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

the first time when I was twenty-six. I couldn’t figure it out, you know? Couldn’t hang on to a job when people gave them to me. Couldn’t keep a girlfriend. Couldn’t make anything work. So I drank. And then I totaled my car, and my wife finally left, and my brothers and my parents did an intervention, and they sent me to Minnesota. Everyone there talked about hitting rock bottom, and how maybe that was mine.” Finally, he raised his eyes, which were bloodshot and bleary. His gaze was unfocused and very far away. “But I don’t think that they were right. I don’t think that was my bottom. I think that maybe the best thing would have been if they’d just let me keep falling.”

Diana felt very heavy, as if her limbs, her hands, her heart had all been encased in lead. Was this victory? Not really. She couldn’t feel like she’d hurt Brad, or opened his eyes, or injured him. He’d been broken already, broken for years, well before he’d ever seen her face.

“So what now?” he asked with a chilling indifference. “You got a gun in that purse?”

“I don’t want you to die,” said Diana. “I want you to live with what you’ve done. Every time you look at your daughters, I want you to think about what you did to me, and think of some guy doing it to them. I want you to suffer.”

She stood, without looking to see how he’d react, and struggled against that paralyzing heaviness to make it to the door, taking one step, then another, and then she was in the hall, at the stairs, in her car. She drove straight through the night to Cape Cod, stopping just once for gas. Michael and Pedro were both already awake when she got home just after dawn, sitting side by side on the couch.

“Where did you go?” Michael asked. Diana didn’t answer; couldn’t answer. Michael looked at her carefully, then stood up and opened his arms. She stepped into his embrace, pressed her face against the soft plaid of his shirt, and let him hold her, rocking her gently against him.

“You could have told me, you know,” he said in his soothing rumble. “Whatever you do, I’ll support you as best I can. Only don’t shut me out.”

She sat down with him at the table and told him where she’d been. “I went to Emlen,” she said, head down at the small table in the kitchen, with Pedro at her feet. “I learned their names.”

Michael nodded calmly. “And that took you a week?”

“The guy who held me down—he lives in Baltimore. I went to see him. I watched him for a while, and then I knocked on his door yesterday morning and told him who I was.”

Her husband stared at her, his face dismayed. “Diana. You went there by yourself? Without anyone knowing where you were? Jesus! Did you think about what could have happened?”

“I did,” she said, and didn’t mention her gun. “But it was okay. We talked. And now he knows. And I feel…” She breathed in, trying to find the words to express this new lightness, like she’d taken off a tight piece of clothing, like she’d set down a heavy load.

“Well, good for you, I guess.” Michael’s expression was still dubious.

“No, it is good,” she said. “I think that this is what I needed. Just to see him, and have him see me.”

“You deserve more than that,” Michael rumbled.

“Yes,” she said. “But I’ll take what I can get.” She stood up, and he stood, too, and Diana stepped into his arms, resting her cheek against his chest, hearing the familiar rhythm of his heart.

“Don’t do that again,” he said. “Don’t leave me like that.”

“I won’t,” she said. “I promise.”

She’d thought that things were getting better, as the days went by… but she’d forgotten that she still had a Google Alert set up for Brad’s name, the same as she’d set one for Henry, and for Danny. Six days after her return, her phone chimed with a story about Brad. Diana felt her pulse trilling as she clicked the link, which led to what turned out to be Brad Burlingham’s obituary.

Bradley Telford Burlingham, 51, died at his home Saturday afternoon. Burlingham, a son of Bradley Burlingham Senior and Tessa (White) Burlingham, was a graduate of the Emlen Academy, and attended Trinity College. Survivors include his parents, two brothers, Davis and Stuart, daughters Lila and Claudia, sons Austin and Eli…

Diana set down her phone and shoved her chair back from the table where she stood, breathing hard, her hands fisted at her sides. Maybe he had a heart attack, she thought. Maybe he’d been sick. But she knew the truth, even before she found the courage to go back to her laptop and do some digging. The Baltimore Sun had been circumspect, but the city’s alt-weekly website had all the facts.

Scion of Prominent Baltimore Family a Suicide. A police source has revealed exclusively to the Weekly that Bradley Burlingham III, the 51-year-old youngest son of city titan Bradley Burlingham Senior, killed himself in his Roland Park apartment Saturday night.

A few minutes later, Diana found herself outside, on her deck, with Pedro at her feet and no memory of how she’d come to be there.

“Diana?” Michael said, but all she could do was shake her head and wordlessly hand him her phone with the story still on its screen, the evidence of her guilt, a burden she’d have to carry until the end of her days, the knowledge that she’d killed Brad Burlingham, as surely as if she’d put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

24 Daisy

Ten minutes after Diana dropped them off, Daisy saw her husband’s car swing into the driveway. She felt her heart sink. Hal wasn’t due home for another hour, which meant he’d left work early. Beatrice’s face looked frightened beneath her purple bangs. Daisy straightened her