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

Diana showed them how to paint shells, and rode with them on rented bikes into Provincetown and all around the dunes. She took them to the cranberry bogs, and for walks along the jetty, and kayaking through the marsh. At night, Michael set up a tent in the yard, arranging camping lanterns in a circle around it. With a fire burning in the firepit, and the hot tub bubbling away, Diana thought it felt enchanted, even magical. The girls hadn’t wanted to leave, had demanded that Diana and her sister settle on a date for their return before they’d get in Julia’s car.

“You can send them here anytime,” Diana said. “They’re always welcome.”

“I’ll take you up on that. They look like they had a great time.” She beckoned Diana toward the railing that overlooked the water, away from the car, and the girls. When Diana was at her side, she said, “I’m glad Sunny had a good time. She’s been needing a break.”

Diana felt a weight settle against her chest. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, you know.” Julia tried to sound nonchalant, but her face was bleak. “She was one of the first girls in her class to, you know, develop. I think some of the boys have been teasing her pretty bad.”

And there it was, the rage that lived just under her skin, ready to come boiling up at an instant. Diana forced herself to breathe, to feel the ground beneath her feet and the wood of the fence under her fingertips, to relax her hands, which wanted to form fists. “It’s just teasing? Nothing’s happened?”

“No,” said Julia, with an uncomfortable smile. “Nothing’s happened. But I’m glad she’s got this place. I’m glad she has you.”

That night, Diana put away the tent and the lanterns, and straightened the clutter of shells and paintbrushes the girls had left on the deck. She called Willa, whose walk, in her later years, had become the stiff and oddly dignified gait of a queen. Slowly, they descended the beach stairs and walked along the sand. I should have had daughters, Diana thought, feeling her eyes sting with unshed tears. I would have been a good mother. Those boys stole that from me.

That night, in bed, when Michael reached for her, she rolled away, facing the wall. In a low voice, he said, “Want to talk?”

“Oh,” she said, and cleared her throat, “just thinking about old times. I’ll feel better in the morning.” But it was a few mornings, and an emergency session with Hazel before she felt like herself again, like a human adult woman with friends and work and hobbies, a rich, fulfilling life, and a husband who loved her, and not like a broken thing that could never be made right. That winter, and into the spring, she went for lots of walks by herself, ranging for miles along the sand or the paths through the marshes and forests, trying to feel less empty, more at home in her skin and her life.

Fourteen years after Diana got her at the shelter, Willa died in her sleep, curled, as always, at the foot of their bed. Michael scooped up her body, wrapped in a blanket. He carried her out to the truck, then came back, and held Diana, in silence, for a long time.

Diana took it hard. It felt like another painful reminder that, however happy she felt, however safe and protected, there was always misery, crouching in the nearby shadows, waiting around the corner, and nothing could keep it away.

Michael didn’t push her. When Diana finally felt ready, they went back to the shelter in Dennis and found a medium-sized mutt, a cheerful fellow with bushy brown fur and eyes like bright black buttons. He seemed to be the result of the union between a corgi and some kind of terrier, and, like Willa, he’d been abandoned, tied up underneath a bridge, starving, with his fur full of mats and burrs and every kind of bug. Diana and Michael brought him home. They brushed the remaining dirt and twigs and burrs out of his coat, and fed him kibble soaked in chicken broth, and tossed a tennis ball for him to fetch. Eventually, his favorite thing became sitting in the prow of a kayak with his back paws on the base of the boat and his front paws on its top, gazing out across the water as Diana paddled.

In 2010, more than twenty years after he’d fed her dinner and given her a job, Reese called Diana into his office, a small, cramped space at the back of the restaurant that smelled of spices and industrial-strength cleaner. “Jonathan and I are retiring,” he said.

“You’re leaving?” she’d said, feeling her face and hands get cold. “You can’t leave!”

He’d shaken his head. “We’re not going anywhere.” He waved his hands dramatically toward the sunset, and the drag queens on the street, visible through the window. “How could we leave all this behind? No. We’ll be right here, except for a few months in the wintertime, when we’ll decamp for warmer climes.”

“So you’re selling?” New management, she thought. A new menu and a new chef. Maybe the new management wouldn’t even want to keep her. Maybe he, or she, would want eager young things, with their strong backs and their open minds, ready to adapt to new ways of doing things.

“That was what I wanted to discuss.” He’d smiled at her and smoothed the white curls of his beard. “How would you feel about being the Abbey’s new proprietress?”

She’d gasped, and said, “I don’t have—I mean, I don’t think—”

“Jonathan and I discussed it. We have what I consider to be a very reasonable mortgage. If the bank agrees, we’ll let you take it over.” Diana was silent, shocked into speechlessness, as Reese said, “You can even change the name, if you want. Call it Our Lady of Good Harbor again. Take it back to its roots.”

She wiped away the tears that were