The Version I Gave You

Twenty years ago, Claire Doran ended the friendship that had defined her twenties. She has never doubted why.Then her mother dies, and June Mercer walks into the funeral.June once knew Claire better than anyone. She was also the friend who helped until helping began to feel like control-the woman who crossed a line Claire had clearly drawn. Claire built the rest of her adult life without her and reduced their years together to a story simple enough to stop telling.Wren, Claire's seventeen-year-old daughter, knows June only from old photographs and fragments. Curious about the woman who appears in so many of them, she begins forming a relationship with June of her own.As Claire clears her mother's house, practical reasons keep putting the former friends in the same rooms. Old ease returns alongside old anger. Wren refuses to let Claire decide what June means to her. And memories Claire has carried for twenty years begin to look different when someone else is asking the questions.Claire knows why the friendship ended. What becomes harder to answer is whether that is the whole story.The Version I Gave You is a contemporary novel about female friendship, motherhood, autonomy, and what remains after a relationship important enough to shape a life is over.