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

She explained herself as best she could, a recitation that left Michael looking troubled. “Is it nonnegotiable?” he asked.

“I don’t think anything is nonnegotiable,” Diana replied. “But… well, is it very important to you?”

He bowed his head. “I need to think,” he said. She touched his shoulder, his dear face, the skin of his cheek so soft against his beard. “I love you very much,” she said, and prayed that it would be enough. He blew out the candle and drew her down to the bed.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he said. Diana closed her eyes, but for hours she lay awake with her heart quaking in her throat. She imagined she could feel her entire body trembling with the thought of losing him, and she didn’t know what she could say, or promise, to get him to stay.

The next morning, Michael went for a walk by himself, on the beach. Diana cleaned every inch of the cottage, emptying out the refrigerator and scrubbing the shelves, pulling every book and shell and postcard off the shelf to dust them. She tried not to look at the time, or to entertain fantasies that she’d never see Michael Carmody again.

A few hours later, Michael came back. His face was very serious as he took her by the hands. “I always thought that the reason you got married was to have a family,” he said. “I always thought I’d have kids, and be a good father to them, like my father was to me.”

She nodded and felt like she’d swallowed a stone, like she’d just stepped off a ledge and was falling into the darkness.

“But I want you to be my family,” he said. “I want us to be a family together. I want that more than anything.”

She gave a hiccup-y half-laugh, half-sob. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure about you. But you have to be sure about this.”

Diana squeezed her eyes shut and forced the words out of her mouth. “What if I don’t deserve to be happy?” she whispered.

His inhalation was loud enough for her to hear it; the noise that meant that he was angry and trying to keep his temper in check. Now is when he’ll realize I’m crazy, she thought. Now is when he’ll leave.

Michael paused, then said, in a slow and deliberate voice, “Do you think you deserved what happened to you that summer?”

Diana shook her head. When she thought about the girl she’d been, young and trusting, running, fleet-footed, down the beach in her white dress, it felt like she was thinking of a stranger. But she knew that girl hadn’t deserved what had happened to her. No girl did.

“Do you?” Michael’s voice was still low and calm, but she could hear anger underneath it.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then why wouldn’t you deserve to be happy?” When she didn’t answer, he bent down to gently brush his lips against hers. “Everyone deserves to be happy,” he said. “Maybe you, most of all.” Diana wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close, hearing him breathe.

“I love you so much. Please say yes,” he whispered.

She watched him slide the ring on her finger. “Yes,” she said.

18 Diana

They were married on the deck behind the Abbey, in the glow of a perfect September sunset with their friends and family all around them. Diana wore a white dress. Michael wore a blue suit. Willa wore a garland of white orchids and roses around her neck that she alternately sniffed at and attempted to eat. A Unitarian Universalist minister conducted the service, with Reese as an unofficial co-officiant, resplendent in a morning coat and a top hat.

Everyone was there: Diana’s parents and her sisters and their husbands and kids; Michael’s parents and his sister and her husband and their kids. Dr. Levy and Mr. Weinberg came. Maeve sent best wishes from Dublin, and Marie-Francoise from London, where she’d moved, and Kelly and Alicia were there, watching, as Diana walked down the aisle, a candlelit path in the sand.

Dora Fitzsimmons, silent as ever, wore a black pantsuit and black New Balance sneakers, and gave the couple a check for five hundred dollars and a pound of Cabot’s fudge. Ryan, freshly returned from Los Angeles, gave them a birdhouse that he’d had commissioned, a version of their cottage in miniature, with a perch for a pair of lovebirds out front. Heavy Flo donated her services as a singer and DJ. She sang “Someone to Watch Over Me,” and a rainbow appeared in the sky over the water as Michael waltzed Diana around the deck. Then she played “It’s Raining Men,” and everyone crammed onto the dance floor, laughing and singing along. It was, everyone agreed, the party of the summer.

At Michael’s urging, Diana told her parents the truth that they’d long ago guessed at: she’d been assaulted that summer, and, while it had knocked her off the path she’d planned, she’d found a different one. “And you’re happy?” her mother asked. “Because you look happy,” she said, before Diana could answer. “I just wish…” she said, her voice getting thick.

“What, Mom?”

“I just wish you’d told us back then! I wish you’d let us help.”

Diana wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders, pulling her close. “I know. I wish a lot of things were different. But I promise, it all worked out okay.” Her mother nodded, and wiped her eyes before pushing Diana toward the dance floor, where her father was waiting, looking healthy and strong, his shoulders straight and his skin less sallow. “Go dance with your dad, honey. He’s been waiting for this a long time.”

Diana had the money she’d saved up from years of living rent-free. Michael had a small inheritance from his grandfather. But even after they’d pooled their savings, it only amounted to ten percent of what they estimated the cottage would sell for on the open market.

“It can’t hurt to ask,” Michael told her, so