The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“I loved you so much that I thought you were the meaning of my life,”

“We’re all whores, really, in some way or another.

“It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.” So I fell down. And Harry caught me.

Because now we both knew what we were willing to risk. Just to be together.

It’s luck and being a son of a bitch.

Until you’re sitting in front of the woman who put your father’s dead body in the driver’s seat of a car to save the reputation of her best friend—and you realize she held on to a letter for almost three decades because she wanted you to know how much you were loved.

You don’t have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.

I said, “Doesn’t it bother you? That your husbands have become such a headline story, so often mentioned, that they have nearly eclipsed your work and yourself? That all anyone talks about when they talk about you are the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo?” And her answer was quintessential Evelyn. “No,” she told me. “Because they are just husbands. I am Evelyn Hugo. And anyway, I think once people know the truth, they will be much more interested in my wife.”