Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

“Winnie,” Beth said gently. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“Period!” Winnie spat out. How she loathed even the sound of her mother’s voice!

“Did you take any Midol?” Beth asked. “Can I make you some chamomile tea?”

“Go away!” This in the most venomous voice Winnie could muster.

“You’re not acting like yourself,” Beth said. “Are you sure there’s nothing else wrong?”

“ I am a self-respecting woman,” Winnie said. Her point being that the woman on the other side of the door could not be described as such. The bigger point being that her own mother, who heretofore had been a paragon of virtue, was now someone else entirely.

Beth tried the door and found herself stymied by the dresser. Winnie couldn’t help smiling with self-satisfaction. There was something about a house with no locking doors-everyone felt justified to barge in on everyone else. But not this time.

“Winnie, what have you done?”

“I said, ‘go away!’ ”

Silence. Then, “Fine, fine, fine. If that’s the way you want it. I’ll be out on the deck eating lunch. Let me know if you need anything.”

When her mother was safely down the stairs, Winnie whispered, “Liar.”

Later, there was a distinctive knock on the door. A Marcus knock.

“Hey,” he said. “Open up.”

For him-yes. But only him. Winnie didn’t even want to see Garrett until later. Winnie shoved the dresser aside and it scraped some green paint off the floor. Oh, well! Winnie didn’t care; it was her mother’s house. She’d finally stopped feeling guilty about breaking the valuable lamp. She couldn’t be bothered anymore about her mother’s heirlooms.

She opened the door to find Marcus holding out a plate: a BLT on toasted Portuguese bread with a handful of Cape Cod chips. Winnie’s stomach reared up. She hadn’t realized she was hungry.

“Your mother told me to tell you that these are Bartlett tomatoes,” he said. “Also, she didn’t put on too much mayonnaise.”

“Mom made the sandwich?” Winnie asked dejectedly. She’d entertained a brief fantasy that Marcus made it.

“Yep.”

“I’m not eating it.”

Marcus walked past Winnie into the room and sat on the bed. Winnie closed the door behind him and slid the dresser against it.

“Well, then, I’m going to eat it,” Marcus said. He took a huge bite out of the corner and tomato seeds slipped down his chin.

“I’ll have half,” Winnie conceded. She was hungry and had no intention of going down for dinner. She and Marcus sat side-by-side on the bed eating the sandwich and all of the chips, using a couple of Kleenex as napkins.

When they finished, Marcus said, “You’ve been up here all day.”

“Yeah.”

“Girl stuff?”

Winnie sighed and lay back against her pillows. “Let me ask you something,” she said. “What if one of your parents did something really bad-”

“Like commit murder, you mean?”

Okay, she deserved that. She thought about how to start over.

“What if one of your parents kept a secret from you your whole life. Like, oh, I don’t know… like they flunked out of college or had a child out of wedlock. Would you be pissed?”

Marcus shifted on the bed and glanced up at the ceiling. Winnie followed his eyes-there was a light water stain and a tiny black spider. Without a word, Marcus stood up, collected the spider in a tissue, and let it go out the window. Winnie marveled. Any other guy would have squished the thing to death. When Marcus sat down again, his eyelids drooped. After two months together, Winnie knew what this meant: he was shutting her out!

“Wake up!” she said impatiently.

“What’s going on, Winnie?”

Winnie chewed her thumbnail. Garrett had sworn her to secrecy, but that wasn’t fair. After all, Piper knew about Beth and David. Winnie motioned for Marcus to come closer. He rolled his eyes-she was being silly-but he leaned in.

“What is it, Winnie?”

“Mom was married before,” Winnie said. “She was married to David.”

Marcus straightened. Married to David. Well.

Winnie studied Marcus’s face; she was interested to know how someone else would react. He seemed nonplussed, like he didn’t get it.

“When was this?”

“When she was twenty-one years old,” Winnie said. “They were married for two weeks. And she never told us.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Piper’s mother, Rosie, told her and Piper told Garrett. I checked it out this morning when I was in town. I made a copy of the marriage certificate.” She pulled it out of her pocket, unfolded it and presented it to him. “Here. This is it.”

That explained why she’d acted so strangely at breakfast. Marcus knew she wasn’t going into town for books. He looked over the marriage certificate. “Did you talk to your mom?” he asked.

“Hell, no. I’m never talking to her again.”

Marcus guffawed. “What, over this ?”

“Yes, over this. She lied to us, Marcus.”

“Maybe she had her reasons. Maybe she was embarrassed.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Why? You can’t tell me you’ve never kept a secret from your mother.”

Winnie thought for a minute. She couldn’t think of a single thing she had ever kept from anyone. “I don’t keep secrets.”

“Some people do,” Marcus said, thinking uneasily of the still-blank legal pad in his room. “It’s called privacy.”

“Privacy isn’t okay under these circumstances,” Winnie said. “Besides, there’s worse news.”

“What’s that?”

“She never told my dad,” Winnie whispered. In her mind, this was such a horrible fact that it couldn’t even be spoken aloud. Her dear, departed father deceived by the woman he loved.

Marcus set the marriage certificate down on the bed. Here was Beth’s secret, then-the one she kept from her whole family but almost told him on the Fourth of July.

“You need to talk to your mom, Winnie,” he said. “You need to work this out.”

“No way,” Winnie said. “Mom is going to pay.”

“Pay? What do you mean, pay ? You’re being ridiculous.”

Winnie bristled at this. “Shut up! You don’t talk to your mother. I don’t see you ‘working things out’ with her! She’s sent you at least three letters that I know of, and you haven’t opened one of them.”

“First of all, my letters are none of your business,” Marcus said. “Secondly, my mother did something really bad. She killed a woman and a nine-year-old girl. She killed them inside our home with a knife from our kitchen. I have a reason to be angry.”

“I have a reason to be angry, too,” Winnie said. “This changes my whole life. I’ve been deceived, my brother has been deceived, and worst of all, my father! I feel like my whole life is a sham. Anyway, Garrett and I have planned some revenge.”

“Revenge?” Marcus said. Winnie kicked herself mentally-she shouldn’t have said anything about the revenge. “You want revenge because your mother was married to David for two weeks twenty years ago? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Marcus felt a wave of exhaustion roll over him. He closed his eyes and lay back on the bed.

“Don’t pretend like you’re falling asleep!” Winnie said. “You do that all the time when you don’t want to deal with reality.”

“Oh, do I?” Marcus asked, his eyes still closed.

“Yes, you do. Anyway, why are you taking Mom’s side? You’re my friend. You have to take my side. My side is the right side.”