Table Of ContentALWAYS CHLOE AND OTHER
STORIES
Catherine Ryan Hyde
“Tender, amazingly hopeful.” –Kirkus Reviews, of Becoming Chloe
“Vibrant and heartbreaking.” –Publishers Weekly, of Becoming Chloe
By the bestselling author of Don’t Let Me Go and Pay It Forward, this
captivating short story collection features ALWAYS CHLOE, the long-awaited
novella sequel to Becoming Chloe, Hyde’s award-winning novel.
Jordy and Chloe are living above a restaurant in Morro Bay, the first place they
landed after their trip down the Big Sur Coast. But Jordy has a boyfriend now,
an old flame who’s come back into his life in a big way.
Chloe stretches herself as far as she can go to give them her blessing, but her
issues about living—or even sleeping—alone turn this happy reunion into a
potential disaster. Chloe stops eating, stops sleeping, stops paddling her beloved
and battered blue kayak in the bay.
No one knows how to help her. When her friend Old Ben, the man who runs the
fuel dock nearby, gives her some advice, his words could either save the day or
send her out to sea forever, depending on her unique mind’s understanding of
them.
A heart-wrenching stand-alone novella, and an answer to the many readers who
asked for a sequel to Becoming Chloe, ALWAYS CHLOE is ultimately about
the struggle to balance others’ needs with our own—and exactly how expansive
and forgiving the human heart can be.
This collection also includes four previously published short stories, including
Breakage, which won honors in the Tobias Wolff award, and The Lion Lottery,
which was cited in Best American Short Stories.
For my faithful reader Misty, who said just the right thing, in just the right way,
at just the right time, to help me see that Jordy and Chloe needed more story.
Author’s Note:
The only piece in this collection that has never been published in any form is
the novella Always Chloe, which is a sequel to my 2006 Knopf novel Becoming
Chloe. So many people expressed interest in what happened to Jordan and Chloe
that I made the singular decision to return to their story. I hope those who have
read Becoming Chloe will enjoy this continuation of their journey, but I’ve done
my best to make this a stand-alone piece, one that doesn’t require much—if any
—previous knowledge of the characters.
The story “Breakage” won second place in the Tobias Wolff award, and was
published in the Bellingham Review. “Pet Care, Tarot Readings, Maid Service”
appeared in the Worcester Review, and “Fortunate Son” was first published in
Eureka Literary Magazine. “The Lion Lottery” was published in High Plains
Literary Review and cited in Best American Short Stories in 1999, under the title
“Castration Humor.” I changed the title because it made the subject matter sound
so very much worse than it is.
Table of Contents
ALWAYS CHLOE
PART ONE: This Is My Right Now
Chapter 1 — FLUKE
PART TWO: This Is Just a Couple Months Back
Chapter 2 — EARTH TIME | Chapter 3 — BLUE BOAT | Chapter 4 — OLD
BEN | Chapter 5 — GOD, THE DEVIL, AND RABBITS | Chapter 6 —
DRIVER CLASS | Chapter 7 — CHLOE’S CHOICE | Chapter 8 —
HAPPINESS
PART THREE: This Is Back to My Right Now
Chapter 9 — LIGHT | Chapter 10 — BEAUTIFUL
OTHER SHORT STORIES
THE LION LOTTERY | PET CARE, TAROT READINGS, MAID SERVICE |
BREAKAGE | FORTUNATE SON
EARTHQUAKE WEATHER AND OTHER STORIES
ABOUT CATHERINE RYAN HYDE
ALSO BY CATHERINE RYAN HYDE
ALWAYS CHLOE
PART ONE:
This Is My Right Now.
FLUKE
I push off from the dock. Paddle away.
Amazing. I’m really doing this thing.
I don’t even know if I’m scared.
Probably I’m scared. Probably I just don’t know.
I can hear Ethel barking at me. And barking. And barking. I’m scared she’ll
wake up Jordy and Kevin. I’m hoping Jordy’ll just yell at her to be quiet, and
then he’ll go back to sleep again.
I’ve never heard Ethel all panicked like that. I thought she could take
anything. She’s been through a lot. Like me. So I figured she could roll with just
about anything by now.
But I was wrong. She wants to come along.
Or maybe she doesn’t want to go. Maybe she just wants me not to.
I don’t look back. I couldn’t stand to look back and see Ethel’s face in the
window.
She can get along without me. She’s done stuff like that before.
I wave at Old Ben on my way by his fuel dock. He waves back.
He calls out to me. “Chloe! Good to see you back on the water!”
It hits me by surprise how much I’m going to miss Old Ben.
I didn’t know that.
I knew Jordy was just about everything in the world, and I knew I would miss
Ethel, but I didn’t know Old Ben got so important. I wonder when that
happened. And why I didn’t know.
It doesn’t matter now. I don’t need to try to figure everything out anymore.
I look again at Ben’s quote. That’s what he calls it. A quote. I would just call
it a little poem. I’m still not quite sure what a quote is, even though I think he
tried to explain it to me. I only know he painted it onto the wood that’s boarding
up the windows in the shop next door to his.
The neighbors think the other guy painted it, before he closed up his shop and
ran away.
But I know it was Old Ben.
It says:
All men should strive to learn before they die
What they are running from, and to, and why.
—Thurber
Ben told me what a Thurber is, but now I forget.
He also told me that women count the same as men for a thing like that.
I don’t think I know any of those “from” and “to” and “why” things. I guess I
didn’t learn them. And I guess I should have. But it’s too late to fix that now.
Old Ben keeps looking and looking after I go by. I keep turning to see him
over my shoulder, and he’s still watching me.
Maybe I’m wearing something about this day, about this plan, like a sign on
my forehead that anybody can read. Or maybe it’s just because I’m paddling my
little blue kayak out farther than the sign. The sign that warns about little boats
near the breakwater. How waves can break inside the breakwater and get small
boats in trouble. I guess Old Ben must know by now that I never paddle out
farther than the sign.
I turn one more time and wave at him. All happy and fun. So he’ll figure I
