Virginia DeLuca
WRITER & THERAPIST
IF YOU MUST GO, I WISH YOU TRIPLETS
A MEMOIR
Published April 2025,
Loyola University/Apprentice House Press
Sometimes, we know the least about those we love the most.
It took less than an hour for an old life to end and a new one to begin. When Virginia DeLuca’s sixty-year-old husband abruptly walked out on their serene and happy—even joyful—marriage, proclaiming a sudden desire to have babies, everyone had a theory. He already knocked someone up. Nervous breakdown. Brain tumor.
After fourteen years together, she was left with the mystery of the ending and the need to forge an unknown path. DeLuca, a psychotherapist, spent decades helping clients cope with sudden losses and dramatic changes—and now it’s happened to her. Now, she must hunt to find the truth of her own story.
In the tradition of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb, If You Must Go, I WishYou Triplets is an unflinching exploration of love and relationships from a woman who ultimately found that life can expand in unanticipated ways.
"What a fantastic book… like reading a mystery, racing to see what happens …and then finding clarity and the triumph of the ending. It was an extraordinary experience… I've never felt quite this way before with any book."
ABIGAIL THOMAS,
New York Times bestselling author of A Three Dog Life
IF YOU MUST GO, I WISH YOU TRIPLETS - PROLOGUE
Sexy. Whenever I think of Perry and how we were, I think sexy. The thought makes me smile—a buoyant inner smile, almost smug. Falling in love at forty-seven and marrying at fifty-two is both phenomenal and frightening. But then again, falling in love is always phenomenal and frightening.
However, in your fifties, the relationship comes with an end date built-in.
Oh, I know some people claim that fifty is the new thirty and all that. But for me, when Perry and I married, I was keenly aware that one of us would have to usher the other out. Maybe not for another thirty years or so, knock on wood, but Perry's parents both died in their early sixties. I'd buried many loved ones already. I just wanted it to be Perry ushering me out.
I should have remembered: Be careful what you wish for.
