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

soothing, sleep-inducing sounds—the chiming of Tibetan singing bowls; Gregorian chants, whales moaning to one another across the vast and chambered deep. She had swallowed melatonin and slugged down valerian tea, and trained herself to leave her phone charging in the bathroom instead of right next to her bed, with the ringer turned up in case her daughter, away at boarding school, should need her in the middle of the night.

Thoughts of Beatrice made her sigh, then look guiltily over her shoulder to make sure she hadn’t woken Hal. Hal was still sleeping, flat on his back, arms and legs starfished wide. They had a king-sized bed, and most mornings Daisy woke up clinging to the edge of her side. Hal, while not unsympathetic, had been notably short on solutions. “What do you want me to do?” he’d asked, sounding maddeningly reasonable and slightly indulgent. “It’s not like I’m pushing you off the bed on purpose. I’m asleep.” He’d given her permission to wake him up. “Just give me a poke,” he’d said. “Shake my shoulder.” Probably because he knew she never would.

Sighing, Daisy rolled over to face the window. It was still dark outside, the sky showing no signs of brightening, which meant it was probably two or three in the morning, the absolute pit of the night. She had a big day coming up, and she needed to try to sleep. Breathe in, two, three, four, she coached herself. Hold, two, three, four. Breathe out. She exhaled slowly, trying, and failing, not to think about how the dean had sounded when he’d called to inform them of Beatrice’s latest transgression, which had involved gathering up the members of the Emlen Feminist Liberation (pronounced Ef-el) and spray-painting the word RAPIST across a male classmate’s dorm-room door.

“Unfortunately, this is not Beatrice’s first infraction of our honor code,” the dean had intoned. “We’ll need at least one of Beatrice’s parents to come up here to discuss this.”

“Okay,” Daisy had stammered. “Although—would you mind calling my husband? You have his number, right?” She wanted Hal to handle this. Hal was the Emlen graduate in the house, the one whose own father had attended the school, a loyal alumnus who donated money each year, in addition to paying Bea’s tuition. He’d know what to do… and, if the dean called, Hal would hear the news from the school and not her.

“Of course,” said the dean. Daisy had hung up, her legs watery with relief, thinking, Hal will fix this. Hal will talk to him. He’ll figure it out, and by the time he comes home, everything will be fine.

But Hal hadn’t, and it wasn’t. Two hours later her husband had stormed into the house, wearing the blue suit and red-and-gold tie that he’d left in that morning and a thunderous look on his face. “They’re probably going to expel her,” he said. “We need to be there Monday morning. Don’t look so happy about it,” he’d snapped before Daisy had even said anything, and Daisy turned away, her face burning. He brushed past her, on his way to the stairs. “I’m very disappointed in her. You should be, too.”

“But…” He was already halfway up the staircase. When she spoke, he stopped, his hand on the railing, his body telegraphing impatience. “Did the boy do what she said?”

Hal turned around. “What?”

Daisy steeled herself. She hadn’t talked to Beatrice yet—her daughter was ignoring her texts, and every phone call she’d made had gone straight to voice mail. “Don’t you think we should hear her side of things, too? To find out what really happened?”

Hal shook his head. “Whatever happened, Beatrice isn’t judge and jury up there. She vandalized school property, she accused someone, in public, of something he might not have done. And,” he concluded, like he was making a closing argument in court, “she’d already been in trouble.”

Daisy bent her head. It was true. Even before the incident, Beatrice had ran been on academic probation for cutting classes. Her daughter ran an Etsy shop on which she sold tiny felt replicas of pets for a hundred dollars apiece. She had made it very clear, to her parents and the school’s administrators, that she preferred crafts to academics.

“Maybe Beatrice just wasn’t a boarding school kind of kid,” Daisy ventured. This was a point she’d made repeatedly when they were deciding whether to send her, a decision that was no decision at all, because, practically from the moment of her birth, Hal had been planning on Bea going to Emlen, which he, and his father, and both of Daisy’s brothers, had attended. “You’ll carry on the family tradition,” he’d said, to which Beatrice had rolled her eyes.

Hal believed the experience of boarding school would make their daughter strong and independent. Daisy thought that Beatrice was too young to be away from home, and that she’d be going to college soon enough, so why rush her out the door? “And Beatrice doesn’t even want to go,” Daisy argued. She’d tried to explain to her husband the particular tenderness of the fourteen-year-old girl. She remembered being that age and feeling as if she was moving through the world like a snail or a turtle whose shell had been removed: freakish and vulnerable; naked and weird. At least, that was how she’d felt, although she suspected that her daughter was made of sterner stuff. Still, she’d made her case: that girls their daughter’s age were especially susceptible to any insult or injury, that even the smallest slight would wound Beatrice terribly, and that she would carry those hurts with her forever, the way Daisy herself did. But Hal hadn’t listened.

“It’s not up to Beatrice,” Hal said, in a tone that was pedantic and ever-so-slightly patronizing. “It’s up to us to do what’s best for her.”

They’d gone around and around, and Hal, as usual, had prevailed. He’d gotten Bea to write an essay through some combination of cajolery and outright bribery, and Daisy suspected that he’d upped his annual gift to