- Why does Helen have a hard time making friends? Is it her natural introversion, her upbringing, events in her life that have stifled her ability to connect, or a combination of factors?
- “You have excellent judgment,” Francie tells Helen in high school. “I have okay judgment. And that’s fine. It gives me a lot of room to … I don’t know. Be me. You just need less room.” Has “good judgment” somehow boxed Helen into a life that doesn’t quite fit?
- Helen and Ricky Zugravescu are polar opposites, and neither understands the other. What does Helen ultimately learn from “the school thug”?
- “Barb’s husband Cormac is the sort of happy-go-lucky-yet-hard-working guy that you want your only daughter to marry. He seems to know instinctively that a person’s life can go in awry any number of ways, and somehow his hasn’t.” Are some people just born with happy temperaments and an innate sense of gratitude?
- Three of Juliette Fay’s novels take place in the fictional town of Belham, Massachusetts and are connected through the main characters’ relationships with Cormac McGrath. In Shelter Me, Cormac is the cousin of the protagonist, Janie LaMarche. In The Shortest Way Home, he is Sean Doran’s best friend from high school. If you’ve read these prior novels, were you surprised to meet him again as Helen’s son-in-law? How has he changed over time?
- Helen worries that because she and Jim “were no Barack and Michele,” her children won’t know what a good marriage looks like and will have a hard time building their own solid relationships. But this doesn’t appear to have happened. How do kids learn how to love?
- Helen’s memories of that night in the woods and the days following are kept in a “tightly locked little box in the back of her brain, guarded by small but vicious dogs and poisonous snakes and attack birds.” What would have happened if she’d opened that box earlier in her life and examined the contents? Would she have made any course corrections?
- Cal’s apology is going well until he suggests that Helen should have written him a nicer note about giving her chlamydia. But it’s this gaffe that allows Helen to really vent all her fury at him. Do some disagreements just require a certain amount of emotion and even yelling?
- When Helen tells Cal everything that happened after that night in the woods (at the top of her lungs), she draws a direct line from their being together to her entering a mediocre marriage. Is it a direct line? What different decisions could she have made? Or is hindsight 20-20?
- After Cal offers a “sincere and thorough apology,” and Helen forgives him, it works out better than she ever could have expected. Are there things you wish you could say to someone from your past—or even your present?
- Cal’s therapist, Dorothy, tells him she thinks his life is ruled by shame. If Cal was so ashamed of his treatment of Helen, why didn’t he contact her sooner? How does shame twist our perspectives and lead us astray?
- Is it okay for married people to be platonic friends with people they’re attracted to, or with whom they have a romantic history?
- How do Jim’s and Suze’s ideas of what’s “fair” in love and in life impact Helen and Cal?
- Do you think Suze should have told Cal right away that she was seeing someone else? Do you think she should have left Cal? Is this arrangement “saving” their marriage, as she says?
- When Call tells his therapist, Dorothy, about the affair, she tells him “not to make any sudden moves …To think about what it is I really want and need. She said, ‘Once you figure it out, head in that direction.’” Is that good advice? If not, what advice would you give?
- Does Suze have a right to question Helen’s relationship with Cal? What motivates her to do so?
- Did you think Cal and Helen would end up together? Why or why not?