Page 134 of Summer After Summer

I turn the phone on, holding it against my chest, waiting for my messages to load. It shudders against me, almost angry at being ignored, and I start to feel concerned. I flip it over. The screen is full of notifications from emails and texts and Twitter.

It takes me a minute to make sense of it, but it’s a link from Matt that does it.

A story in the Daily Mail about me and Fred. It’s got pictures of us together from Bath. Walking down the street, hand in hand. Standing outside the jewelry store, looking like we’re picking out an engagement ring.

But the story is not just about me and Fred.

It’s about me and Fred and another woman named Catherine—some British socialite that he’s been dating that he never told me about.

I feel sick as I flip through the photos of them together. This is what I get for never googling him. He’s practically engaged to another woman.

And oh God. The toothbrush, the robe … are they hers?

Bile rises in my throat, and I rush to the bathroom and heave up whatever’s left from yesterday. When I’m finally done, I sit back against the wall, feeling feverish, and go to Twitter. This girl, Catherine, is apparently quite a big deal here, and my name and hers and Fred’s along with #cheater are trending. The vitriol I’m receiving is ridiculous. Why does anyone care about a relationship that they’re not in? But they do. The country does. And I don’t want to be this person, this villain.

I feel another wave of nausea.

I can’t be here anymore. I need to leave. Before Fred comes back.

Whatever he’s said to me these last couple of days, it’s a lie, and I can’t bear to hear any more of it.

I pick up my phone and I call Ash. Because, even though she’s a continent away, I know I can count on her to save me.

Two days, I think as I dial her number. Two days to add to our total. Two days thinking we could escape ourselves, but somehow I knew underneath that it wasn’t going to happen.

Somehow, I knew that five years apart wasn’t enough time to fix us.

Because I forgot that things that are brought back to life aren’t real.

They’re ghosts.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

July 2023

Fred and I don’t speak when we wake with the dawn the next morning on the beach at James’s winery. We simply get up, return to the house, and act like nothing happened. Because nothing did. Ditto for the drive back to Southampton in the car that Fred arranges.

Lucy doesn’t come with us. She’s still woozy, and the doctor told her to take it easy, so James says she can stay with him for a while, until she’s ready to go home, and it feels like we all breathe a sigh of relief when this decision is made, but maybe that’s wishful thinking.

Fred drops me off at the top of the driveway and leaves without saying anything more than goodbye. It’s weird—we felt so connected last night, almost like we were friends—and now we’re back to being nothing. Maybe less than nothing, because if we were nothing, we could make small talk. But we’ve never done that. Everything between us has always been outsized. We don’t know how to be normal together, so I don’t look back when the car drives away, I just go into the house.

After a shower and a change of clothes, I go in search of something, I’m not sure what. While there’s still a lot of cataloging to do, the only real clear-out left is of my mother’s room. That feels like too much for today, and part of me wants to leave it for the estate sale, and let it be someone else’s problem.

But that’s what I do. I push problems off until they accumulate. A month from now, I won’t have a place to live unless I decide to get back together with Wes. I’ll have more money than I’ve ever had, but less sense of what I want to do. Go back on the tennis circuit? Leave teaching and become a coach? Leave it all behind and move to some warm-weather location where I can read books by a pool and play pickleball in the afternoons?

But no. That’s never been me, and the part of me that’s been slumbering since I retired five years ago is awake now. I’m not ready to check out of life, I just don’t know what life I want to lead.

With these thoughts swirling, I end up in my father’s study.

He’s sitting behind his desk, reading a book. For all my father’s oddness and vanity, he’s always been a well-read man. Today’s entry is a biography of John Lennon, the Beatles being a band I’m sure my dad ignored when they came out but are now far enough in the past to be intriguing to him.

“Learning anything interesting?”

“What? Oh, Olivia, hello.” He puts the book down. John Lennon’s small, round spectacles look up at me. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I just felt like … we haven’t talked since I’ve been home.”

“Haven’t we?”

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