Elin Hilderbrand - Summer People

“I want to finish college,” Beth said.

“We wouldn’t be able to afford a year of your college,” he said. “Plus a place to live, plus food. Your daddy’s not taking care of you anymore, okay? It’s me.” His voice softened. “I love you, Mrs. Ronan.”

“Stop calling me that.”

“What?”

“ ‘Mrs. Ronan.’ It makes it sound like you own me. You don’t own me.” She started to cry.

“Hey, hey,” he said. “I know you want to finish your degree. I’ll help you make some calls. There’s a community college in Harwich. You could take the boat over a couple days a week, maybe.”

Beth pushed her plate away. They had been married thirteen days.

That night, she lay awake watching him sleep. She remembered back to the evening she met him, six years earlier. David had just inherited a dirt bike from an older cousin and he was giving it a whirl up and down West Miacomet Road. Beth was sitting on Horizon’s front stoop, shucking corn with a paper bag between her legs. She watched this boy zip past then back again. He was shirtless and barefoot; his hair glinted gold in the last of the day’s sunlight. Eventually Beth became so entranced that she stood up and watched him unabashedly. He stopped at the end of the driveway.

“Want to go for a ride?”

Up close, the bike looked hardly sturdy enough to support him, much less the two of them. But Beth nodded-she abandoned the pot of corn and the bag of husks and silks and climbed onto the back of this strange boy’s dirt bike. By necessity, she linked her arms around his bare torso and with a sensation like a rocket launching, they took off. Beth was sixteen years old, flying over the bumpy roads at a speed she’d never imagined. The wind tossed her hair. It was the first time she’d tasted freedom.

In the morning, after David left for work, Beth packed her things. She left her wedding ring on top of a white piece of paper on the kitchen table, where he would be sure to see it.

Winnie’s eyes were wide. “Then what happened?”

“I drove home,” Beth said. “My parents were sitting right here at this table eating breakfast with Danny and Scott. Grandpa was eating shredded wheat, Gramma was having a cigarette and coffee, and the boys had scrambled eggs with ketchup.”

“You can remember that?” Garrett asked.

“Like it happened this morning,” Beth said.

The house had grown silent as soon as the front screen door clapped shut behind her. By the time Beth made it to the kitchen, all eyes were on her.

“I’m back,” she said brightly, as though she’d just returned from a semester abroad.

Her mother shooed the boys out of the kitchen. Her father methodically finished his shredded wheat-it was well known that even a fire couldn’t keep Garrett Eyler from his shredded wheat-and then he approached Beth, kissed her on the forehead, and grasping her upper arm said, “You did the right thing.”

At these words, Beth broke down. Her mother took over- leading Beth upstairs to her bed, which was freshly made, lowering the shades and saying, “You stay right here until the worst has passed.” As though they were expecting a storm.

What her mother was referring to, of course, was David, who screeched into the driveway in his painting truck at half past three. He pounded on the front door. Beth sat up in bed, petrified. She heard him yelling, “Let me see her! I love her! Let me talk to her!” And then Beth heard the low, calm tones of her father. “I’ve contacted my lawyer. It will all be taken care of.” The conversation continued-David’s voice growing so hysterical that Beth had to peek out the window. She saw her father and David standing just outside the door. David’s expression was so anguished, his voice so desperate that Beth collapsed and pulled her two feather pillows over her head. She didn’t listen to another word; she didn’t even hear him drive away.

“And that’s it?” Garrett said.

“That’s it,” Beth said. “That’s the whole story. My father’s attorney took care of the divorce. I didn’t see David again for several years, and by that point, we were both married to other people. And I made the conscious decision never to think or speak of it again. To anyone, including your father. I’m sorry if you feel betrayed, and I’m even sorrier if you feel I betrayed your father. But that was my decision. It was an event from my past. Mine. Do you understand?”

The twins nodded mechanically, like marionettes.

Beth felt drained. There were other things she wanted to discuss with the kids-the Malibu rum, the whereabouts of the ashes-but those things hardly mattered to her at this moment. The only thing that mattered now was that she had told the one story she’d tried with all her might to forget. The reason she’d tried to forget was because of the expression on David’s face that final morning. It was the look of a man whose dream had been crushed without warning. It was the look of a man who would have loved her forever, who would have taken her for a ride on the back of his dirt bike into infinity.

Beth stood up. She made herself a piece of toast at the counter, ate it in four bites, then went upstairs to her room. Her business with the twins was finished for the time being; they would have to process all they’d heard. What Beth realized before she took a Valium and fell into bed for a nap was that there was one more person she needed to talk to about all of this before she put it to rest for good, and that person was David.

Beth thought of biking or driving out to David’s house that evening before dinner (it grew dark at seven o’clock now, a sign that August had arrived), but Beth didn’t want to talk with David in front of his girls. She let a few days pass. Her relationship with the twins returned to almost normal, however they seemed to bestow upon her a new kind of respect-maybe because she had finally owned up to the truth, or maybe because they had never before imagined her as a person capable of getting married on a whim by a judge wearing Bermuda shorts. When Beth saw Piper, she, too, treated Beth differently, more formally, always calling her “Mrs. Newton.” One night, Beth screwed up the courage to ask Piper where David was working.

“This week, Cliff Road,” Piper said. And then, as if she knew what Beth was planning, she added, “One of the new houses on the left just before you reach Madaket Road.”

Beth decided to go see him the following morning, climbing into the Rover at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock. She wanted to catch him early, say her piece, and leave. Unfortunately, there was a blanket of fog so thick that Beth couldn’t see any of the houses from the road and she worried that she wouldn’t be able to find the right one. But then she spied two huge homes with fresh yellow cedar shingles on the left, and she took a chance and chose the first of the two driveways. There were a number of vans and trucks-one of them David’s.

Beth parked in a spot well out of everyone’s way and climbed out of the car. She began to feel nervous about this plan-after all, David was working. He had a business to run, contracts to fulfill; he didn’t need his old girlfriend showing up to rehash something that happened back in the Ice Age. Beth glanced at her car and considered leaving, but what if he saw her? That would only make things worse.