Excerpt from The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Mrs. Jeffreys, who wouldn’t let Sarah use tampons because it was too much like having sex, walked into the mudroom not too long after Chuck Goodhue. And there, in one high-pitched breath, she purportedly ordered Kevin Thorpe to zip his fly and be ashamed of himself. Sissy she escorted home, holding her hand the entire way. She led her through the center of the party—Sissy blushing and with her head down but also undeniably smiling—all the way to the three-story Tudor, where she knocked on the door and handed Sissy over to Mr. Lindell. Whether or not she ratted out Sissy, none of us knew, but a handful of us did overhear Mrs. Jeffreys a few weeks later when she told Mrs. Epstein that she’d walked in on Kevin Thorpe saying, repeatedly, “Sit on it. Just sit on it.”

“Can you imagine?” Mrs. Jeffreys said to Mrs. Epstein. “Can you even imagine?”


We ’d known since ninth grade that Sarah Jeffreys had been raped by Franco Bowles, Tommy Bowles’ older brother, when he was home from college one summer. But it wasn’t until years later—fully, if somewhat fitfully, situated in adulthood—that we were able to use this information to explain Mrs. Jeffreys’ behavior. Too late we realized that what we’d always assumed was a nagging overprotectiveness was in fact a compulsive, if not remorseful, form of devotion to us all. We never forgave Franco for what he did. We never addressed it, but we never forgave him, either. And we all felt bad for not feeling bad sooner for Sarah. No one heard from Sarah after high school. She went missing too, in a way, but a different kind of missing.

Trey developed something of a fetish for girls in uniform. It wasn’t his fault. We saw them every day. We got sick of the uniforms, hated the matching plaid skirts and the knee-high socks. We grew out of thinking they were sexy. But he was a public schooler; he never got the chance. A couple decades later, he went to jail after taking Paul Epstein’s daughter home and doing things with her that girls shouldn’t do until they’re much, much older, if ever. Paul’s daughter said she knew what she was doing. She said she wanted to do those things with Trey. But what does a thirteen-year-old know of what she wants? In the court testimony, she referred to Trey as Mr. Stephens. Never had we felt so old. She called Mr. Stephens a man; our sons she referred to as boys. We blushed at the wording. How simple, how true.


For two years, Mrs . Jeffreys controlled Halloween. If Sissy was invited to Sarah’s basement party that second year, none of us knew about it and she certainly didn’t attend. Plans had been made by Mr. Lindell to send his youngest away for her last two years of high school. She needed a fresh start, he said, needed not always to be thought of as Nora Lindell’s little sister. Probably this was true. But mostly we blamed Paul Epstein, who’d taken to calling Sissy a slut in the hallways at school. She’d walk by, alone or with a girlfriend, and he’d cough the word into his hand from where he leaned against his locker. None of us joined him, and Sissy never acknowledged him. But always her face turned a horrible blotchy red, which was proof enough that she heard him every time.

Paul argued that you couldn’t force someone into becoming something they weren’t already, but mostly we agreed that Paul had pushed her into it. That, believing she already had the reputation, Sissy Lindell thrust herself into fulfilling what only Paul Epstein had alleged. At one point it was rumored that she’d even had sex with Trey Stephens. When we took it to him, however, he denied it. “I might go to public school,” he said, “but I wouldn’t do that to Nora.” We couldn’t help but respect his loyalty; couldn’t help but believe that he alone would have the dignity and self-restraint that the rest of us lacked. Of course, this was before Paul Epstein had a daughter, before any of us could even conceive of having daughters of our own.

Excerpted from The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard. Copyright © 2011 by Hannah Pittard. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.