Three Sisters, One Year After Nicky’s Death

On July 4th, exactly one year after Nicole “Nicky” Blue died from an accidental fentanyl overdose at twenty-seven, her three surviving sisters are scattered across the world. None has found a way to live comfortably with her absence.

The four sisters grew up in an Upper West Side apartment in New York, raised by an alcoholic father and an emotionally distant mother. Nicky, the third-born, became a beloved tenth-grade English teacher despite suffering from severe endometriosis. Her chronic pain eventually led to the painkiller use that preceded her death.

Now Avery Blue, thirty-three, lives in London with her wife, Chiti. A brilliant corporate lawyer and former heroin addict who has been clean for ten years, Avery has always assumed responsibility for her younger sisters. But her own life is unraveling behind the scenes.

Bonnie Blue, thirty-one, was once a professional boxer and IBA World silver medalist. Following Nicky’s death and a devastating title fight loss, she abandoned boxing and moved to Venice Beach, California, where she works as a bouncer.

The youngest, Lucky Blue, twenty-six, is a world-famous fashion model living in Paris. She spends her nights drinking, taking drugs, and partying, doing everything possible to avoid being alone with her grief.

Their fragile separation is disrupted when their mother announces that she and their father are selling the family apartment. The sisters have one month to remove Nicky’s belongings.

Lucky Loses Her Job, Bonnie Breaks Down, and Avery Has an Affair

Lucky begins the anniversary of Nicky’s death hungover in Paris. Before a couture fitting, she calls Nicky’s old cellphone, which Avery has kept active, and leaves a tearful voicemail. She then meets fellow models Sabina, Cliff, and Riley at a café, where the conversation turns to Lucky’s reckless behavior.

By the time she reaches her fitting, she is heavily intoxicated. The designers lace her into an elaborate pale pink ball gown that took three hundred hours to embroider. Overwhelmed by the heat, tight bodice, and everything she has consumed, Lucky leans out a window and vomits onto the pristine runway below.

Her agency fires her immediately.

Across the country, Bonnie receives a call from Avery about the apartment. Avery offers to handle Nicky’s belongings herself, knowing how painful returning to New York would be for Bonnie.

That evening, while working at Peachy’s, the Venice Beach dive bar owned by her friend Peachy, Bonnie encounters an aggressive customer who directs a racial slur at him. Already shaken by an encounter with a woman who reminds her of Nicky, Bonnie loses control and beats the man unconscious.

She flees to the beach and walks through the night. Returning home, she discovers that her feet and Nicky’s favorite leather sandals are covered in black tar. She frantically tries to clean everything before remembering that olive oil removes tar easily. Sitting alone in her nearly empty rental, she finally begins sobbing—the first time she has cried since Nicky died.

In London, Avery’s carefully constructed life is also collapsing. She secretly smokes cigarettes, shoplifts expensive merchandise, and has stopped attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Her marriage is increasingly strained because Chiti wants to find a sperm donor and have a child, while Avery cannot bring herself to admit that she doesn’t want to become a mother.

At an AA meeting, Avery meets Charlie, a twenty-seven-year-old copywriter and poet who has been sober for ninety days. She is drawn to his openness, and the two begin an affair. During a visit to his room at his parents’ house, Avery tells him about her teenage heroin addiction in San Francisco and Nicky’s death.

For someone who has spent years presenting herself as the responsible sister, the affair is another secret she cannot reconcile with the life she has built.

Lucky’s London Blackout Exposes Avery’s Secrets

After losing her modeling job, Lucky travels to London to stay with Avery and Chiti.

During dinner, Chiti mentions their plans to have a baby. Lucky, already feeling abandoned by the people closest to her, reacts badly. When she encounters Avery outside, she accidentally reveals that Chiti has discussed the baby plans, catching Avery off guard.

Lucky escapes to a party at an exclusive sex club called Pure Smut with a stylist known as Troll Doll. After consuming a dangerous mixture of drugs and alcohol, she encounters a huge bouncer nicknamed BFG, who appears to tell her something about Nicky having a baby.

The mysterious comment sends Lucky into a panic. She blacks out and eventually collapses on Avery’s doorstep wearing a white feather boa.

Finding her youngest sister unconscious, Avery drags her into the shower and desperately shakes her awake, sobbing, “Not you. Not you too. Not you.”

The next day, Lucky returns to the club looking for BFG. He denies knowing Nicky or saying anything about a baby. Lucky realizes she hallucinated the conversation.

Soon afterward, Bonnie leaves a voicemail asking Lucky to help clear out Nicky’s apartment, giving her a reason to return to New York.

Before she departs, Chiti discovers an empty Plan B box in the guest bathroom trash. Lucky insists it isn’t hers and suddenly realizes that it must belong to Avery.

Bonnie and Lucky Return to New York

Bonnie arrives in New York and visits Golden Ring Gym, where she trained for fifteen years under Pavel Petrovich.

Their reunion is painfully awkward. Pavel treats her with cold formality and refuses to train her himself, assigning her to another trainer named Felix. Bonnie has never told Pavel that she loves him, and her feelings for him were one of the reasons she fled to California.

When Lucky arrives at JFK, Bonnie greets her with a homemade sign. The sisters return to their childhood apartment, where Lucky begins suffering severe withdrawal from alcohol and drugs.

For several days, Bonnie devotes herself to caring for her. She bathes Lucky, blow-dries her hair, feeds her bananas and blue Gatorade, and accompanies her on gentle walks through Central Park.

When Lucky becomes desperate enough to try escaping the apartment to buy drugs, Bonnie physically restrains her in the hallway. Their struggle eventually dissolves into laughter, giving them a rare moment of closeness.

During a run in Central Park, Bonnie confesses that she has become addicted to pain, both in the boxing ring and outside it. She also admits her long-hidden love for Pavel.

Back in London, Chiti confronts Avery about the Plan B box. Avery confesses that she has been having an affair with Charlie.

Heartbroken, Chiti smashes a glass vase and steps barefoot into the broken pieces, demanding that Avery stay and face what she has done. Avery carefully removes the glass from her wife’s feet, but the damage to their marriage is undeniable.

Chiti moves into the guest room, and Avery leaves for New York.

The Sisters Reunite, Then Turn on Each Other

With all three sisters back in their childhood apartment, they briefly rediscover the easy companionship they once shared.

One afternoon, they spot an abandoned pink Smeg refrigerator on 89th Street and decide to carry it upstairs together. The ridiculous effort has them laughing as they maneuver it into the apartment.

But their mother’s behavior soon reminds them of the family’s longstanding problems. She drops off paperwork for the apartment sale with the doorman without bothering to visit her daughters upstairs.

As they sort through Nicky’s belongings, deciding what to keep, donate, or throw away, they find a vintage Spice Girls tour T-shirt from their childhood.

Lucky puts it on, and an argument erupts.

She exposes Bonnie’s feelings for Pavel, embarrassing her sister. Bonnie retaliates by pointing out that she sacrificed a week of boxing training to nurse Lucky through withdrawal. When Lucky dismisses that sacrifice as merely taking a break, the argument becomes increasingly vicious.

Finally, Avery lashes out with the cruelest thing she could possibly say: if people got what they deserved, Lucky would have been the sister in the casket instead of Nicky.

Lucky storms out, devastated.

She eventually encounters Riley, the young American model she met in Paris, near the basketball courts at West 4th Street. Together they begin drinking, and Lucky’s fragile sobriety collapses.

The night becomes a chaotic tour of New York bars, clubs, and apartments. She drinks beer, takes shots in Chinatown, orders bottle service in SoHo, and drinks wine on a rooftop. At one point, she rips off Nicky’s Spice Girls shirt while screaming about the band.

After vomiting on someone’s expensive rug, she is thrown out around five in the morning. Riley eventually finds her slumped on a sidewalk grate and takes her back to his Williamsburg loft.

Lucky Finds AA, and Bonnie Confronts Pavel

Lucky wakes in Riley’s apartment overwhelmed by shame.

For the first time, she openly admits that she is an alcoholic and addict who has no idea how to live sober. Riley responds with unexpected gentleness rather than judgment.

Walking across the Williamsburg Bridge afterward, Lucky remembers their father’s erratic eulogy at Nicky’s funeral, particularly his wish that Nicky would “go lightly.”

She finds an AA meeting on Saint Marks Place.

There, she meets several regulars, including Cooper, who has Tourette’s, and Butter, a British woman with bright orange hair who eventually becomes her sponsor. When asked to read from the Big Book, Lucky pushes through her lifelong fear of reading aloud.

It is a small but important first step toward recovery.

Bonnie, meanwhile, returns to Golden Ring and spars six punishing rounds with Danya, Pavel’s new star pupil. Although she is rusty and absorbs several hard punches, she proves she can still fight.

When Pavel finally calls out instructions to her, Bonnie instinctively looks toward him and takes a punch to the temple that knocks her down. She gets back up and finishes the session.

That evening, she attends the gym’s annual party at a Harlem club, accompanied by Peachy. Wearing one of Nicky’s silk shirts and concealer over her black eye, she finds Pavel smoking a cigar outside.

This time, Bonnie refuses to let him evade their feelings. When he questions whether she really wants to tie her life to his, she asks what would happen if she did.

Their conversation finally brings their long-suppressed romantic connection into the open.

Avery Confronts Her Mother

While her sisters struggle through their own turning points, Avery spends a day hiding in a Midtown hotel before traveling upstate to visit their mother.

At the family’s cabin, she discovers her mother tending chickens that peck at a toy xylophone.

During their conversation, her mother reveals that their father has entered a six-month residential rehabilitation program because of his severe alcoholism and gout. His treatment is the real reason the family needs to sell the apartment.

Avery confronts her mother about the neglect and dysfunction that shaped their childhood, as well as the family’s failure to protect Nicky.

Their mother admits that she never felt suited to motherhood. She also reveals that she once tried to find Avery when Avery was struggling with heroin addiction in San Francisco. She explains that she stayed married to their father partly because she wanted the sisters to have one another.

The conversation is painful but more open than anything Avery has experienced with her mother in years.

Avery finally confesses her affair with Charlie and admits she doesn’t want a baby. Her mother advises her to stop punishing herself and either commit fully to Chiti or allow both of them to move forward separately.

The Sisters Finally Talk About Nicky

When Avery returns to the apartment at dawn, she finds Lucky sitting on the bathroom toilet playing a red Gibson guitar borrowed from Butter.

Avery apologizes for telling Lucky she should have died instead of Nicky. Lucky accepts her apology, and the sisters embrace.

Bonnie joins them, and Lucky plays a song she has written about Nicky. The three women end up crowded together in the bathtub, crying and laughing as they listen.

Over the following week, they continue packing Nicky’s belongings, attending AA meetings, watching Bonnie train, and spending time together in Central Park.

Bonnie announces that she is moving in with Pavel.

Eventually, the sisters have the conversation they have avoided for an entire year: what happened before Nicky died, and what each of them might have done differently.

Bonnie admits that Nicky asked her for pain pills the day before her death, but she refused. She has carried guilt over that decision ever since.

Lucky reveals that she discovered a secret wish Nicky had written on a wishing tree at her school: “No more pills.”

Avery confesses that she noticed Nicky’s unusually small pupils, a possible sign of opioid use, but did not intervene.

As they share these memories, they begin releasing one another from the blame each has carried.

Avery then tells her sisters about her affair, her compulsive shoplifting, and her decision not to have children.

Instead of condemning her, Bonnie and Lucky reassure her that they love her regardless of what she has done. Their conversation even turns darkly funny, with one sister joking that she would help dispose of a body if necessary.

For the first time in a long while, the surviving Blue sisters can speak openly about Nicky, their mistakes, and the lives they want to lead.

Avery and Chiti Separate

Avery returns to London knowing she must finally tell Chiti the truth.

She admits that she cannot have a child and cannot promise to become the mother Chiti wants her to be. Although the two women still love each other, they recognize that their futures no longer fit together.

They separate.

Afterward, Avery goes to the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond. She dives deep into the cold water, reaches the muddy bottom, and then kicks herself back toward the surface, emerging into the sunlight.

Ten Years Later: A New Nicole Blue

The novel’s epilogue jumps forward ten years.

Avery, now forty-three, has left corporate law and become a professor at Columbia University. She is married to a woman named Fatima and remains close friends with Chiti, who still lives in London and has an eight-year-old son, Azad, conceived through a sperm donor.

Lucky, thirty-six, has written a successful memoir and is touring to promote it. Her recovery has not been straightforward: she is currently celebrating sixty days sober after another relapse. She continues working toward sobriety.

Bonnie, forty-one, eventually returned to professional boxing and unified the lightweight world titles before retiring. She now works as a respected boxing trainer and has built a life with Pavel.

When Bonnie goes into labor with their first child, Avery and Lucky rush to the hospital to join her and Pavel.

The sisters are together in the delivery room when Bonnie gives birth to a healthy baby girl.

They name her Nicole Petrovich Blue, honoring the sister whose death brought them back together.

The novel closes from the newborn Nicole’s perspective. Surrounded by her mother, father, and two aunts, she experiences their voices, laughter, warmth, and love as she enters the world, safe in the middle of the Blue family.