Page 175 of Summer After Summer

“But the money could’ve gone to Father only,” Sophie says. “Wes didn’t know he’d agree to give some of it to us.”

“He knows Dad is suggestable and that he doesn’t care about money. So they worked it out together. Ann would befriend Charlotte and suggest that she and Barry be the lawyers on the deal. And it was Ann who proposed that Aunt Tracy convince William to divide the money. Isn’t that right, Charlotte?”

Charlotte speaks quietly. “Yes, that’s right. It was Ann’s idea.”

“Then she found a buyer, someone who’d pay top dollar, and maybe a bit more for the satisfaction of getting the house: Fred.”

“Why would Fred care so much about getting the house?” Sophie asks.

“Because he knows I love it,” I say, keeping myself from looking at Fred. “And he wanted to hurt me.”

“Why?”

“Wes knows why.”

Wes had confronted me five years ago in London after Fred left. He knew enough about my past that when Ash told him Fred was in London and that he should come to get me, he assumed the worst.

It all came pouring out of me. How I wanted to make sure Fred and I were truly over if I was going to marry Wes. How close I’d come to leaving him. How I still didn’t know what I was going to do when Fred came over, but he should assume the worst.

He was quiet for a long time, and then he told me that didn’t want things to end. That he still loved me and that if I wanted to be with him, I could. I could put all of my tortured past with Fred away and start fresh, clean.

And because I’d seen the look on Fred’s face in the doorway, because I knew Fred wasn’t going to have coffee or tea or anything with me, not after I’d hid Wes from him, I’d agreed.

I wanted a clean future, a fresh start. I was sick of tortured love.

I married Wes in August in the garden, just like we’d planned, and I gave our marriage my best. But then that note had arrived from Fred at the start of the pandemic. The charm, the request to run away together. And all Wes’s doubts must’ve come rushing back.

No, worse. He’d thought I’d go to Fred if I got that note, so he hid it from me. But then that filled him with doubt and resentment. And then the way we rubbed at each other in the months that followed, his business failing—all of that built into a big ball of hate. He couldn’t trust me to pick him, and so it was like I hadn’t. He wanted to hurt me like I’d hurt him.

Worse.

“But why come here after you left him?” Sophie asks. “Why try to reconcile with you?”

I keep waiting for Wes to say something, for him to tell me I’ve got it wrong, to amend the narrative. But he doesn’t say a thing, just works the muscle in his jaw and clenches his hands on the table.

“If I got the money after we separated, he wouldn’t be entitled to any of it in the divorce. But if we were together, with Ann’s help, he could get his half outright.”

“But you would’ve found out,” Charlotte says. “We all would have.”

“They didn’t care about that. Once the wires went through this afternoon, they’d be gone.”

It’s that word that breaks me.

Gone.

I’m furious at Wes, I hate him maybe, but part of me still loves him too. And whatever I did, it wasn’t so bad as to deserve this.

“Is this all true, Wes? Ann?” Sophie asks, her face white, her hands shaking.

“No,” Wes and Ann say together.

Charlotte’s hysterical laugh is cut off by a sob. “Oh my God, I fell for you. I fell for all of it.”

“We both did,” I say.

William stands unsteadily and holds out his arm. He points to Wes. “You leave now. And don’t you come back here again.”

“She has it wrong.”

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