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

about that. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor if you stayed. You could make sure the mice don’t move in.” She refolded her hands. “There’s a woodstove. And there’s oil heat. At least, there’s an oil tank. Theoretically, it’s a four-season house, but I’ve never been up there past Thanksgiving, so I’m not sure how warm you’ll be, if it ever gets really cold…”

“I’ll get a space heater.” It felt strange to be making plans, strange to feel a smile on her face, and to feel a tiny pinprick of hope, after feeling hopeless for so long. “I… thank you. It sounds really great.”

Dr. Levy said, “I’ll put the keys in the mail, and send you directions. It’s on an unmarked road, so it’s kind of hard to find.” She got to her feet. Diana stood up, too.

“Thank you. I…” She didn’t have the words for what she wanted to tell her former employer, so she just said, “Thank you,” again.

Dr. Levy nodded. “Take care of yourself.” She paused in the doorway, giving Diana a long, level look, and then a smile. And then she was gone.

Diana walked back to the kitchen. Most days, she slept until the sun went down, right through dinner. She’d come downstairs at nine or so, eat something standing over the sink, and drive to work. That afternoon, she put Dr. Levy’s cannoli in the refrigerator, then stood there, considering her options, before pulling out eggs and butter. There was bread in the breadbox, a just-ripe-enough red plum in the fruit bowl. She put butter in the pan, bread in the toaster, cracked the eggs, and took a bite of the plum. Ten minutes later, she sat down to one of the rare actual meals she’d eaten since that summer. She sprinkled salt over her eggs, twisted the pepper mill three times, and sliced through the first egg, watching the yolk spill its gold onto the plate, thinking, Am I really going to do this? Am I going to go back, and live there, where it happened? Part of her whispered that it was folly, crazy to even consider, the worst idea she’d ever had, but another part remembered the freshness of the air and the colors of the sunsets. Those boys were only summer people, she thought, and the beach was just a beach, not to blame for what had happened there. Besides, there were lots of beaches in Truro. She’d never have to visit that one again. Five months later, she packed up her clothes into trash bags and cardboard boxes from the liquor store, and climbed into the ancient Honda that had been Julia’s, then Kara’s, and was now hers, heading to the Cape.

7 Diana

The cottage stood at the end of Knowles Heights Road in North Truro, on the crest of a dune overlooking the bay. A screen of scrub pines, crabapple trees, and beach-plum bushes hid it from its neighbors, and it had expansive windows facing the sea. It wasn’t grand. There were no airy rooms or walls of glass, no pool or hot tub or stainless-steel kitchen. It was just one room, a building like a child’s drawing of a house, with a peaked roof, white walls, and black shutters, and a small deck out back. Inside, there were stained wood walls and bright rag rugs on the hardwood floors, and a couch in a white canvas slipcover. A short staircase past the kitchen led to the sleeping loft, tucked under the eaves, with room for a futon on a box spring, with a stack of books beside it. The roof formed a peak over the bed, and a pair of small windows let in the light.

Diana set a box of books down on a coffee table made from a glass-topped ship’s helm. “Ahoy, matey,” she murmured. Just ten steps took her from the front door, to the far windows, but when she got there, she saw that the views were almost the same as the ones from Dr. Levy’s house. The ocean was spread out below her, as close as if she were standing on a ship’s deck. There were seagulls skimming low over the waves, and in the distance, a sailboat with two masts, its white sails full-bellied in the wind.

Diana walked the length of the cabin, back and forth. She had the same feeling she got when she set down a heavy backpack or took off a too-tight bra—the same easing, the same sense that she could breathe freely, and move without restraint. She rolled her shoulders, still stiff from the drive, and imagined casting off all her years of numbness and sorrow, and turning into someone else. Maybe not the woman she’d once dreamed of being, the writer, the artist, the professor, but at least someone different than she’d been back home.

Diana continued exploring. There was a stereo with a CD player tucked into a nook in the kitchen. Simple white curtains hung over the eye-level windows. The woodstove Dr. Levy had mentioned stood in the corner, and the bathroom had a grand, antique claw-footed tub that barely fit in the tiny room and looked as out of place as a dowager at a tailgate party. Diana stared at it, bemused, then went back to the main room, where a narrow shelf ran around three walls of the house at eye level. She saw paperback books, bits of sea glass, and driftwood. A dried starfish was propped up next to a glass jar filled with shells. On a small rectangle of canvas, someone had painted a competent seascape.

Outside, on the deck, were a barbecue grill and picnic table. Around the corner, behind a screen of shrubs, there was an outdoor shower with a mural of a mermaid painted on the wooden wall of its enclosure.

Diana opened the windows to chase away the lingering, musty smell of closed-up house that she remembered from her stay with Dr. Levy.