Excerpt from Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"What? Why not? But you must! You can't be shouldering this all alone!" Nicola's voice shot up the scale with dismay.

"I can't. Olivia won't come home if I do. I know it. He said it was a risk, to be spending Christmas with her. But I have to, Nic. She has nowhere else to go."

"Emma! This is silly. She'll understand, she's a doctor, for God's sake. The last thing she'd want is to be putting you in danger."

"But—look, you know how it is with Olivia. This is the first Christmas she's been home in years—even just home for more than a few hours. It was the Calais camp last year, Sudan before that, the Philippines before that. I want her there. I don't care what Singer thinks. It's only a risk—a tiny risk at that. If she goes down with Haag, my creaky immune system will be the least of our worries."

"But Andrew? Surely he ought to know."

She knew Nicola was right. But she was loath to go into how little she and Andrew shared these days, or how self-sufficient she had gradually become. Ever since the psychotherapy course Nicola had taken after her divorce, she was apt to counsel one at any opportunity. And it wasn't as if Emma and Andrew were in trouble. Whose marriage was still wildly intimate after thirty years? Easier to blame Haag again.

"He'll say the same—that Olivia can't do her quarantine at home. And what if it is my last Christmas? I'd never forgive myself if I turned her away, and missed a chance to have one more Christmas just the four of us. I'd been so looking forward to it. The girls being at Weyfield again, like when they were little."

Nicola's eyes were moist. "OK, sweetheart," she said. "You know best."

Excerpted from Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak. Copyright © 2017 by Francesca Hornak. Excerpted by permission of Berkley Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.