck through the butler’s pantry and out onto the back porch. Tommy pulled a