That Summer by Jennifer Weiner (read more books .txt) 📕

“Daisy?”

“Hello, Hal.” Her voice sounded different. Cool, and faraway.

“Where are you, sweetheart? Where’s Beatrice? What’s going on?”

Instead of answering, Daisy said, “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

A lesser man, a non-lawyer, might have fallen into that trap. Hal knew better. “Where are you?” he asked again. When she didn’t answer, he bit back the words that wanted to escape: Tell me where you went! Tell me where you took my car and my daughter! Struggling for calm, he said, “If there’s anything we need to discuss, we can do it face-to-face. But I need to know where you are. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”

He heard Daisy sigh. It was a familiar sound and, in it, Hal heard what he wanted to hear—capitulation. That’s my girl, he thought.

“Beatrice and I are on the Cape.”

Hal forced himself to smile. Making that shape with his mouth would change the sound of his voice. He would sound calm, and Daisy would hear that, and she wouldn’t panic, or do anything rash. That was how it was with women. You could fool them; you could lead them. It was what they required. Without someone to impose order, some man to run the show, it would just be twittering hysteria all the time, flocks of chirping birds flapping their wings pointlessly, going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. “Stay right there,” he told his wife.

“Meet me tomorrow morning at Diana’s house. I’ll text you the address. I think that we should talk. The three of us.”

“Fine,” said Hal. “I look forward to it.” Even if the other Diana had gotten hold of his wife, filled her head with lies and exaggerations, ensorcelled her, somehow, Hal would find the words to break the spell. He’d plead his case, he’d tell Daisy his side of things, and he’d win, because he was, in the end, a winner. “Tell Beatrice I love her, and that I’m on my way.”

34 Daisy

At six in the morning, as the sun was coming up, Daisy steered her car up the driveway and parked it beside the small, cedar-shingled cottage that stood on the edge of the dune. Diana was sitting on the edge of a wooden deck. A short-legged, chunky dog with shaggy brown fur frolicked around her legs.

“That’s Pedro,” said Diana, as she got to her feet. “Pedro, behave.”

Daisy walked toward the deck. The air was thick with the promise of rain, weighty with humidity. She could see rafts of gray clouds rolling in from Provincetown. She felt unreality nagging at her, like the ground beneath her feet was going to crumble, like the cottage would slide into the sea, and everything she’d known or seen or believed in would disappear.

“Do you want some coffee?” Diana asked.

Daisy stared at her. Of all the things she’d been expecting, nothing as prosaic as coffee had made the list. She imagined sitting, her hands wrapped around a warm mug, the simple comfort of it. “Sure.”

Diana led her into the cottage. Daisy took it in: the white-painted walls, the ledge lined with brightly patterned decoupaged seashells and dried starfish, framed postcards hung from bright bits of ribbon, paintings of flowers and landscapes in frames made from driftwood. She saw the piles of books, the white voile curtains, and the narrow refectory table with the easel and the guitar in the corner. “God,” she said, “Beatrice would love it here.”

“She’s always welcome,” said Diana, and led Daisy to the galley kitchen, which was separated from the living space by a half-height wall. Daisy looked around at the well-worn utensils in their ceramic container, the copper pots, the rows of spices in glass jars, the blue ceramic bowl full of clementines.

Daisy went back to the living space. She let her hand brush Pedro’s leash, hanging on a peg by the door. She touched the rocking chair, then the white chenille throw, and went straight to the framed wedding photograph of Diana and Michael that stood on her bedside table.

“This is your husband?”

Diana nodded. Daisy picked up the photograph and studied it in the light. Diana wore a simple white dress, and there were white blossoms in her hair. The man by her side was big and burly, with rounded shoulders and tree-trunk thighs and a broad chest. Diana looked radiant, and the man looked ecstatic, almost delirious with joy, his eyes barely slits above his cheeks, his smile as wide as his face.

Diana sounded almost shy. “He was the caretaker for the cottage, when I moved in.”

“Do you have children?”

Diana shook her head.

“I don’t know anything about you. Not one true thing,” Daisy said as she watched the other woman moving in the kitchen, her hands deft and her movements economical as she measured coffee and poured water into her machine. “Jesus, did you even need cooking lessons?”

Diana looked rueful. “Well, I can’t cook like you do, but I’m not quite as pathetic as I pretended to be. I own a restaurant in Provincetown. The Abbey?”

“Oh my God,” said Daisy. “We’ve been there.”

“I own it now, but I was a waitress there, for a long time. For the first few years I lived here I would go back to Boston in the summertime. I couldn’t stand to be here in July or August. Everything I saw, or heard, or smelled, it all reminded me of what happened.” Diana poured coffee into a mug, adding sugar and cream, because by then she knew how Daisy took her coffee.

“Is Beatrice here?” Diana asked.

“She’s back at the house. Vernon’s house. The one where you found our picture.”

Diana nodded. “And Hal?”

Daisy swallowed. It felt like her heart had taken up residence in her throat and was sitting there, quivering. “On his way. I told him that we needed to talk to him. I left him a note, so he’d know where to come.”

Diana nodded again. After she’d poured a cup of