Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

And now here were Garrett and Piper, their children: Beth and David a generation removed. It touched Beth in a way she couldn’t name.

“We’re going to see each other tomorrow night,” Garrett announced.

“Fine,” Beth said, as if he’d been asking permission.

“Can you drop me off here tomorrow night around seven, Dad?” Piper asked her father. “If you say no, I’ll ride my bike. I don’t care if it’s dark.”

“I’d prefer you not hand me any ultimatums,” David said. “But, yes, I’d be happy to bring you here tomorrow.” He winked at Beth. Victory for him. Then he woke Peyton and directed his girls out to the car.

Beth and Garrett stood at the screen door until the Ronans pulled away.

“Piper seems nice,” Beth said. “She’s very pretty.”

“You told me his wife was coming,” Garrett said.

Beth closed the front door and turned off the porch light. The house was quiet. That was perhaps the most noticeable difference between Nantucket and New York. The absence of noise. “I thought she was coming. I didn’t realize they had split up.” A little background noise-some cars honking, people yelling or singing or hailing cabs-might disguise the lie in her voice. Here, the lie was naked, exposed. Garrett would hear it.

“Piper told me her dad considered this to be a date.”

“David might have considered this a date,” Beth said. “But I didn’t.”

Garrett looked at her in a way that let her know he could see right through her. She hoped and prayed that Piper didn’t know about her and David. Every man, woman, and child was entitled to a secret and Beth had hers; she didn’t want to fear its disclosure if Garrett and Piper started dating. She grew angry at the unfairness of it-it was her past, her secret, her history, years before she met Arch and had these children. It was not mandatory for her to share it-not even with Arch. Her husband and kids did not automatically own everything that happened in her life.

Beth sighed. This summer was going to be even harder than she’d initially thought. And she could blame nobody but herself. She’d invited David for dinner. Disinvited him, then invited him again.

“What are you and Piper doing tomorrow?” she asked.

“Don’t know yet.”

“But you had a good time tonight?”

Garrett’s stare softened into a smile. He looked at the floor. “Yeah.”

Beth hugged her son, who was rigid and unyielding in her arms. This was what it felt like to hold an angry teenager.

“Okay,” she said. “Sweet dreams.”

Winnie woke up in the middle of the night, hungrier than she’d ever been in her life. A voice in her head screamed out for food. She waited until her eyes adjusted to the dark and then she padded downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother, of course, had cleaned everything up. (Winnie’s father used to say, “Mom can’t sleep at night if there’s an unwashed dish in the house.”) All of the leftovers were in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap. Sliced steak, two baked potatoes, some sour cream. Winnie fixed herself a plate, poured a glass of milk and sat down at the kitchen table. The trick was to keep from thinking about her father. Thinking about her father made eating impossible. Even thinking that one stupid thing: her father lingering in the kitchen after a dinner party while Beth cleaned up. Wearing his blue pajamas and his tortoiseshell glasses because he would have taken out his contacts, the top of his head grazing the copper pots that hung from the ceiling. Drinking ice water from the Yankees mug he’d gotten as a kid that he kept by his bed every night. Saying, “Mom can’t sleep at night if there’s an unwashed dish in the house.” That was Winnie’s father in one of his simple, human moments, a moment she never would have given a second thought, except now he was dead and every memory seemed unspeakably precious. It made Winnie upset enough that she stared at her plate of food. Yes, it looked delicious, yes, she was hungry, but no, she couldn’t eat.

Then she heard a whisper. “A-ha! Caught you.”

It was Marcus. Wearing boxer shorts and a gray Benjamin N. Cardozo swim team T-shirt. Holding an envelope in one hand and his CD player in the other. He opened the fridge and brought out the platter of leftover steak. Popped open a Coke, found utensils, and sat next to her. Winnie felt so happy that she managed to poke open the top of her potato and stuff it full of sour cream. It wasn’t eating, exactly, but it was close.

Marcus started in on the steak, eating right off the platter. He noticed her staring at him. “I didn’t get myself another plate because I plan to finish all this.”

“You eat a lot,” she said.

“I’m hungry a lot.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“You don’t eat in front of other people?” he said. “Is that it? Because if I’m keeping you from eating, I’ll go into the other room. You need to eat, Winnie.”

“I have a problem,” she said. She wished she’d just been able to say those words that afternoon at the beach instead of getting angry at him. Sustaining anger at Marcus was not something that made her happy. She loved Marcus! “I have an eating problem.” She expected him to say, Yeah, no shit, but he didn’t. He just chewed his steak, waiting for her to say more.

“What’s that envelope?” she asked.

“A letter from my mother.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

She paused, hoping he would offer more information. He downed half the Coke, then he belched.

“Excuse me.”

Winnie stared at her cold, cream-filled potato. She reached for the salt and pepper. “What does it say?”

“I have no idea,” Marcus said.

“You haven’t read it?” Winnie asked.

“Nope.”

“How come?”

Marcus chewed his steak and drank some more Coke. Winnie trembled internally. She wanted to have a real conversation with Marcus. If they couldn’t talk here, in the dark kitchen in the middle of the night, intimacy would be hopeless.

Finally Marcus said, “I don’t read my mother’s letters.”

“Why not?” Winnie asked.

“Because I don’t want to,” Marcus said.

“But you brought it down here with you,” Winnie said.

“To throw it away.” He pointed the tines of his fork at her. “Are you going to eat or what?”

Winnie picked up her knife and fork, cut a piece of steak and deposited it into her mouth. Chewed. Swallowed.

It was delicious.

“Good job,” Marcus said.

She ate another piece of steak, then some potato, which was good even cold, and she felt her body thanking her. She drank some milk; the screaming in her head quieted.

“Why don’t you want to read her letters?” she asked.

Marcus put down his utensils and sank back into his chair, which squeaked. “Girls just have to know everything.”

“Your mother’s in jail for the rest of her life,” Winnie said. “I’d think you’d want to read her letters and maybe write some back.”

“My mother’s in jail for the rest of her life because she killed two people, one of whom was only nine years old. You know the story.”

“I know what I read in the papers,” Winnie said, though this was a lie. Arch had asked both Winnie and Garrett not to read the papers, and out of respect for him, they didn’t. All Winnie knew about the case were the most basic facts. She’d seen the photographs, naturally, the one they showed again and again of the little girl in black Mary Janes covered with a bloody sheet. Winnie had also caught a clip on TV of Constance Tyler, hands cuffed behind her back, being led from the courthouse in Queens. Winnie was surprised by how pretty she was. No one expected a murderer to be pretty. “My dad said that Constance didn’t deserve the death penalty. He said killing the little girl was an accident.”