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

them or leave them, but you can’t hide them,” she said, and Willa wagged her stump, as if she understood.

That first night, after she’d made sure the door was locked and turned out the lights, Diana climbed into the loft and got into bed. She could see Willa’s silhouette below her, sitting on her haunches at the foot of the stairs. “Come on, girl, it’s okay,” she said, patting the bed, and Willa had gathered herself, trotting up the stairs and leaping onto the mattress, her tail rotating madly. She licked Diana’s hand, sniffed her way around the perimeter of the bed, then turned herself around three times and curled up on her side, with her back against Diana’s hip. Diana wrapped her arm around the dog’s head, and Willa rested her muzzle on Diana’s forearm. That was how they fell asleep.

Diana bought a dog bed, and one of the bike shops sold her a used three-speed bike with a roomy wicker basket on its handlebars. She’d take Willa for a walk every morning, and, every few days, for a bike ride to the post office to collect her mail. At two in the morning, with the whole world quiet except for the waves and the wind’s low keening, Diana would come home from work and unlock the cottage door to find the light above the stove still burning and Willa curled up on the couch, tail wagging in welcome.

Diana’s skin got tan; the sun put streaks of gold in her hair. The biking and the swimming worked her heart and her lungs and her muscles, the nights of sound sleep erased the worry from her eyes. Day by day, week by week, with every walk on the sand and each stroke through the water, with each workday completed, and each deposit to her savings account, she felt stronger. A little more herself; a little more at home.

By October, all the trees were bare, except for the scrubby pines. The water got too cold for swimming, and the beach looked desolate. The town had emptied out, just as Reese had predicted. In Provincetown, Diana had her choice of parking spaces, and started becoming familiar with the faces of some of her fellow washashores and year-rounders: the clerk at the grocery store, the librarians at the public library, the guy with the shaved head who worked behind the counter at Joe.

One morning, she was sleeping late, dressed in a sweatshirt and a pair of boxer shorts with Willa curled up beside her. Reese had celebrated his fiftieth birthday at the Abbey the night before, closing the restaurant to the public and throwing a party for all his friends, which seemed to include every resident of P-town. Diana had spotted the woman from the art gallery, with her pink hair and cat-eye glasses, the guy who ran the copy shop, the meter maid and the cops and the shellfish constable and even the guy who directed traffic, dressed as a pilgrim, on busy weekends. The Abbey had been crowded, with three bartenders hustling to keep everyone’s glasses full. Chef had made paella, studded with linguica and chunks of lobster meat and fresh clams, and, after dinner was served, Reese had insisted that his staffers join the party. It had been a long night, which had culminated with Reese, after much coaxing from Jonathan, standing on top of a table and singing “Let’s Get It On.” He’d started a capella, but at some point one of the patrons had produced an accordion, of all things, and then a few of the drag queens, powerless to resist the spotlight, had climbed on the table to join in. At one point, Reese had fought has way through the crowd to Diana, taking hold of her head and planting a resounding kiss on her cheek. “Dee! My baby washashore! Are you having fun?”

She promised that she was.

“And you’re happy!” Reese, who Diana suspected was thoroughly drunk, was giving her a probing look.

“I’m fine!” She lifted her glass of champagne as proof. “I promise.”

“Okay, then.” He patted her upper arm and sent her back into the throng. Instead of returning to the party, Diana had gone to the ladies’ room. She’d washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror for a long time, wondering what other people saw. A tallish young woman with golden-brown hair, a girl who wore baggy clothes and a wary expression. A girl who’d forgotten how to smile.

When she came out of the bathroom, Ryan was waiting. He grabbed her hand. “Come dancing,” he said, and dragged her toward the center of the room, where people were doing some kind of line dance to “Love Shack” by the B-52s. Diana had let herself be pulled toward the center of the action, throwing her hands in the air with three dozen other revelers whenever Fred Schneider sang “The whole shack shimmies!”

She hadn’t made it home until after two in the morning, and had immediately fallen deeply asleep without bothering to set her alarm, because it was Saturday, one of her days off. She had just opened her eyes when the knocking began.“Caretaker!” a loud, male voice shouted.

She jumped up, badly startled, calling, “Just a minute!” as Willa yelped and scrambled underneath the bed. Diana snatched up the previous evening’s white shirt, wincing at the combined odors of tequila, cigarette smoke, and clam juice, which must have gotten splashed on her sleeves during service. The dresser, with the rest of her clothes, was downstairs, on the opposite side of the cottage, and she could see a bulky male shape looming outside of the screen door.

“Just hang on!” A few weeks ago, there’d been a sale at one of the fancy home goods stores on Commercial Street, the same place she’d bought Ryan’s birthday socks, and she’d treated herself to a blanket of soft knit wool, purple with fringed tassels. She snatched it up, wrapped it around her waist, and came down the stairs