The Summerhouse Read online

  “Did you say that there was a court stenographer there?”

  “Yes. In a way, everything was being done legally.”

  “I take it the money didn’t go to the campaign fund?”

  “No. And Jessie knew that it wouldn’t. Since everything was so well documented, it was an easy matter to compare dates of when the hundred and fifty was given to the judge and see that he never deposited it.”

  “And Jessie got this information?” Leslie asked, eyes wide.

  “Yes, and Jessie used it to change everything. On the day that I was to appear in court, Jessie wrote a note—and he still won’t tell me what he wrote—and had it delivered to the judge in his chambers. Ten minutes later, the judge asked to see Jessie. An hour later, Jessie walked out and we went into the courtroom.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Leaning back on her arms, Ellie smiled, closing her eyes for a moment in delicious memory. “You should have seen Martin’s face! When we walked into the courtroom, he was smug, smirking at me, knowing that he was going to be given one hundred percent control of all my books—or else I was going to agree to anything to retain control. But three hours later, he walked out with a face black with rage. Everything had been split fifty-fifty, as it should have been.”

  “And here’s an irony. Since Martin had spent most of what I’d earned on what he told the judge was his own ‘personal property,’ in the end, he owed me money.”

  “And what about your house and your books?”

  “The house was sold and I was given half the proceeds. And there was never any question that he’d be given control of my books, or that he’d receive any money that I would earn in the future.”

  “This time, he didn’t get the house and you the payments.”

  “No!”

  When Leslie didn’t say anything more, Ellie stood up and yawned. “So that’s it. I finally found out why Martin was believed and I wasn’t.”

  “And it’s freed you, hasn’t it?” Leslie said, standing also.

  “Yes. It never was the money; it was the injustice that broke me.”

  On impulse, Leslie hugged Ellie, then pulled away. “So what happened to Martin?”

  “Bankruptcy. And he had to go to work,” Ellie said with a smile.

  “Work? Support himself?” Leslie said, then they both laughed. “What happened to the money he turned over to his friend?”

  Ellie smiled. “Jessie figured out that Martin’s lawyer probably knew where that was so during the lunch break, he had a talk with the lawyer. After lunch Martin’s lawyer submitted a copy of a bank statement to the court showing that Martin had quite a bit hidden away so I was awarded half of it.”

  For a moment Ellie closed her eyes, then opened them and looked at Leslie. “The first time around I had all that money taken away from me, but I learned that I could do without it. And the second time the money seemed somehow dirty to me. I didn’t want to touch it. I gave every penny of it to help abused children.”

  For a moment the two women were silent, then they smiled at each other, then they laughed. Then, as though they’d been cued, they once again did the little dance that they had performed in the restaurant. And when they finally went to bed, they were still laughing.

  And now Ellie was flying home to Woody’s ranch, where they now lived, home to her husband, Jessie, and to her toddler son, a child she had memories of but whom she’d never seen in person, the idea of which made her laugh. She’d purchased three nylon duffle bags to carry all the toys and clothes that she was taking back with her as gifts to Jessie and Nate, Valerie and Woody, and their son, Mark.

  Keeping her eyes closed, she smiled in happiness.

  Then, in the next moment, her eyes flew open. What if she wrote a story about—

  Ten minutes later, she was writing the plot to a new novel fast and furiously.

  Thirty-one

  When Leslie entered her house, she stood in the entrance and looked into the living room with new eyes—and she saw many things that she didn’t like. How pretentious Alan’s untouchable antiques looked! He had made what should have been a comfortable family room into a room that one could only admire, certainly not use.

  “Put them there,” she said to the man who was setting her luggage and shopping bags on the floor of the entrance hall. He was the same man who had driven her to the airport, the man who’d flirted with her a bit. She’d been flattered then, but now she felt that he’d just been trying for a larger tip. But, oddly enough, on this second trip, he’d been looking at Leslie as though he really was interested in her. And she understood why.

  There was a woman at her church who wasn’t especially pretty and her figure wasn’t nearly as good as Leslie’s, but all the men watched her wherever she went. Of course she inspired a great deal of gossip and jealousy among the women, but Leslie had always wondered what it was about the woman that made men look at her. She’d asked Alan.

  “I don’t know,” he’d said in that way that lets a woman know that he doesn’t want to analyze something. “It’s as though she expects to be looked at, so she is.”

  At the time, Leslie hadn’t understood that, but now she did. Just days ago she’d been a girl again, with a girl’s body, and she’d remembered what it felt like to be desirable.

  Had she punished herself all these years for what she believed she’d done to the man she loved? Or had she backed down in every argument because she had decided that she was a failure?

  Whatever the problem had been, right now, as she entered the house, she knew that, inside, she was a different woman. “Thanks,” she said to the driver, then handed him a ten.

  “Thank you,” he said, then gave her a look that let her know that he was available for further contact.

  “Hi, Mom,” Rebecca said as she came down the stairs, walking past the luggage and many bags at Leslie’s feet. “You forgot to hand-wash my yellow sweater before you left, so I had to send it to the cleaner’s. Dad’s going to be mad about the expense.” With that she sailed past her mother and went toward the kitchen.

  For a moment Leslie stared after her daughter. Before her trip to Maine, she would have whined to her daughter that she could have washed her own sweater, but now Leslie felt no such compulsion to say such a thing to her daughter.

  Alan came in from the garden. He was wearing perfectly pressed trousers and a crisply ironed shirt. He barely glanced at his wife. “I thought you weren’t going to return until tomorrow,” he said as he looked through a stack of mail on the kitchen table. “You girls have a fight?” he asked, chuckling at his own joke.

  He picked up a couple of envelopes, and as he walked past Leslie, he gave her an absentminded kiss on the cheek, then started up the stairs. He still hadn’t actually looked at her. “I’m going out in about an hour,” he said. “Bambi and I have to see a client.” At the top of the stairs, he turned into their bedroom.

  In the next minute, Joe came down the stairs. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “Glad you’re back.”

  At that Leslie smiled, but then Joe told her he was hungry. “When’s dinner?” he asked as he went out the front door.

  Leslie stood still for a moment. How long had her family been like this? she wondered. When had they become a bunch of strangers living in the same house, with each person caring only about his or her own needs and no one else’s?

  She went into the kitchen, thinking that Rebecca would be there, but the room was empty.

  “I don’t like this room,” she said aloud. It had cost the earth, but she still didn’t like it.

  Going to the sink she filled the kettle with water and put it on to boil.

  Isn’t this where I came in? she thought. Isn’t this what I was doing the last time I was in this house?

  The water came to a boil and she made herself a cup of tea, then she stood at the window and looked out at the old summerhouse in the back. And as she looked at it, she remembered Millie Formund’s summerhouse. And Leslie remembered what