Page 107 of The Summer Guests

“It wasn’t the pond’s fault,” said Zoe.

“What do you mean?”

“The pond didn’t try to kill us.Peopledid.” Zoe looked at the water and sighed. “I wish I could go swimming.”

“Seriously?”

“I’m a mermaid, remember?”

Laughing, Susan pulled Zoe into a hug. “Of course you are, darling.” The little mermaid who refused to die. Who, even after all that had happened, was eager to plunge back into the water. Holding her close, Susan was grateful for every breath her daughter took, for the warm flush of her skin. For the fact she was in her arms, and alive.

“Hey, girls, you about ready to go?” Ethan called from the driveway. He’d just finished loading their suitcases in the trunk, and he stood by the car, waiting for them.

“We’re coming!” Susan said.

Even using a walker, Zoe was easily able to make it up the sloping lawn to the driveway. Ethan opened the door and eased Zoe into the car, where the parting gift from Callie Yount sat on the back seat: a stuffed brown cow with a purple ribbon around its neck.So you won’t forget me,Callie had said.

As if that were even possible.

“Just a minute,” Susan said. “I want to check the house one more time.”

She climbed the stairs to the deck, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. For a moment she stood in the living room, where she had spent so many frantic hours, terrified that her daughter might be dead. The echoes of that panic still seemed to linger in the room. She walked past the wall where the Conover family photos used to hang. The wall was empty now, the photos taken down and shipped home by Elizabeth, who never planned to return. But Susan could still see where the frames had once hung, their outlines burned into the wall by years of sunlight.The ghosts of Conovers past.

That happy family was gone, replaced by a new version of the Conovers, tainted by scandal. By murder. It was not a family she wanted to be part of, but that was the problem with families: you couldn’t choose your own. What youcouldchoose was whom to love, and Susan had chosen Ethan, just as he had chosen her.

Which meant that Elizabeth, for better or for worse, would remain a part of their lives. A troubled part, but they would learn to deal with her.

She walked through the kitchen to make sure the stove was turned off and all the electrical cords were unplugged. There were still echoes of panic in this room, as well. She remembered standing here after she’d found Zoe’s ear stud in the car trunk, watching as Brooke and Colincalmly unloaded groceries. Wondering if one of them had tried to kill her daughter.

She went upstairs for a last check of their bedrooms and the bathroom. The closets were empty, the dresser drawers cleaned out.Must leave nothing behind,she thought,because I am never coming back.

She walked out of the house and locked the door, leaving the ghosts behind.

“All set?” said Ethan.

“Let’s go,” she said. But as she was about to slide into the car, she couldn’t help looking one last time across the pond. This morning Reuben was at the hospital with his sister, so there was no one on the opposite bank waving goodbye. Although she and Reuben had already said their farewells, she wished she could have another chance to thank him, another chance to atone for what had been done to him. She might not have caused his suffering, but because her name was Conover, she felt responsible all the same.

She slid into the car beside Ethan. “It reallyisbeautiful here,” she admitted. “The pond, the trees. But ...”

“But?”

“I never want to see this goddamn place again.”

“Neither do I.” He grasped her hand and pressed it to his lips. “Let’s go home.”

Chapter 50

Reuben

The summer people were gone.

Last night there had been a hard frost, and this morning as Reuben paddled his kayak on the pond, he saw delicate panes of ice, as translucent as glass, drifting by. By noon the ice would melt away, but this morning it was a harbinger of the long, cold weeks ahead, as was the flame-red maple leaf that floated past. How quickly summer rushed by, like a northeaster blowing in, here and gone again.

Like the summer people themselves.

Their homes stood empty now, the windows shuttered, the deck furniture and canoes stored away for the season. He paddled past Arthur Fox’s house, its lawn already littered with fallen leaves, and then past Hannah Greene’s house. A broken tree branch had toppled onto the back deck where Hannah, that pale dumpling of a woman, liked to sun herself.

He paddled on, toward Moonview.

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