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

outside. As soon as they were in the driveway, she said, “Is Danny okay?”

Jesse sighed. “So you noticed.”

“What’s going on?”

“I wish I knew. I’ve been trying to get him to tell me.” Jesse pressed his full lips together, raking his hands through his curls. “Ever since February, he’s been working nonstop. He stays late after school, every day, and when he’s not there, he’s at the Boys and Girls Club, and when he’s not there he’s at the soup kitchen. And I’m all for good deeds, but…” He tugged at his hair again, looking at the sky. “It’s like he’s trying to atone for something. And I have no idea what. And he won’t say.”

Daisy hoped her shock didn’t show on her face. “Do you think that he…” She let her voice trail off.

“Cheated?” Jesse gave an inelegant snort. “I can’t think when he’d have had the time. No.” He put his hand on her shoulder and looked past her, off into the distance. “And when I ask him, he says everything’s fine, and I’m worried about nothing. Which is making me feel kind of crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. I see it, too.”

“Maybe you can ask him,” Jesse said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Daisy wasn’t sure about that, but she promised she would try.

12 Daisy

By four o’clock, Daisy was home, greeting Lester, who was wagging his tail and frolicking around her legs with an energy suggesting he’d despaired of her ever returning (and also suggesting that Beatrice, who’d sworn she would walk him, had, instead, only let him out the back door). She was gathering ingredients for dinner when Beatrice came home from school, arrayed in a frilly, puff-sleeved pink blouse, high-waisted jeans, Doc Marten boots, and her typical scowl. Her daughter’s blue-tinged hair hung in ringlets, and she’d accessorized with a pair of black velvet gloves and a small hat with a bit of black netting that hung over her eye. It was, Daisy had to admit, quite chic… but she knew if she said one kind word, all of it would end up in the back of Beatrice’s closet. After the age of fourteen, Beatrice treated Daisy’s approval like the worst kind of insult. Meanwhile, Daisy remembered being so desperate for even the tiniest sign of approval from her own mom that she’d taught herself to make puff pastry dough from scratch, the better to prepare homemade spanakopita, which her mom had once enjoyed.

“Hi, sweetheart. How was your day?”

Beatrice shrugged, and muttered, “I must lie down where all the ladders start. In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”

Daisy stared for a moment. “So… bad?”

Beatrice made a rude noise in the back of her throat. “Predictable.” She dropped her book bag—not the sturdy JanSport backpack they’d bought her to take to Emlen, but a petit pointe satchel, embroidered with a pattern of forget-me-nots—by the front door, pulled a loaf of brioche out of the refrigerator, and ripped off a chunk.

“Could you use a knife to slice that, please?”

Beatrice made a face, stomped across the kitchen, selected a serrated knife from the block, and, with exaggerated slowness, trimmed the ragged ends off the loaf.

“Did you learn anything interesting?”

Beatrice shrugged.

“What do you think of your new classmates so far?”

“They’re rich prepwads. So, basically, just like my old classmates. My life is like an ouroborus. A snake that eats its own tail, forever.” Beatrice looked especially moody as she smoothed peanut butter and honey on an inch-thick slab of brioche.

Daisy swallowed the lecture she wanted to deliver about how lucky Beatrice was to attend such a well-regarded school, to have a beautiful home and plenty to eat, to know that college would be paid for and that, once she finished, she would never have to worry about not being able to pay the rent. Beatrice, having lived with those certainties every day of her life, would never understand. Talking to Beatrice about privilege was like trying to explain water to a fish.

“What clubs do you think you’ll go out for?” At Emlen, Beatrice had joined the school newspaper and the creative writing club, information that Daisy had gleaned from careful perusal of the school’s online newspaper and its Facebook page, because Beatrice would never actually tell her something about her life.

Beatrice gave her another shrug. Daisy turned her gaze away from her daughter and out at the kitchen, remembering the first time she’d seen their house. On their third date, Daisy had taken the train to Philadelphia. Hal had met her at 30th Street Station and driven her out to Gladwyne, along streets of rolling green lawns and houses that looked more like estates. He’d pulled up the driveway of a stately Colonial, with a white exterior and black shutters, a sloping lawn that looked the size of a soccer field, and a bright-red front door.

“This is me,” he’d said. Certainly in size the house matched the one Daisy had lived in, before her father’s death. But that house, with its wraparound porch and the eyebrow windows that accented the third floor, seemed, somehow, to have a friendly, welcoming character, the fun uncle who’d let you have a sip of his beer at Thanksgiving and slip you twenty dollars on your way out the door. This house felt more like a forbidding grandmother, one who’d frown at your outfit and tell you that you didn’t need that second helping of stuffing.

Hal led her through an empty foyer, past an empty living room, and into an almost-empty kitchen, where he paused to put the two bottles of seltzer he’d purchased into an almost-empty refrigerator (Daisy glimpsed condiments, lemons, and half of a hoagie in a clear plastic clamshell).

Daisy turned in a slow circle that gave her views of the almost-empty living room and dining room. “Were you robbed?”

Hal looked puzzled. Then he smiled. “This is the house I grew up in. When my father moved, he took all the furniture with him. You