Page 2 of Summer After Summer

“I know.”

“I’m not going to be the only one to take care of him.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“You kind of did, though, Olivia, when you moved away and never came back.”

I wanted to contradict her, but she was right. As much as I loved it, Southampton was a crucible of bad memories, and I’d insulated myself from them as much as I could, returning rarely—and lately, not at all.

I agreed to think about it and hung up. Then I spent the next twenty minutes calming Justine down, who’d felt ignored and was going to tell her mummy that I wasn’t giving her the right amount of attention. I knew better than to try to reason her out of her tantrum. Her mother paid extra for her lessons, and the income I made teaching kids like her to play mediocre piano after school was an important supplement to my inadequate teacher’s salary.

Despite the guilt Charlotte laid at my door, I’d decided I wasn’t going to go. But then it turned out that I could just drop my life and my husband; that I had to because I couldn’t breathe in New York anymore, and so here I was.

Another car stops suddenly in front of me, and I apply the brakes as my heart skips a beat, praying they don’t give out. My car is ten years old and hasn’t had a tune-up in years. I never remember to do stuff like that, but Wes is always telling me he worries whenever I drive it. Not enough to take it in himself, though, and over time, the tone of the concern has shifted from fretting about my safety to saying things like, “If you end up killing someone with that thing, don’t blame me.”

When your husband switches from caring for your well-being to worrying about the safety of others, well, let’s just say it’s a warning sign—and in my case, one of the many reasons my things are stuffed into this death trap.

My car stops right before the black bumper in front of me, and I breathe a sigh of relief, my heart racing like I’ve been sprinting through the rain. There’s a sticker on it that reads: “If you can read this, you’re too close.” I let it get a car’s length ahead of me and check the upcoming sign. It’s my exit. I just have to navigate across three lanes of traffic, and I can be free of this particular hell.

I get off the highway and drive through town, passing familiar restaurants and new logos in old places. I cut away before the main street, not wanting to get caught in the stop-and-go traffic as the tourists pop in and out of the cute candy-colored stores. I turn onto First Neck and aim for the beach, turning right when it morphs into Meadow. I pass the Crowder’s massive turreted home with its thatched roof, then a new build I don’t recognize that looks like it belongs in Malibu, not Cryder Beach.

And then I’m at Taylor House, its weathered shingled sides rising from the long pale grasses that grow out of the sandy dunes that surround it, its lighthouse windows glinting in the sun.

The house is a pile, built at the beginning of the last century, when the family was still accumulating money rather than watching it dwindle. We’d never been able to settle on how many rooms it had—twenty-six or twenty-seven, depending on who you asked and whether the secret room behind the library shelves counted. (Obviously, yes.) Either way, it was more rooms than anyone needed, and more rooms than this family could afford.

As I bring my car to a stop, I stare up at it, feeling nostalgic. Memories click through my brain with a swiftness that leaves me breathless, and I’m relieved that soon I won’t have this place to remind me anymore. Another family will build a life here, for good or bad, and it won’t mean anything to me.

I wonder for the first time who bought it and whether they’re planning to tear it down and build some post-modernist collection of boxes like so many others have done. I promise myself that I won’t be around to find out, that this is the last summer I’ll spend here. Once the past is tucked away, and Charlotte and my father are settled somewhere reasonable, I’ll lock up my memories and throw away the key.

Charlotte comes out of the front door, summoned by the sound of my tires on the gravel drive. She’s wearing an off-white linen jumpsuit, tied at the waist with a tight cinch. A pair of oversized black sunglasses hide her dark eyes.

When I get out of the car, I can’t help but notice the weeds poking through the stones, and the overgrown flower border; how much slumpier the place looks in general from the last time I was here.

Charlotte, though, is the same—thin and waspish, her long, dark brown hair still glossy and blunt at her shoulders, her clothes hanging off her because she doesn’t eat, she never has. At thirty-seven, she could still pass for twenty-five. She has one of those faces, both thin and plump enough that it doesn’t seem to age, especially since she’s always been careful about the sun.

“Olivia!” She tips her sunglasses down to peer at me. Her skin is almost the same color as her outfit. “What are you wearing?”

I check myself, unable to recall what I threw on before I tossed the last bag into the car. I see a pair of black leggings that are a size too small and a T-shirt for a Bon Jovi concert I forgot I even attended. I haven’t had a haircut in months, and the lack of sun and general malaise I’ve been feeling for too long has turned my hair mousy. Add in the fact that I spent too much time in the sun with too little sunscreen for years, and I doubt anyone would guess I’m one minute younger than the thirty-five I am.

“My white jumpsuit is at the cleaners.”

Charlotte isn’t sure how to take this, so she air-kisses me instead, one kiss near, but not quite on, each cheek, an affectation she picked up during a summer in Montreal to learn French. Her vocabulary never made it past ordering off the menu in a pretentious way in French restaurants, but Charlotte isn’t the sort of person who accepts personal limitations.

“Well, you look dreadful. Thank gawd the garden party is tomorrow.”

“Garden party?”

“Didn’t I tell you? We’re kicking off the summer with a hurrah in the garden. Don’t worry, I’ve arranged everything.”

“Smoked salmon sandwiches and gin?”

“Precisely. You’ll be there?”

It’s the last thing I want to do, but that’s what this whole summer’s going to be like. I might as well accept it now. “Yes.”

“I assume you have something else to wear?”

I point my thumb at the car. “Somewhere in there, I’m sure.”

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