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

“Are you a brave girl?” the guy asked Willa. “Monty, he’d hide under the porch, every time. Come out with mulch and burrs all over him, with this embarrassed look on his face.”

Diana didn’t want to be amused. But she couldn’t stop herself from picturing it—a big, dopey-looking dog, who’d match this big, amiable guy, slinking out from underneath a porch, looking foolish.

The guy straightened. “Well, I won’t take up any more of your time.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket, extending it toward the door. “Anything else goes wrong—roof starts leaking, toilet won’t flush—you call me.”

The card, she saw, had the same logo as the truck. “Thanks.”

“Okay, then. Nice to meet you. See you around.” He ambled to his truck and climbed behind the wheel. It was a substantial truck, but even so, it seemed to sag a little beneath his bulk, and the top of his baseball cap brushed its ceiling. He gave her a friendly wave and drove away.

When Diana got home that night, she found that Michael Carmody had tucked another business card between her screen door and the doorjamb. He’d also left a waist-high pile of firewood stacked by the door, with a Baggie full of dehydrated hot dog on top of it.

“I hope you told him that your affections can’t be bought,” she told Willa, who looked up at her, her tail rotating frantically. Diana sighed and gave Willa one of Michael Carmody’s treats.

9 Diana

Oh, Michael! He’s lovely,” Dr. Levy told her when she called. “I should have told you he’d be stopping by.” Diana left him a message, reiterating the afternoons she’d be working. The very next night, she’d returned from work to find her storm windows in place. A week after that, Diana went to the bar to fill a drink order and was not entirely surprised to find Michael Carmody sitting there, with the barstool practically invisible underneath his body. He wore jeans, a plaid shirt, and his Sox cap.

“Hey, I found you!” he said.

“Yes, you did,” she said.

“Did Willa like her treats?”

“She did. Thanks.”

“I love dogs,” he said, his voice meditative. “Except for those nasty, yappy little purse dogs.” Turning to Frankie, the bartender, he said, “Hey, do you remember Mrs. Lambert? She’d come in here sometimes, back in the day, looking for her husband, and she’d have one of them whatchamacallems, a teacup poodle, in that monogrammed tote bag she used to carry?” He turned to Diana and said, “I bet she would’ve monogrammed the dog, if she could have figured out how.”

Diana made a noncommittal noise.

“When your shift’s over, how about I buy you a drink?” he asked.

“No thank you,” said Diana. If she’d been interested in dating anyone, Michael Carmody would have been a reasonable prospect, even if he resembled John Candy more than John F. Kennedy Junior. He was cheerful, with a nice smile, and he seemed kind. And he liked Willa, too.

He spread his hands wide in supplication. She noticed, without intending to notice, that his nails were clipped very short, and they were scrupulously clean. “You don’t want to hear about my childhood?” When she smiled briefly, but didn’t answer, he said, “Well then, I will finish up this excellent gin and tonic, and be on my way.” He nodded at the bartender. “Thanks, Frankie.”

“Any time, Mike.” Frankie was a sinewy, middle-aged woman, deeply tanned, with an anchor tattooed on one of her forearms, and her dark hair in a mullet. The waiters and the bussers wore white shirts and black pants, but Frankie, like Ryan, was exempt from the dress code. She wore her own uniform: black jeans, a black chambray shirt, and motorcycle boots with heavy silver buckles.

Diana tried to ignore Michael Carmody, but she saw him greet two of the waitresses, kiss Ryan on the cheek, and give Reese a lengthy hug, complete with back-pounding, on his way out the door. When he was gone, Ryan drifted over to the bar and sat down with a sigh. “Isn’t he cute? Total bear.”

Frankie nodded her approval. “You’re missing out, Dee.”

“Which bear are we talking about? Michael Carmody? I love him,” said Ellie Ford, who was one of the waitresses, a petite, freckled strawberry blonde who’d spent her whole life on the Cape and knew everything about everyone in P-town. “He dated my sister’s best friend for two years in high school.”

“You could do a lot worse than be wrapped up in that,” Frankie said to Diana. “Michael Carmody’s good people.”

Diana shook her head. “I’m sure he is. It’s just, I’m not looking for anything right now.” When she’d taken the job, she’d made vague allusions to a broken heart, and how her move to the Cape was a chance to start over. She’d answered follow-up questions as briefly as she could without being rude and politely turned down Ryan’s attempts to set her up with single friends of both genders. She was sure her colleagues were engaging in some collective Baby Boom fantasy, where she was the bitchy, big-city ice queen who needed some salt-of-the-earth loving, maybe even a baby or three, to make her a woman again. Not happening, she told herself. She’d never wanted children, not even before that summer, and she wasn’t ready for any kind of romance. On her way back from the kitchen, her hands full of lemons and limes, she realized that she’d have no one to call if the roof leaked or the toilet stopped flushing. Dialing Michael Carmody’s number would automatically be seen as a capitulation. Oh, well, she thought.

The following Monday morning, Diana put Willa into her bicycle basket and rode to the center of town, where a single convenience store, two real-estate offices, a seafood market, and the post office, each housed in a single-story wooden building, comprised Truro’s downtown. In the empty field next to the post office, across the street from the town green, bands and