Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner

about a married, settled midwestern lady with a name that was the most exotic thing about her. India suited me better, and so India was what I’d become.
    “India,” said Marcus Croft. “I’ll be in touch.”
    Upstairs in the ballroom, waiting for the banquet manager to go over the menu one last time, I flipped open my laptop, slipped off my shoes, and typed “Marcus Croft” into my search engine. The computer spat out eleven thousand hits—the Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Businessweek, the Robb Report. It didn’t take me long to learn that the man who’d been so nonplussed by the Starbucks offerings was the real deal, an arbitrageur who’dlaunched one of the world’s most successful hedge funds, a man who owned pieces of everything from sports teams to fast-food chains to clothing factories in China. Married once, to his college sweetheart, the former Arlene Sandusky; divorced for five years, three children, almost grown. He was fifty-five. That was older than I thought, but I could work with it. I figured that, barring an early and lucrative divorce, we could be man and wife for twenty years, and if he was considerate and didn’t linger, I’d have plenty of years to be a very merry widow.
    But that was getting ahead of myself.
    I dug deeper, refining my search, typing in his name along with the name of his wife. It didn’t take me long to learn that the ex–Mrs. Croft had taken a lover—her yoga instructor, which was not terribly original—and taken off for an ashram in New Mexico. All the better to replace you with, my dear, I’d thought, clicking the link for pictures, which revealed a generic society-woman-of-a-certain-age, in an updo and a satin gown at the Met’s costume ball. I was prettier than she was; thinner, younger, bigger boobs, a higher ass; the winner by technical knockout in the only categories that mattered.
    My telephone rang. PRIVATE NUMBER , read the display. I put my finger on the button, readying myself, a backup quarterback who’d just been called into the big game. In that moment, I remembered going on the one vacation my grandparents and I ever took, to a cabin on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire that one of their friends had won at a church auction and had, for some reason, been unable to use. One morning my opa had woken me up before the sun had risen, and we’d slipped out of the cabin, leaving my grandmother still snoozing in the saggymattressed bed. Sitting in a wooden rowboat, one foot trailing in the shockingly cold water, holding the fishing rod my opa had brought up from the basement the night before we’d left, I felt at first a gentle tug, then a sharper one. The tip of my rod bent untilit was almost touching the surface of the lake. I jerked back on it as hard as I could, until my opa stopped me. Easy, he said, his arms against my shoulders. Remember. He’s a fish. You’re a big girl. Play him in easy, and remember: you’re smarter than he is.
    You’re smarter than he is, I thought, and arranged my face into a pleasant smile, crossed my legs, shook out my hair, and lifted the receiver to my ear.

JULES
     
    I was in ninth grade when my dad had his accident. Miss Carasick, the guidance counselor, who was known, inevitably, as Miss Carsick, pulled me out of French class and hustled me down the hall into her office, which was decorated with posters from different colleges. “Your father’s in the hospital,” she said.
    I’d been slouching in the seat across from her desk—cringing, actually. I was afraid she’d found out that Tricia Barnes and I had been hiding out in the girls’ room after we’d pled menstrual cramps to get out of gym class. I hadn’t seen my parents that morning, but that wasn’t unusual: most days, my father left for school before I even got out of bed and my mom stayed asleep until after I was gone. “What? Why? What happened?”
    Miss Carasick sat back. Her glasses shone in the glare from the fluorescent lights