Excerpt from The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I inhaled the smoke from my cigarette and then exhaled. My sister and her babies and all their glowing perfection. Motherhood seemed to suit Susan, made her even prettier than she always had been, which I might have once thought impossible, but, no. Caring for the girls gave her rosier cheeks and a new sheen to her vibrant black hair and even made her laughter sound brighter. And never mind that she'd carried two babies at once, the extra weight had dropped off her waistline just like that and now her figure looked more perfect than ever. The twins were only nine months, but they already babbled and smiled and had started to make sounds that vaguely resembled dada. Sam is just in love, Susan had gushed the last time I'd seen her a few weeks earlier when we'd taken the train out to Elizabeth for Sunday brunch. And why wouldn't he be? His children—and his wife—were perfect, and thinking about it made me well up with both jealousy and sadness.

Motherhood had done no favors for my figure. I was always a slightly heavier, slightly shorter, slightly duller version of my older sister. My mother used to tell me my features were ordinary—and not unkindly, just a statement of fact. I'd always had nice clear skin and pretty pale brown eyes, but I was neither tall nor short, beautiful nor ugly, the kind of woman who can blend into a crowd and be utterly forgettable. My most distinguishing feature was my shoulder-length medium brown curls, often impossibly unruly. I loved David, but my waist was a few inches thicker than it once was, my curls were forever a mess, and the last time Susan saw me she took one look at the bags under my eyes and told me I wasn't sleeping enough. Yes, David was exhausting. He would be two soon and had yet to utter even a single sound. Ed claimed his ears must not work, or possibly his brain, and Dr. Greenberg said it was me, that I was too cold with him, too cross with him. Indulge him a little more, why don't you, he had said, the entire weight of his bald head sinking into his frown.

And yet I'd tried everything: coaxing him, playing with him, listening harder, hugging him more, punishing him, yelling at him. I read Parents magazine with a rapt hunger for answers that were never there. I learned about illnesses and tantrums, but nothing at all about what to do with a child like mine who just would not speak.

I heard a knock at the door, interrupting my thoughts. I checked the time, but it was only three thirty, too early for anyone to arrive for dinner and too early for Ed to be home from work. For a moment, I wondered if it was Ethel back from the studio and wanting to take me up on my offer for coffee. "Coming," I called, but not too loud so as not to wake David, and I squashed out my cigarette, stood, and smoothed down my dress with my hands, then smoothed my curls.

I opened the door and saw my mother standing there in the hallway, looking as if she'd just swallowed a lemon, a frown so big enveloping her plump cheeks that it seemed to weigh them down, to make her entire face sag. "You're so early," I said, opening the door wider, "I don't have anything ready yet."

She pushed past me into the apartment. "Dinner is canceled," she said. "Susan just sent me a telegram. Thank goodness she figured it out."

The telephone operators had been on strike for two weeks, rendering our new shiny black telephone entirely useless. We had been promised a party line as part of our forty-six dollars a month rent, which also included electricity. It was an excellent deal, according to Ed. Not so excellent when the phone was unworkable because of the operators' strike.

"Canceled?" I asked, trying not to let the disappointment I felt seep into my voice.

"There's a smallpox outbreak in the city," my mother said. "Susan heard on the radio and she can't bring the twins into the city under these conditions."

Excerpted from The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor. Copyright © 2015 by Jillian Cantor. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.