Page 136 of Summer After Summer

“Not so young.”

“Mom was only eighteen.”

“She was the one who wanted to get married.”

“She did?”

He rubs his chin. “Did she ever tell you about her father?”

“Grandpa Simon?”

“Terrible man. She never even told me all the details, but he wasn’t a good father. Drove your grandmother into an early grave with his rages. Your mother wanted to escape him. Getting married was a way to do that. But that didn’t mean it’s not what she wanted. What we both did. Sometimes you can make the right decision, even under duress.”

“How come no one ever told me that?”

William laces his fingers together. “Not really the sort of thing you discuss with your children, is it?”

“No, I guess not … Only …”

“You think your mother regretted it?”

“No, I …”

“She was happy, Olivia. Maybe in the end, she wasn’t, but she was so sick, sicker than you knew. It took a lot out of her. There’s this whole thing now about how one has to be brave when one is dying, as if you’ve failed yourself if you aren’t. But not everyone has it in them to be that when they’re dying young. I accepted that. She was scared. She didn’t want to leave us. But there wasn’t anything she or I, or the doctors, could do about it.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I love you … Dad.”

He smiles. “I love you too.”

I spend much of the day wandering around the house, trying to see my past through this new lens. I’ve been blaming William for the way things are in our family—calling him William instead of Dad, putting distance between us. But he’s been here the whole time. He didn’t abandon us to nannies. He didn’t bring in a new mother and pretend that our real one never existed.

He did the best he could. He was the one who was brave in the face of the terrible thing that had happened to our family. Not that I blame my mother for being afraid. But maybe that’s what it was—the advice she gave me in that twenty-first birthday card. Fear.

Did I screw up my whole life because my mother was afraid of dying? Did she think that if I did what she did, I’d end like she did too?

But if I’m being honest with myself, it wasn’t only because of my mother that I’d turned Fred down. William and Aunt Tracy were against me marrying him too. More importantly, I was against it. I was too young, and everything that’s happened between us since is proof of that.

But I also know that the answers to my life right now aren’t in this house, hidden in the walls, or in the locked-up memories of old men.

The answer to my future is at the club.

Wes.

A man who wants to be with me. A man who made a mistake, yes, a bad one, but who wasn’t trying to hurt me. Who’s never looked at me with the cold stare that Fred gave me this morning. And if I’ve given this many chances to Fred, doesn’t Wes deserve another chance too? We’ve both hurt each other, and I’m not innocent in this.

So I go to the club to find him.

And when I do, he’s sitting on the veranda, having a drink with Ann. It’s not the combination I expected, but it’s innocent despite my hammering heart. They don’t jump away from each other or look guilty. There isn’t an air of complicity about them. If anything, I’d say they were arguing, but that doesn’t make any sense either.

“Olivia,” Wes says when he notices me standing there. “Join us.”

I walk up to them slowly. “What are you two doing together?”

They exchange a glance. “Well, now the surprise is ruined,” Wes says.

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