Three and a Half Wives: A Novel

by Judith Arnold

Overview

Talia and Gwen had both been married to Jeremy. They married him for the same reason: because he was electric and a force of nature. And they divorced him for the same reason: because he was a child. Heather is currently married to Jeremy, and she has yet to learn what the other two women discovered about him. Maybe she never will; after all, she's young, naïve, and wildly in love with him.

Jeremy's three wives have a polite relationship with each other and nothing more. But when Jeremy turns up missing, and his last whereabouts are traced to his home on Martha's Vineyard — a home none of the women knew about — they reluctantly join forces in an effort to find out who he really is and what has happened to him. Their search leads them to Monica, a woman who has never been married to Jeremy, but who has a relationship with him unlike any of the others.

Talia, Gwen, Heather, and Monica will uncover the mystery of Jeremy's disappearance. But what they discover from their time together will be much more revealing, much more profound, and much more inspiring than anything they ever gained from the man who unites them. And this will change each of them in dramatic ways.

Filled with heart, humor, compassion, and revelation, Three and a Half Wives is a story of marriage (well, three of them), friendship, and, most of all, community. It is the kind of ultra-relatable, endlessly surprising tale that can only come from a master storyteller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611884234
Publisher:	The Story Plant
Publication date:	03/03/2026
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

USA Today bestselling author Judith Arnold knew she wanted to be a writer by the time she was four. She loved making up stories (not exactly the same thing as lying) and enjoying the adventures of her fictional characters.

With more than one hundred published novels to her name, she has been able to live her dream. Four of Judith’s novels have received awards from RT Book Reviews Magazine (for Best Harlequin American Romance, Best Harlequin Superromance, Best Series Romance Novel, and Best Contemporary Romance Novel), and she’s a three-time finalist for Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award. Her novel Love In Bloom’s was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly.

A New York native, Judith lives in New England.

Read an Excerpt

The late morning air had already grown quite warm, and Gwen switched on the car’s air conditioning and wished that she, like Heather, had worn sandals instead of her comfortable espadrilles. Of course, her feet were nowhere near as pretty as Heather’s, and she was overdue for a pedicure. She wished she could look good in floaty, sleeveless sundresses like Heather’s, too. She wished she had graceful shoulders like Heather’s, rather than her boxy, mannish shoulders. She would even settle for curves like Talia’s, a bosom that suggested nurturing and fertility, a waist that nipped in so she would look graceful in fitted shirts and fashionable belts rather than the practical twill skirt and jersey-knit top she had on. But she was a sensible sort. She wore simple pearl studs rather than dangly, jangly earrings like Heather’s, or even classic gold hoops like Talia’s. She wore a regular analog watch, rather than one of those mini-computers designed to resemble jewelry that were de riguer with her younger colleagues at the foundation, who could check the weather or measure their pulse simply by tapping their watches’ shiny black screens.

Talia, she was relieved to note, wore a watch similar to hers, with a round white face and two hands. Heather wore no watch, just a loop of multicolored beads around her narrow wrist. And her wedding band, of course—textured metal resembling a braid. Gwen’s wedding band, like the ring she had worn when she’d been married to Jeremy, was a plain, smooth circle of gold. It was practical. It was sensible. It was nice.

No one spoke until Gwen reached the highway. Boston’s morning rush hour had passed, but there was still a fair amount of traffic. “How long a trip is it?” Heather called from the back seat.

Are we there yet? Gwen suppressed a wry grin. Heather really was the child in this car. “Under two hours to Woods Hole, if the other vehicles on the road cooperate,” Gwen told her. “Then another forty-five minutes on the ferry.”

“I’ve never been on a ferry before,” Heather said, sounding awed. “And driving on a ferry, that just seems so weird.”

“It isn’t weird,” Gwen assured her, exchanging a quick look with Talia. “Do your children know where we’re going?”

Talia nodded, then shrugged. “They heard their father owns a place on the island, and they think it’s the coolest thing. They wanted to come with us today, but I said no.”

“Of course.” Gwen hesitated, then added, “Will they be all right if we get back late?”

“They’re sixteen,” Talia reminded her. “They know how to drive. They know how to cook.”

“Speaking of cooking,” Heather called from the back seat, “I brought avocado sandwiches, if anyone’s hungry.”

“No, thank you,” Gwen said. The texture of avocados didn’t sit well with her. They were like overripe bananas, only green and greasy.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Talia said. In her rear-view mirror, Gwen saw Heather settle back in her seat, a slight pout curving her lips. She pulled off her hat and stared out the window, apparently wounded that no one wanted her avocado sandwiches.

They drove in silence for a while. Glancing to her right, Gwen observed that Talia was engrossed in something on her cell phone screen. In the back seat, Heather continued to gaze out the window, looking glum. If she was going to sulk all day, this trip would be even worse than Gwen was already anticipating. To atone for having rejected Heather’s culinary offering, and hopefully to cheer the girl up, Gwen said, “David tells me you’re a potter.”

In the mirror, she could see Heather’s face immediately brighten. “He teases me about that,” she said. “He calls me Harry Potter.”

“I take it you don’t perform magic tricks?”

Heather looked fleetingly baffled by the question, but then relaxed into another smile. “I throw pots—which doesn’t mean what it sounds like. That’s what we say when we make a pot out of clay on a pottery wheel. That was how I met Jeremy. I had a booth at a craft fair—I used to do a lot of craft fairs before I met him—and he was at the fair with a friend, a girlfriend, I guess? I don’t know. Anyway, she wanted one of my pots, so he bought it for her. And he took my card. This friend of mine from the craft fair circuit told me I should print little cards with my name and email address on them so customers could contact me?”

Heather had that juvenile habit of curling her voice so that half her sentences sounded like questions. When any of the younger staff at the foundation spoke that way, Gwen chided them, asking if they were making a statement or inquiring about something. She had broken most of them of the habit. She wondered if she could break Heather of the habit, too. But then, she imagined they wouldn’t be spending much time together after today. They would find Jeremy (vibes be damned) and Heather would learn what Gwen and Talia already knew (that Jeremy habitually engaged in infidelity), and Heather would get on with her life. She would throw her pots and grow up and Gwen would never have to think about her again.

“So I printed these cards,” Heather went on, “and Jeremy took one? And then he emailed me and said he wanted to see more of my stuff, and maybe help me make more money. And that’s how we met.”

“Ah, romance,” Talia muttered, sounding more than a little cynical.

“He’s so smart about business,” Heather babbled on. “I mean, of course he is, right? He’s a lawyer. But he gave me all this advice about setting up a website and selling direct, and skipping the craft fairs, and he found me this gallery? They sell my stuff there. And he said he’s going to find me some more galleries. Retail venues, he calls them. I hope he’s okay,” she added wistfully. “Do you think he’s okay?”

He’s enjoying an island escapade with some other wife, Gwen thought bitterly. She tried to block from her mind the notion that he had fallen off a boat and drowned. He did know how to swim, after all, and he wouldn’t be so foolish as to go boating without wearing a life vest.

Ignoring Heather’s question, Talia said, “Selling your work in a gallery is pretty cool. The twins told me about your studio in the barn, but they didn’t tell me about the gallery.”

It was indeed pretty cool, Gwen conceded. When David had told her Heather was a ceramist, she had imagined something only a degree or two more sophisticated than the lopsided clay bowls David used to mold out of clay at summer camp, with opaque paint in primary colors slapped onto them. As a dutiful mother, Gwen had displayed them on the window sill in the kitchen until David turned ten and demanded that she get rid of them. “They’re embarrassing,” he’d complained. She had carefully packed them into a box and stored them in the attic. She couldn’t bring herself to discard her precious child’s ugly little masterpieces. Given her own utter lack of artistic ability, she had considered those crooked bowls significantly more charming than anything she herself could create.

Still in a chatty mood, Heather said, “The twins tell me you’re writing a book, Talia. That’s pretty cool, too.”

“It’s already written,” Talia told her. “I just need to proofread the notes one final time. It’s scheduled for publication this November.”

“What’s it about?”

“The friction between immigrant parents and their U.S.-born offspring in contemporary America.”

“Oh.” Heather subsided, sinking back against the upholstery. She sounded disappointed. Maybe she had thought Talia—a professor of sociology, for heaven’s sake—would have written a potboiler novel full of steamy sex and intrigue. “Does this car have a radio?”

Gwen and Talia exchanged another look. Honestly, they might as well have a child in the back seat. Maybe Gwen ought to have packed some activity books for Heather. License-plate bingo, perhaps, or a coloring book and a few waxy crayons. No, not that. Apparently, she had enough artistic talent to have created pieces that were sold in a gallery.

“I can turn on some music,” Gwen said, experiencing a twinge of malicious amusement. Her car was equipped with fourteen high-quality speakers. She had programmed several of the radio’s buttons to rock music stations, but that mischievous twinge compelled her to press the button for one of Boston’s classical music stations. Talia grinned as the car resonated with Mozart’s clarinet concerto. If Heather wanted to listen to music, this was the music she would listen to.

With the radio on, Gwen and her passengers lapsed into silence. For her, that was a pleasure. She could converse as well as anyone, but at heart she was an introvert. She had often wondered, after her marriage to Jeremy unraveled, whether he had cheated on her because she wasn’t garrulous enough, funny enough, entertaining enough.

Clearly, she hadn’t been enough.

Now, nearly twenty years after she had divorced Jeremy, she was chauffeuring his current wife and his other ex-wife to the Vineyard to rescue him. Or to humiliate him, if indeed he was enjoying a secret tryst with some other woman. To catch him in yet another lie. To haul him out of the water before he drowned. To rescue him. To punish him.

To hate him or to love him. She wasn’t sure which.