Page 101 of Summer After Summer

He leaves and I’m still standing there, watching him walk across the lawn, where William is taking his morning walk.

Aunt Tracy puts her arms around me. “He’s a smoothie, that one.”

“He is.”

“You don’t have to be with any man, you know.”

“I know.”

She squeezes, then releases me. I watch Wes talk to William for a minute, wondering what they’re discussing, then let it go.

It’s not something I do well, but if I want my marriage to have a chance, I’m going to have to get used to the sensation.

I take my shower and change into an old pair of shorts and a ratty T-shirt. Today is the day I tackle the library with a renewed interest now that Wes has reminded me about the secret compartment behind one of the shelves.

The library itself is large, dark, and daunting, with dark bookshelves up to the ceiling circling the room. There must be thousands of books in here, and I’m not going to be boxing them all up. I’ll leave that to Lucy’s company. But I do need to go through the shelves and make sure there are no important documents or keepsakes buried within.

I pull open the heavy red velvet drapes, and a cloud of dust flies up. We used to love playing in here as kids, building forts with the furniture and towers of old hardcover books. I run my hand along the spines. All the classics are here: the Brontës, Dickens, Austen.

I pull down the Austen compilation—all six novels in a green hardcover that’s almost too big to hold. I remember discovering it when I was thirteen, and sitting in the window reading, reading, reading until I made it to Persuasion. I loved all the books, but this one especially. It was my mother’s favorite too, and I search the bookshelves for her special copy, the one she’d had since she was a teenager. I don’t find it, so I put the large volume aside to keep, and move on down the shelves.

Some of these books are probably valuable, but I’ll let Lucy decide that. I text her to ask whether each one of them needs to be cataloged. She answers that no, she’ll send her appraiser next week to check if there’s anything worth keeping. I sigh with relief and continue browsing.

I pull out the family Bible, with each generation added in a different handwriting on the inside cover. There I am with my sisters, written in by my mother. And beneath Sophie, at some point, my father took the trouble to write in the names of her children, which I find surprising and touching.

I put it in the “keep” pile, then clear off some of the knickknacks into a box—a collection of glass birds, an old vase that isn’t worth anything but sentiment, a few drawings Charlotte did that my mother framed.

I’m circling the room, avoiding the place I really want to look. Await, avoid, attack, I think, an old admonishment a silly uncle used to give before we went to a banquet in Chinatown when we visited him in the city.

Memory is so funny, what it tosses up, what it discards.

But enough.

I walk to the shelf that hides the secret compartment. It’s a large recess behind a block of shelves that was probably meant for a safe. I can’t think of the last time I looked in here.

No, no, I can. My mother caught me. I was twelve or thirteen, and she was already sick. I remember because she was in her nightgown, even though it was the middle of the day. I’d slipped away from my piano lesson when my teacher had fallen asleep in her rocking chair, a common occurrence. Charlotte had been keeping something from me—I can’t remember what, now—and I was determined to find it. I pulled half the books off the shelves, and then I opened the cabinet.

“What are you doing, darling?” my mom said, moving into the room like a ghost.

“Charlotte hid something from me.”

“What, dear?”

“She won’t tell me—only I know it’s mine.”

She walked toward me, her dressing gown billowing around her. Her skin was pale, and the color seemed to have been bleached out of her hair. She wore it long and loose, and it tickled my neck as she gathered me close.

“You shouldn’t let Charlotte get to you so much, darling.”

“I know.”

“Maybe she didn’t even hide anything.”

I cocked my head to the side. “That sounds like Charlotte.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be playing piano?”

“Mrs. Carson fell asleep again.”

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