Page 69 of The Summer Guests

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking aboutthis.” She held up the page from the desk and shook it at him. “A missing girl? Really?”

He frowned at the page, then at her. “You think that’s about Zoe?”

“Isn’t it? I can’t believe you’d write about this nightmare we’re going through. No, the nightmareI’mgoing through, because I don’t think you and your family have actuallyfeltany of this. Not when Zoe went missing. Not now, with her fighting for her life. I’m terrified I’m going to lose my baby, and you have the gall towriteabout it.”

“That’s not true, Susan.”

“It’s right here, in these pages. The girl who goes missing. The family in their summer cottage.”

“It’s not about Zoe.”

“You didn’t even bother to change the name of the house. Moonview. Really?”

“I swear, it isn’t about Zoe.”

“How does that saying go? ‘Good writers borrow, great writers steal’?”

“I keep telling you, this story isn’t about Zoe! Those are just notes I jotted down, about something that happened years ago, before I was even born. It’s about that woman who went missing in 1972, the one in the newspaper article you brought home. Hannah was eight years old, and she remembers the case. I just wrote down what she told me. She remembers the police came to her house and questioned her father.”

“Why her father?”

“Because the missing woman worked for Dr. Greene. She was his secretary or something, and they asked him if he knew where she went. There was talk about sending divers into the pond, but they never did, because Hannah thinks the woman eventually turned up. Susan, I wasn’t writing about Zoe.” He nodded at the page she was holding. “I was writing abouther.”

“This mysterious missing woman.”

“I swear, that’s the truth.”

She sagged forward on the bed and ran her hands through her hair, which was still damp and sweet smelling from the shower. “God, I’m so tired. I just want us all to go home. I want everything to be back the way it was.”

“So do I.” He sat down beside her and took her hand. “I love you,” he said. “And I love our daughter.Ourdaughter. Nothing else matters more than you two, nothing. You believe me, don’t you?”

She said nothing.

“Susan?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

Abruptly he stood up, went to the desk, and picked up the page with his notes. To her shock, he ripped it in half, then ripped it again. Now he attacked the other pages with such violence that when he finished, there was nothing left but shreds. He threw it all into the trash can and sagged back, exhausted, against the desk. “I wish we’d never come here,” he said. “To this place. To thisfuckinghouse. I didn’t want to come back. Everyone else might have good memories here, but I don’t. It’s where my parents were always fighting. Where Colin lorded it over me. Where I could never match up because he was bigger, faster. More brilliant. Maybe that’s why I became a writer. So I could create endings that turn out happy.” He looked at her. “Youwere my happy ending, Susan. Now I think I’ve lost you, and it’s my fault. My fault that Zoe got taken. I should have been here. I should have knownexactlywhere she was, and now ...” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She stood up and went to him. When she touched his shoulder, she could feel anguish rippling through his body. They wrapped their arms around each other and held on tightly, fiercely, as though steadying each other against roaring, battering waves that threatened to drag them under.

“What I wrote had nothing to do with Zoe,” he said. “I need you to believe that. You believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. But what she really thought was:I don’t know.

Chapter 34

Maggie

Declan reclined on her living room sofa, his fractured left ankle propped up on cushions, and he looked supremely embarrassed about his predicament. He bloody well should be. He’d been an idiot to climb that tree, an opinion she’d not hesitated to share as she and Ben had half dragged him back up the trail to Ben’s car.Don’t you dare call an ambulance. It’s not that bad,he kept insisting. Men and their ridiculous pride. By the time they’d arrived at the hospital, he was pale and clammy from the pain, yet even then, he’d balked at the idea of a wheelchair.

That’s when she’d decided she’d had enough of his nonsense and had practically shoved him into the wheelchair. An injection of morphine and one fiberglass cast later, here he was, parked in her living room, looking sheepish about his current situation.

“I hate to impose on you, Mags,” he said. “I reallycanmanage at home.”

“No, you can’t.”

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