That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (free e reader txt) 📗

has to help. So we’ll swing by her place on our way up, and Hal doesn’t need to know.”

“I gotcha.” The warmth in Crystal’s voice made Daisy’s eyes sting. “Family drama. Believe me, I completely understand. If he calls, I’ll just let him know that Beatrice is with you.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. She imagined that Hannah was with her, watching, following along as she made one last pass through the bathroom, gathering sunscreen, toothpaste, and soap. She called the pet hotel where Lester occasionally stayed, and made a reservation for a week, with some extra daily one-on-one time, because she felt terrible about leaving him.

Glad you’re looking after the dog, she imagined Hannah saying. But what about you? What about Beatrice?

She stood by the door, waiting. When her daughter arrived, carpetbag looped daintily over her forearm, Daisy shoved the duffel bag into her arms. “Go upstairs and get enough clothes for the weekend. Bring your homework, and a sweatshirt and shoes you can walk in. Quick as you can, okay? I’ll explain everything once we’re in the car.”

For once, thank God, Beatrice didn’t argue, or roll her eyes or do any of her usual teenager tricks. “What’s going on? Where are we going?”

“Grandma’s place first.”

Beatrice’s eyes were very wide. “What about Daddy?”

Daisy hadn’t heard Beatrice call her father “Daddy” in as long as she could remember. Don’t tell her, she thought. Hal is still her father, no matter what he’s done, he’s still her dad. And there was another voice, the one that could see the bones of Beatrice’s face, the outline of the woman she was becoming. It was that voice that Daisy spoke with. “Honey, it’s complicated. I promise I’ll tell you as much as I can. But, for right now, I need to ask you not to tell Dad where we’re going. No phone calls, no texts, no emails.”

“I can’t call anyone. You’ve got my phone, remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Mom.” Her daughter’s face was troubled. “What happened? What’s going on?”

“I can’t tell you any more right now, but I promise that I’m going to keep you safe. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. I swear, I’m going to keep you safe, no matter what.”

31 Diana

After what had happened in Baltimore, with Brad, Diana swore that she was done. She’d learned her tormentor’s name. She had hunted him down. She had called him to account for what he’d done, made him look at her, made him see her, and the damage that he’d done. Now he was dead.

Had he belatedly developed a conscience? Was it that Diana pulled the veil from his eyes, showing him who he was and what he’d done, and had he been unable to live for even another day with the knowledge? Or had she found a troubled, broken man; a man truly trying to do better, and pushed him over the edge, depriving his children of their father, his parents of their son?

She didn’t know. And when she tried to think it through, the facts that she laid out so reasonably kept sliding away, replaced by an image of Brad’s children, Claudia and Eli, trudging up the stairs with their backpacks and their unsuspecting faces. Those children, and their half-siblings, would all grow up without a father. And that was her fault.

For the first time in a long time, Diana started having trouble sleeping. Menopause, suggested her doctor, and Hazel, her therapist, had looked her over carefully with eyes that saw too much and asked, Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind? Diana hadn’t been able to do it, because what would Hazel say if Diana told her the truth?

Every night, Michael would sleep by her side, and Pedro would sleep at her feet, and Diana would lie awake, staring out into the blackness. On moonless nights, it was impossible to tell where the sky became land, and where the land became water. I am going to forget about this, she told herself. I am going to forget about Henry Shoemaker and Daniel Rosen. I’m not going to think about what happened to me, all those years ago. I am going to get on with my happy life.

She might have been able to do it, if she’d been better rested, or if the entire country was not in the midst of facing the wreckage of decades of sexual harassment and sexual assault, if the news had not been full of stories of the terrible things that some man or another had done, and how many women he’d done them to.

Diana would read the stories and think about Hal, and her hands would clench, and she’d think, He should suffer. He should pay. Then she’d remember what had happened with Brad, and think how much worse it would be, because Daniel Rosen had a husband and Henry Shoemaker had a wife and a daughter, a daughter who was almost exactly the age Diana had been that summer, a daughter the age that her nieces were now. I can’t do anything, she would think… and then, an instant later, she’d think, but I can’t do nothing.

“See the paper?” Michael asked one morning in June, tossing the Cape Cod Times down on the table.

“Who is it this time?” Diana asked without looking. So far, there’d been the famous movie producer, the morning news anchor, the conductor of a prominent orchestra, the editor of a famous literary magazine. Actors, athletes, NFL owners, one by one by one, they’d been exposed.

Michael poured himself a cup of coffee, and made Diana her tea. Then, instead of sitting at the table, he’d gone to the couch and patted the space beside him. There was gray in his reddish beard now, to go with the gray in her hair. He wore orthotic inserts in his shoes, and did stretches for his back before he went to bed at night.

He held a section of the paper, turning it so that she could