Page 63 of The Summer House
When the waitress left, Lillian’s eyes grew red and full of tears that fell down her cheeks. She blotted her face with a napkin. “I did everything wrong,” she said, her voice quivering. “Everything.” She stopped, another tear sliding down her face. Frederick seemed as though he wanted to hop across the table and hold her but he didn’t move.
“Edward was away all the time on business, starting up his company in Florida. We didn’t have a house there yet, and so I stayed back, but the winters in the Outer Banks were so long and lonesome for me, and he was always focused on his work. Our marriage was crumbling. I was alone. I tried to tell him. I used to take walks on the beach to clear my head, but it didn’t help. I didn’t know what to do, and I thought that soon, I would have to initiate the conversation about divorce,” she said quietly.
“One day, I was walking down the beach and I met this surfer.” She set her hands on her cutlery as if she were straightening it before she looked up at Frederick and smiled nervously. “I watched him for quite a while, dipping under the waves and then paddling out, riding them in, over and over. It was so graceful and beautiful—calming. After a while he jogged up, the board under his arm, his hair soaking wet, and the most gorgeous smile on his face. I hadn’t ever had a smile like that directed at me.”
She finally met Frederick’s eyes and there it was: the smile. With acknowledgment of his encouragement, she continued. “He nodded hello and got a sandwich from a little cooler he had on the beach by a blanket. He told me that I was welcome to sit down on the blanket rather than standing. Then he opened a glass bottle of soda and handed it to me. With a wave of his hand, he went back out.”
She put her napkin in her lap, her hands unstill, clearly to release nervous energy. “Do you remember that day, Frederick?”
“Of course.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat.
Juliette was on the edge of her seat, her mouth slack, eyebrows slightly raised, her concentration deep as she listened. She looked uncertainly at Luke, but his downward-turned eyes gave her all the confirmation she needed. Frederick folded his hands on the table, his discomfort clear: He didn’t like what the news was doing to Juliette. Aiden wasn’t much better. His lips were pressed together, his brows furrowed, and he’d put an arm around Juliette.
“When he came up again, we made some small talk, and he told me that he came out there every day to surf when he wasn’t working at the little beach shop in town. He told me if I was ever bored, I could look for that blanket and watch the waves. That was what he liked to do sometimes, he’d said.
“I should’ve known what was happening.” Lillian shook her head. “The next day, I went looking for that blanket. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I’d called Edward that morning, telling him how much I hated the way we were living apart and, I... It had been months since I’d seen him. I even asked if I could go to Florida. He said...” A flash of anger crossed her face then went away. “Well, it doesn’t matter what he said. He wouldn’t come back. He believed that if I could just hold out, we’d reap the benefits. But I knew the benefits he was talking about just meant money. I got off the phone feeling lower than I had in a long time, and that was when I decided to take that walk just to see a friendly face.”
“You never told me that,” Frederick said, a protective square to his shoulders. It was clear that he didn’t like Edward’s response to her even this many years later.
“Why would I have?” she said. “But when I saw you—that surfer who’d introduced himself to me as ‘Freddy’…” She smiled as more tears surfaced and turned to the group. “I noticed he’d brought a stack of books. They were sitting on the blanket. He called hello from his board and came up to see me. ‘Those are for you,’ he said. ‘I hoped you’d come back.’ A long time later, I asked him why.”
There was a moment between them as they stared at each other and there was so much there, just under the surface. Even now.
Frederick said, “I told you it was because I’d never seen such a beautiful woman who looked so sad and I knew right then that all I wanted was to see you smile.”
She put her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes before looking up again. “You were so easy to talk to. So kind, gentle, you took me out—we met for ice cream, remember?”
Callie, knew what kind and gentle felt like too, being with Luke. It was clear, the more Lillian talked about Frederick, how similar Luke was to his real father, and she was floored by the similarities. Luke had spent his whole life trying to live up to something he wasn’t. If he’d just been told about Frederick, would he have realized that his differences weren’t downfalls? He was perfect just the way he was.
“You know why I’m telling you all this, don’t you?” she asked Luke.
The whole table waited for the answer.
“Because I can see in your eyes right now, the exact same look I saw in Freddy’s eyes when I told him we couldn’t see each other anymore: disappointment, anger, sadness. That unique cocktail of emotions that only come about a few times in one’s life. Luke, you look so much like Freddy it kills me sometimes.”
Luke had a pensive look on his face and Callie had never seen him this quiet before.
“The night I was with Freddy was like magic.” She reached out and held Frederick’s hand across the table. “We’d seen each other so many times and he was so familiar to me then, like the piece of me that had been missing for all those years. He was such a gentleman that I couldn’t believe I’d put myself in that position—that I allowed myself to follow my heart without thinking—because I was falling in love with him.”
She offered a shy smile toward him.
“The next morning, in the light of day, I realized what I’d done and I told him we had to end it. Even though I loved him, I told him I’d made the worst mistake of my life out of loneliness, and I regretted how it happened immensely. I left, planning never to speak of it again. Two days later, Edward told me he was coming home. He said he was sorry for not being more sympathetic, that he was just overwhelmed with work, and he promised not to leave me again.” She let go of Frederick’s hand and crossed her arms. “I have held that guilt for so many years and it weighs on me like a cinderblock tied to my heart.”
The rain started sheeting down outside, streaking the windows, the sound on the roof like a crowd at a sporting event. It came down hard and fast like the emotions surrounding them all. The table was silent, but on their faces Callie could see a hundred thoughts at once.
Lillian spoke quietly. “When I found out I was pregnant,” she said in a whisper as a family walked in and sat down in the dining room, “I knew right then I should tell Freddy. It was close enough that Edward wouldn’t question it, and I was terrified to tell him. When I counted the days, I knew exactly when it was, and I couldn’t keep that from Freddy. I arranged to meet him for coffee to figure out what to do.”
Frederick smiled a sad smile. “I remember that day like it was yesterday. You looked so beautiful and I hadn’t thought I would see you again so I was over the moon when you called.”
Lillian looked at him with a comforting expression, her pain at having hurt him obviously still there. She addressed the others: “I told him quietly and then said…” She cringed, the pain slowing down her words. “… that I’d been thinking all the way there, and the best thing for our child would be to have all the opportunities money could buy. Money that Edward could give him, money that Freddy didn’t have. I told him that if I went back to Edward and we raised Luke as our son, however, he could never speak of it again.”
Frederick spoke up. “I said okay. And I left.” The words came out as if they still surprised him today. He rubbed the scruff on his face like he was trying to wipe the anguish off. “I didn’t want to agree to it, but I didn’t feel like I could force what I wanted on Lillian. If she wanted to be with Edward more than me, I just wanted her to be happy. I was young. I didn’t realize at that moment what having a son would mean to me. But it started to sink in pretty quickly. The moment she walked out, I was a mess.”
“I thought I could give him all the love he neededandthe money to move him forward in life. But money isn’t always better,” Lillian said. “I should’ve known that right then, but it took me time to realize what I’d done, and when I did, it was too late.” Her voice was breaking and she took a sip of coffee, her hands trembling as she lifted the cup.
Two women came in the door and walked over to the table in the corner, happily hugging the group of people sitting there. It felt like a world away from the table where Callie sat, hurting for this family and for Luke, wishing he’d look at her so she could comfort him, but his eyes were on Lillian, his shoulders high and anxious.
“Freddy wanted to see Luke.” Lillian smiled through her tears at Frederick, now speaking to him. “I said that it wasn’t a good idea, but you’d taken me to Corolla before and I knew how remote it was. There wasn’t a chance, back then, of anyone finding us. I played with Luke that day and you sat on the dune, sketching, on that blanket I remembered so well.” She addressed the others. “But he was really watching Luke—watching him laugh, run around chasing the seagulls, build in the sand. I still remember stealing little glances and seeing the smile on his face as he watched Luke play.
