Page 53 of Summer At Willow Tree Farm

‘What’s going on with Josh’s father?’

Please don’t let it be about that either.

‘Why do you ask?’ Ellie said, in a pathetic attempt to stall for time. She was so not ready to have this conversation while her head was exploding – and damage limitation on her latest catastrophe was still one life-threatening hangover away.

‘You never speak with him when he Skypes Josh,’ her mother said. ‘And I wondered why he didn’t come with you?’ Dee sprinkled flour over the kitchen table and plopped the dough on top. ‘Three months is a long time for Josh and you to be away from him, and for you to be away from your business.’ Dee plunged her knuckles into the dough, and began to stretch and tear it. ‘I just wanted to make sure everything was all right?’

Emotion Ellie hadn’t even realised was there burned her larynx, as she suddenly envisioned herself as Dee’s ball of dough being contorted into all sorts of impossible positions.

‘It’s complicated,’ she finally managed to mumble.

‘I’m sure it is, marriages always are,’ her mother said, the understanding in her voice somehow unbearably poignant.

No wonder she didn’t want to tell her mum about Dan and the divorce. Because it would force her to admit how stupid she had been – about her determination to keep her marriage going no matter what. A part of her had always condemned her mum for giving up too easily, for not trying harder to resist Pam, to make things work with her dad, but what if her mum had just been a great deal braver and more honest than she was?

At least her mum had loved Pam, while Ellie wasn’t entirely convinced she had ever really loved Dan.

What she’d been was dazzled by his golden boy good looks, and his confidence and charm. When they’d first met, she’d been doing grunt work on a J-1 visa at the Marshall Creek Summer Camp in Sarasota and Dan had been the camp’s sailing instructor. Impossibly cute and so effortlessly sexy, he could make every person at the camp with ovaries, and quite a few without, hyperventilate.

At the time, she’d convinced herself she was special. The only one who could make him hyperventilate back, during all those sweaty, furtive encounters in the boathouse after lights out, which had eventually produced Josh.

If only she’d known then what she knew now, that Dan had never been hyperventilating just for her.

‘Dan and I are getting a divorce. He got Josh’s middle school teacher pregnant. I thought it would be good for Josh and I to be away from Orchard Harbor for the summer when everyone finds out.’

‘Oh Ellie, I…’

‘Wait, that’s not all,’ she said, to halt the outpouring of support she wasn’t sure she deserved. ‘I don’t have to worry about taking a break from my business, because…’ She hesitated. Why was this the hardest part? She thought of Art’s accusations last Friday. That would be why.

‘It’s a total disaster. In fact, I don’t really have a business any more.’ She stared down at her hands, feeling sick with humiliation and guilt. ‘Once I kicked Dan out of the house, all my clients deserted me, because I no longer had the kudos of being Senator Granger’s daughter-in-law. And why would anyone else want to hire Events by Eloise when it was owned by a woman who had been cheated on all over town and had pretended not to notice.’

Surely that was the worse part, that ever since she’d first caught Dan cheating, she’d secretly known he’d never stopped, but she’d kept the façade of her perfect marriage to Senator Granger’s son going for the sake of appearances and little else. She’d kidded herself she’d been keeping it going for Josh, but how could that be true, when Dan had given their son almost as little attention as he gave her?

She gulped down the last of her lemonade, the tart sweet taste doing nothing to ease the dryness in her throat.

‘Maybe Art’s right to be sceptical about my abilities to pull this off,’ she said. ‘I went to see him after the meeting when we agreed the project and he made it clear he thinks this is just a vanity project for me, that I’m just using it to pass the time until I go home.’

‘Art had absolutely no right to say that.’ The total and utter faith in her mother’s voice made tears well up Ellie’s throat.

‘I swear that’s genuinely not true,’ Ellie said, the need to prove herself to her mother suddenly paramount. ‘I really want the shop to work. But maybe he’s right to be wary. I’ve failed at my marriage and my business. What if I’m just using this project as a chance to shore up my confidence after all those other screw ups. And what happens if I screw this up, too?’

Her mother swooped down, pressing flour-covered palms to her clammy cheeks. ‘You’re not going to screw it up.’ Dee gripped her head, to get the message across. ‘And you’re not a failure. Frankly, it sounds like your husband failed in the marriage, not you.’

‘The shop might not be a success though.’ Did her mother understand that? That she might lose everything Pam had left her? ‘It’s a risk.’

‘And it’s a risk we’re all willing to take because real failure would be not taking that chance and letting the co-op die by slow degrees through our own inaction.’ Dee folded Ellie into a hug.

‘Art doesn’t think so,’ Ellie said against her mother’s bosom. The pointless tears started to make her sinuses ache almost as much as her head.

‘That’s because Art finds it next to impossible to trust anyone, after what happened with Laura and then with Alicia.’

Alicia? Who’s Alicia?

Ellie shut the question down. Because thinking about Art just made her head hurt more.

‘Does Josh know? About the divorce?’ her mother said.

Ellie shook her head. ‘I don’t know how to tell him.’

---