Page 68 of The Summer Guests

Elizabeth merely shrugged. As the silence stretched on, it seemed more and more weighted with significance.

“Is Kit ... is there something I should know about him?”

“He’s a complicated child.”

“I heard he was sick a lot, as a baby.”

“In and out of hospitals. The pediatricians never could pinpoint why Kit had so many digestive issues. He improved for a bit, after they hired the nanny. But a year later she quit, and the boy seemed to get worse. At one point, he was so thin he looked like a little skeleton. That’s probably why Brooke can’t stop hovering over him. Why she refused to let Colin hire another nanny. She didn’t trust anyone else to take care of him. Now he’s grown so attached to his mother, I don’t know how he’ll manage going to college.” She looked at Zoe. “But your daughter, she’s just so ...normal.”

Or she was.

They sat quietly for a moment, sipping their coffees. Listening to the ventilator.

“Have they told you anything new?” said Elizabeth.

“No. Only what you’ve already heard.” Susan drooped forward, rubbing her temples. “God, I wish I could figure out how this happened. I wish it made sense.”

“That’s their job, not yours. Your job is to stay strong and healthy for your daughter.” Elizabeth stood up. “Come, let me take you home.”

“I need to be here.”

“Just for a few hours. If you want to stay healthy, you need dinner. Maybe a change of clothes.”

And a shower,thought Susan, looking down at her wrinkled shirt. Elizabeth was right; she needed to stay strong, stay healthy, for Zoe.

She nodded, and stood up as well. “Just for a while.”

At home she took a shower, buttoned on a fresh shirt, and packed a bag with the essentials she’d need for a night of sitting at Zoe’s bedside. The ICU allowed only one visitor to stay overnight, and if Zoe woke up tonight, it was her mother’s face she’d want to see at her bedside. So that’s where Susan would be.

She’d have to spend the night sitting in a chair, which meant she’d get little sleep, but she might as well make herself as comfortable as possible. Into her overnight bag went her slippers and socks and a sweatshirt, because hospitals were always chilly. She doubted she’d have the energy to read anything, but she packed a book anyway, a lighthearted novel about three sisters on vacation in Italy. A place she promised herself she would take Zoe someday. She had to hold on to that image: her and Zoe and Ethan lounging on a beach in Italy, everyone healthy and happy and whole. If she couldn’t imagine it, then it couldn’t happen, and she neededsomevision of the future. Something to look forward to.

Her phone charger. Mustn’t forget that.

She went to the desk, where she’d left it plugged into the wall socket. That’s when she noticed the pages, covered with Ethan’s handwriting. New pages, ones she hadn’t read before.

She frowned at the last paragraph.

It was summertime when she vanished from the pond, a disappearance so sudden it seemed as if she’d simply stepped off the edge of the earth. The police were called, of course, but no one seemed to know a thing. Then the questions just ... stopped. That was the peculiar part. Had she been found? Was it all a hoax? Nobody would say. Nobody wanted to talk about it. In time, the mystery faded from memory, without answers. Without a body. It’s as if the girl never existed.

Susan sank onto the bed, stunned. A missing girl. A pond. Dear God, was he writing about Zoe? Had he turned their daughter,herdaughter, into nothing more than a character in his novel?

She could hear the family talking and setting the table downstairs, could smell the savory aroma of a dinner casserole, but she’d lost any semblance of an appetite. She thought of Ethan, holed away up here, furtively scribbling these sentences. While other men might cheat on their wives with mistresses, Ethan had cheated on Susan by hiding upstairs with this novel. Like a cannibal feeding on his own family, he had used Susan’s anguish to nourish his story.

“Susan?” Ethan called from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready!”

Susan didn’t answer, didn’t move. Even when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Even when Ethan walked into the bedroom.

“Don’t you want to eat?” he said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“But you need to eat, at least something. And you’ve hardly slept these past few days. Why don’t we take turns at the hospital? Let me spend tonight with her.”

“That should be good for another plot twist.”

“What?”

She looked up at him. “How could you write about her, Ethan? Iseverythingin our lives just material for your novel?”

---