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

Diana had never imagined that she would feel anything besides disgust for the Emlen men or anyone in their orbit. She hadn’t considered the possibility of befriending one of their wives. She’d certainly never planned on confiding in Daisy about her rape, on even hinting at what had happened to her, lest Daisy, sweet, clueless Daisy, put the pieces together and realize how her husband fit in.

And then there was Beatrice. During the days before her invitation to Daisy’s home she’d done her best to prepare herself for the sight of her rapist’s daughter, knowing that the girl was a teenager, like her nieces, the age of the daughter Diana and Michael might have had.

It had helped that Beatrice hadn’t looked anything like Hal. Her hair was purple, and Diana thought that she favored her mother. Or maybe it was that she’d had more recent acquaintance with Daisy’s face, and was more able to see the similarities. Beatrice was petite, with the same large, round eyes and full cheeks as her mother, and clothes that looked like they’d been plucked from a punk revival of Little House on the Prairie. That afternoon, Beatrice and Daisy had held a tense-looking, whispered conversation at the base of the school steps while Diana waited behind the wheel. Daisy appeared to be speaking very intensely. Beatrice was shrugging, wearing the universal expression of adolescent disdain. Daisy shrugged and walked up the steps into the school. Beatrice watched her mother before turning, walking to Diana’s car, and climbing into the back seat.

“I am a disgrace,” she’d announced, and Diana had said, “I’m sure that you’ll survive.”

Diana had gotten them to Gladwyne as quickly as she could, declining Daisy’s offer to come in for coffee or stay for dinner, saying, “Some other time,” to Beatrice, who’d offered to show her a mouse she was working on. She’d sped back to Center City with her hands clenched on the wheel. And now here she was, walking in circles around this tiny apartment, wanting desperately to just go home.

She picked up her phone and punched in her husband’s name. He answered on the first ring, sounding gruff when he said her name.

“Michael?”

Diana could picture him: his beard, now as much silvery-gray as reddish-brown; the way he’d be in the post-office parking lot, or in a client’s driveway, leaning against his truck with his forehead squinched up and the phone pressed against his cheek. “How are you?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Fine.” She sat down. “No. No, actually.” When she started laughing, the noise she made was high and wild. She was sure it scared him. She was scaring herself, a little.

“Hey,” he said. His voice was still gruff, but less irritated, more patient. “Tell me.”

“I just wish…” Her voice trailed off, then she blurted, “I wish I didn’t like her so much. Her, and her daughter. Beatrice. She’s fourteen.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Michael said. “Or, at least, you don’t have to do anything now. You just come home.”

“I can’t,” Diana whispered. But if she gave up now, without confronting Hal Shoemaker, it would all have been for nothing. He would continue to live in a world without consequences, a world where men like him hurt girls like her, then shook them off like they were dust underneath their shoes, and, worse, all the young women, her nieces, his daughter, purple-haired, oddball, blameless Beatrice, would have to live in that world, too. And then, what if Daisy recognized her on the Cape, on Longnook Beach in Truro, or walking around Provincetown? What if Daisy realized that Diana wasn’t who she’d pretended to be?

“I can’t come back yet,” she told Michael. “But soon. Maybe another week. I just…” Just what? Just need to confront Hal, like I’d planned? Just need to make sure that Daisy will be okay when she learns her husband is a rapist? Just need to figure out how to keep Beatrice from being destroyed?

“Soon,” she repeated. “I’ll be home soon.”

“Well, I’ll be here,” said Michael. Diana wondered what he was feeling, if he was impatient, if he was angry. But all he said was, “Pedro keeps taking your socks.”

She choked out a laugh through a throat thick with tears. Whenever she went away unexpectedly, Pedro would dig one of her socks, or bras, or pairs of underwear, out of the laundry basket. He’d carry it around in his mouth all day, and tuck it into a corner of his bed at night. It reminded her of how Willa would hide food, all those years ago.

“Don’t let him chew holes in anything,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t hear how unsteady her voice had become.

“I’ll do my best,” said Michael. Then he said, “Come home, Diana,” but she ended the call without answering, telling herself that she still had work to do.

Part

Four

This Happy Land

23 Diana

The Emlen Academy sat high on a hill above a small town in New Hampshire, which it seemed to look down upon with lordly disdain. Or maybe that was just Diana’s frame of mind. She parked in the visitors’ lot and checked her appearance in the rearview mirror. Lipstick bright against her pale face, a skirt and a blouse and a blazer. In her purse, a letter she’d written herself, on Boston University stationery, which she’d made by cutting and pasting the school’s letterhead and logo onto a plain piece of paper. Diana Carmody is researching the history of single-sex boarding schools in New England. She’d given the English department’s phone number and made up a professor’s name, hoping that no one would ask for credentials and that, if they did, just the letter itself would be enough.

She got out of the car and began walking up the hill, crossing the snow-covered quad. She knew the names of all the buildings, the location of the library,