The Summerhouse Read online

  While she’d been thinking, Jessie had remained quiet, and when she turned to look at him, she saw that he’d been watching her.

  “You have some heavy things going on inside you, don’t you?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” she answered. “I do. But, you know something? I don’t care anymore.” With that, she smiled. She really, really smiled. And she looked about her at the beauty of their surroundings, and she took a deep breath. Maybe the divorce court system in this state was a travesty, but the air was heavenly.

  “I don’t want to go home,” she said. “There’s nothing there for me. And when do you want me to have Lew’s wife over for lunch?”

  When Jessie didn’t answer, she looked down at him. He was looking up at her with those male eyes again. But this time Ellie didn’t run away. And she certainly didn’t start crying. No, instead, she bent down to kiss him, and in the next moment she had his shirt unbuttoned.

  Twenty-four

  1980

  OHIO

  One second Leslie was in the Victorian house of a woman named Madame Zoya and the next she was standing in the dormitory room of her university.

  She stood there blinking, disoriented, not sure of what she was seeing. There were two beds in the room, hers, neat and tidy, with its often-washed spread that she’d had since she was a freshman, and the other, her roommate’s bed. It was a jumble of covers that looked as though they’d never been washed.

  Leslie’s first thought was that she was going to have to get after Rebecca to make up her bed. And straighten up her desk and—

  It was then that the realization of what she was seeing hit Leslie. And when she had the thought, she didn’t believe it. She took a step backward.

  And that’s when the realization of her body hit her. She was at least fifteen pounds lighter than she had been ten minutes earlier.

  Her mind was clearing now, and even though she didn’t believe what she was seeing and feeling, it seemed to be real.

  “Mirror,” she said aloud, then tried to remember back to her college days. Where was the—Ah, back of the closet door.

  Opening the door, she was hit with the sight of herself at twenty years old.

  Staring back at her was a Leslie Aimes that she hadn’t seen in a long, long time. It wasn’t just the twenty-year-old body that had had a lifetime of twisting and twirling that had made it into this beautiful machine. No, Leslie remembered that body. Every morning when she awoke, she remembered that body—and missed it. She missed being able to bend and stretch and turn with ease and grace.

  No, that wasn’t what surprised her as she looked in the mirror. What astonished her was the look of hope on the face of the girl in the mirror.

  “When did I lose that?” she asked aloud. “When did I change?”

  The Leslie looking back at her had sparkling green eyes that seemed to be on the verge of laughing. This was a girl who believed in herself, was sure that she was going to go far in the world.

  This was not a girl who thought she was going to end up a housewife who served on one committee after another. This wasn’t a woman who was terrified that her husband was going to leave her for a girl half her age.

  Leaning toward the mirror, Leslie turned her face this way and that. No lines, no wrinkles, just pure, smooth skin. Gone were twenty years of damage caused by playing tennis in the sun and sitting by the club pool with the children. Maybe this time around she’d have sense enough to slather on sunscreen.

  “And this girl isn’t afraid of anyone,” she said as she looked at herself. And that thought was a shock to her. When had she become frightened? Had it been when she’d found out that she wasn’t going to be a Great Dancer, in capital letters? Had she become frightened when she’d gone crawling back to Alan, feeling that she was a failure? What had happened to Leslie to change the look that was sparkling in this girl’s eyes?

  When the telephone rang, Leslie jumped and looked about for someone to answer it. But then she remembered that it was her phone and she should answer it.

  “Hello?” she asked tentatively.

  “Leslie? Is that you?”

  It was Alan.

  “Yes,” was all she could manage to say. She’d spent her entire life with him so now the impulse to tell him what had happened to her was strong. But she couldn’t do that. Would she start with how she’d dumped him ten days before the wedding and end with Bambi?

  “You sound odd. You aren’t getting sick, are you?”

  Had he always been so cut-and-dried? Where was the romance? “No,” she said softly as she held the receiver tightly. She was trying to remember exactly what Alan looked like the year before he graduated from college.

  “Well, something’s wrong with you,” he said, sounding annoyed. “I just called to tell you that I’ll pick you up at eight A.M. tomorrow and we’ll drive home together.”

  Leslie knew that Alan’s car was going to break down on the way to her college and that he was going to spend the whole week of spring break trying to get the parts to repair it. And she was going to end up alone at school for that week, dancing alone in the studio, eating alone.

  “Are you there?” he asked, this time sounding almost angry.

  “Yes, I’m here,” Leslie said. “I was just thinking how much I’d like to see you again. What do you want us to do together next week?”

  “Together? Are you kidding? With your mother and mine planning our every minute? We have to do those things that have to be done to get ready for a wedding. You know better than I do what they are.”

  And at thirty-nine years of age I know what a waste of time they are, she thought. It’s what comes after marriage that’s important. Maybe if she and Alan had spent more time with each other, had talked more, then Leslie wouldn’t have run away to New York and—

  “You’re acting very strange,” Alan said. “So I hope you get over it by tomorrow. We have a lot to do this coming week. Mother’s invited some important people to spend next weekend with us, and I think you and I should try to come to some agreement about where we’re going to live.”

  Leslie opened her mouth to tell him that they were going to buy the old Belville place, but she closed it. One thing about Alan: He didn’t change. At twenty he was as bossy as he was at forty.

  On the desk beside the telephone was an envelope of heavy cream-colored paper. Putting the phone to her shoulder, Leslie opened the envelope. In it was an invitation from Halliwell J. Formund IV to spend the coming spring break with him and his family and their other guests at their estate. If she accepted, a car would pick her up tomorrow morning.

  Part of her wanted to tell Alan that she had another invitation for the break, but why burn bridges? Why cause unnecessary hurt?

  “I’ll be ready,” Leslie said into the phone, sounding as sweet as she could manage. “But call me if you have any problems.”

  “What does that mean?” Alan snapped.

  “Nothing. I just meant—Never mind. Forget it. If you call and I’m not here, I’ll be at the studio dancing.”

  “Aren’t you always?” he asked.

  At that Leslie dropped the phone into the cradle. All these years she’d beaten herself up for running away and leaving poor Alan nearly standing at the altar, but now she remembered why she’d done it: He’d been a prig. A full-of-himself, self-satisfied prig.

  But the Alan she’d married was no longer a prig. Bossy, yes. And, yes, maybe even controlling at times. But that Alan had a humility about him . . .

  With wide eyes, Leslie stared, unseeing, at the bulletin board behind the desk. Had she changed him? Had her running off to New York shaken the insufferable attitude she’d just seen but had forgotton about over the years?

  What irony, she thought. All their years of marriage she’d been burdened by this dreadful, dishonorable thing that she believed she’d done to dear, sweet Alan, and now she was seeing that maybe her jilting him was the best thing she could have done.

  “Hmmm,” she said,