Page 4 of The Summer Guests

Susan glanced back at her daughter. “Not everyone’s a mermaid like you, sweetie.”

“And girls wore a lot more clothes back then,” said Elizabeth. “Petticoats, long dresses. Maybe boots. That may have dragged her down.”

“This website says Maiden Pond has a maximum depth of forty-two feet,” said Zoe, scrolling through her phone. “Does that sound right?”

“I have no idea,” Ethan said.

“But doesn’t your family go there every summer?”

“Mom and Colin do. I haven’t been back in a long time.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Mom, how deep is the pond?”

Elizabeth sighed. “Does it really matter?”

“As long as it’s deep enough,” said Zoe. “Is there anything in the water that bites?”

“Absolutely,” said Ethan. “You might get nibbled to death by ducks.”

“Ethan.”

“Seriously, there’s nothing in the pond that will hurt you, Zoe. Maine doesn’t even have any poisonous snakes.”

“That’s good, ’cause snakes are the one thing thatwouldfreak me out.”

“But I warn you, the water’s going to be cold. The lakes up here don’t really heat up till August.”

“Cold water doesn’t bother me. I want to do a polar bear plunge someday.”

“Better you than me.”

“I’m going to go swimming ten times a day here. I can’twaitto jump in!”

Ethan laughed. “And I can’t wait to hear you screech when you hit that cold water.”

It was good to hear Ethan laugh again. Susan hadn’t heard him laugh very much these last few months as he’d sat staring at his computer screen, waiting for inspiration. If only inspiration were something a novelist could just conjure up, he’d told her. If only there were a magic pill or an incantation that would make words appear on the page. Five years after his first novel was published, he had yet to deliver his second, and as the months passed, he’d grown more and more afraid that there never would be a second novel, that the words would never flow again. That he was merely an impostor, someone with the audacity to call himself an author. How could he tell his writing students at Boston Collegethat he was any sort of authority on the craft when he himself could not produce a single satisfactory page? She’d watched defeat reshape his face, had watched the shadows deepen under his eyes and a perpetual frown etch its way into permanence. At night, she’d feel him tossing beside her, and she knew that it was the book keeping him awake. The book that refused to be written. She had no idea how a writer’s mind worked, but she imagined it was like a dozen different voices shouting in your head, demanding you tell their storytheirway. It seemed like a form of madness.

Maybe this would be good for him, being dragged away from his computer to attend his father’s memorial service, away from those constantly clamoring characters in his head. Even now, as Boston fell farther and farther behind them, she could see his neck muscles relax and his mouth tilt up as, mile by mile, he was shedding the layers of tension. He needed this trip to Maine. They both did.Two weeks of vacation in a house on the water is exactly what we need.

She turned to look at her mother-in-law, who was once again staring out the car window. “Everything okay back there, Elizabeth?”

“I’m just thinking about how much I’ll need to do when we get there.”

“Mom, it’s all taken care of,” said Ethan. “Colin texted me this morning. He and Brooke say the bedrooms are ready, so you won’t have to lift a finger. They’ve put Kit up in the attic, so Zoe can sleep in the bedroom next to ours. Oh, and Arthur and Hannah will join us tonight for cocktails.” He looked at Susan. “You remember my parents’ friends, Hannah Greene and Arthur Fox, right? From the wedding. They have cottages on the pond too.”

“Yes, of course,” Susan said, although her memory of them was almost lost among all the other memories from their wedding day: Ethan beaming at her as they stood at the altar. Zoe, aglow in her yellow bridesmaid dress. And then the sudden thunderstorm that sent their drenched and laughing guests fleeing inside. She remembered Arthur, a tall and patrician man in his eighties, swapping stories at the barwith his old friend George. Similarly hazy was her memory of Hannah Greene, a buxom woman in her sixties, burbling stories about her misadventures while babysitting Ethan and his older brother Colin at the pond.

“There’ll be a few people you don’t know at the memorial service,” said Ethan. “The local minister’s presiding, and some of Dad’s buddies from the yacht club said they’d be there.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at Elizabeth. “It’ll be like old times, Mom!”

“Ethan, watch out!” said Susan.

Ethan suddenly slammed on the brakes, and their car screeched to a halt, jerking them all forward against their seat belts. “Jesus,” he muttered, staring at the line of cars that had abruptly stopped ahead of them. “You okay back there, Mom?”

“It’d be nice if we got there in one piece.”

“I didn’t count on all this traffic.”

“Well, you haven’t been back here in years. It’s changed.” Elizabeth sighed and said, softly: “Everything’s changed.”

The traffic was at a standstill. A long line of cars snaked ahead of them, curving around the bend and out of sight.

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