Page 168 of Summer After Summer

“I can help.”

“No, you stay here. Find out what Fred wants.”

She pats me on the arm, then disappears through the swinging door with the plates in hand.

I worry about Tracy. What is she going to do when she won’t have us all to fuss over all of the time?

“These are good,” Fred says. “Amazing, really.”

“She’s the best. Why didn’t you want to talk to me in the living room?”

“Everyone was around.”

“Buying all our stuff so you can have an empty house.”

He holds his hand up in surrender, a half-eaten cookie in the left. “I offered to take it as is.”

“You … what?”

“I was happy to take care of all of this. But Ann said the family didn’t want that.”

“Ann said?”

“She wasn’t speaking for you?”

“No. I didn’t even know … No.”

“I should’ve asked you directly.”

“Yes. About a lot of things.”

“Olivia …”

“No, no, don’t use my name like that. Nothing good ever comes of it.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted … I was going to offer to check the transfer papers and make sure everything’s in order.”

The transfer papers for the house sale, he means. Ann’s assistant had sent them to me weeks ago, and I’d let them sit in my inbox, unread.

“No, thank you. I’m going to go now. Don’t follow me, okay?”

“Okay.”

I walk out of the kitchen, pushing through the swinging door, that feeling of something out of place dogging me. I stop in the crowd and try to think, but my mind won’t go there, like a name I can’t quite remember of some celebrity on screen.

I shake the thought away. It will come to me if I don’t worry about it too much.

I go to the dining room and then out onto the veranda, where I find Wes talking with Ash.

“Olivia!” Ash says. “We were looking for you.”

“Here I am.”

“Everything okay?” Wes puts his arm around my waist and kisses me on the cheek.

“Yes, fine I think.” I lean into him briefly, then pull away, the feeling I’ve been pushing down even stronger. “I have a few things I need to do before the signing. Can I meet you there?”

“You don’t want me to drive you?”

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