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

remembering what Hal had said, at the dinner party, that rainy night; about how there had to be a way back for the transgressors; about how famous broadcasters and athletes couldn’t just be canceled forever. She thought about Danny, who at least had been trying to do better, as opposed to her husband, who, she thought, simply wanted to put the events of that summer behind him, to stick them in a folder labeled CHILDHOOD and never think of them again. “I don’t know what atonement looks like. I don’t know how a man makes this right. Or even if it’s possible.” She bent her head and cleared her throat. Staring down at her hands, she said, “I’m not much of an adult, I think. I never finished college, and I barely have any friends.”

Diana looked at her, waiting.

“I always thought that it was me. That I was selfish, or self-involved, or boring, or stupid, or silly.” Daisy heard Hal’s voice in her head. My little songbird Happy in her cage. “I thought people didn’t like me, or that I wasn’t as smart as they were, or at least, not as educated. And maybe I am unlikable. I’m not discounting that possibility, but Hal…” She touched her lips. “I think that Hal wanted me all to himself, so he kept other people away. I could sense some of that, at least some of the time. But I thought…” She looked down. Her heart was so heavy. The world seemed bleak and gray and sunless, and like it would be that way forever. “It felt like love,” she said.

Diana nodded. For a moment they sat in silence, before the rumble of distant thunder made Diana cast a practiced glance upward.

“Looks like we’re going to get a thunderstorm.”

“This was always my favorite thing about being on the Cape,” said Daisy. “Sitting in the living room, in front of the windows, and watching the storms roll in.” If Diana noted Daisy’s use of the past tense, she didn’t say anything. Daisy took a deep breath and made herself ask the question.

“So tell me,” said Daisy. “Tell me what happened.”

Diana looked out toward the water. The wind blew her hair away from her face. “I was fifteen,” she began. “It was the summer after my sophomore year in high school. I played soccer, and I loved reading. My parents and my older sisters and I lived in South Boston. My mom was a secretary for the English department at Boston University, and that’s where she met Dr. Levy.”

Diana told Daisy everything. She told Daisy about convincing her father to let her take the job and how happy her parents had been when Dr. Levy had offered her the job. She told her what happened that summer, and about the lost years that followed, and how Dr. Levy had given her the cottage and Diana had come to live in it, alone. She talked about getting her job at the Abbey, and all the people she’d met there; she talked about adopting Willa, and meeting Michael Carmody, her caretaker. She told her about her marriage, her happy years painting and crafting and working at the Abbey. She told her about finding Daisy’s wedding picture, about creating the email address and the fake profile page as a way of getting close to Daisy.

“I just couldn’t believe that he’d married someone else named Diana. It was so weird. It felt like he was rubbing it in, somehow.” She smoothed back her hair. “Like, you were the Diana he married, and I was the Diana that he… well. You know.”

Daisy’s face burned, and she had to force the words out of her mouth. “After our first date, he told me he’d known another Diana. That’s when he started calling me Daisy.” She shook her head, thinking of the girl she’d been then, trusting and hopeful and naive. “I should have known that something was wrong.”

“No,” said Diana. “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known something like that.”

Daisy nodded reluctantly. Then, with every muscle tensed, she asked, “What happens now?”

“I don’t know,” said Diana. “I thought I knew. I thought that I just wanted to look him in the eye and let him see me, and tell him that he’d hurt me.”

“Do you think that’s going to be enough?” Diana’s expression was hard to read, and Daisy felt herself shudder. He’s still Beatrice’s father, she heard her mother saying. What would it do to her daughter if Hal was put on trial, if he was convicted and sent to jail? And then she asked herself the same question she’d asked her brother, and her mom: What if this had happened to Beatrice? What would justice look like then?

She knew that there had to be more to it than just mouthing an apology; there had to be deeds, in addition to words. Maybe Hal could go take a leave of absence from the law firm, and go to Emlen and talk to the boys there. Maybe he could work with a therapist, and he could figure out why he’d done what he’d done, and what to say to other rich, privileged young men to keep them from inflicting similar harm. That would be something, but Daisy knew that it still wouldn’t be enough. And part of her, a cool, removed part whose existence she’d never previously suspected, was saying, Not my problem. Because, no matter what happened, it seemed like a part of her had decided that Hal wasn’t going to be her problem for much longer.

She snorted. Diana looked at her quizzically.

“I was just thinking, I read once, in India there’s a tradition where if you want to end your marriage, you just say ‘I divorce thee’ three times.” She shrugged. “And then I was thinking about Michael Scott on The Office, and how he tried to declare bankruptcy by just yelling…”

“ ‘I declare bankruptcy!’ ” Diana said.

“Yeah, that’s it,” said Daisy. She rubbed her face. She’d been awake all night,