The Summerhouse Read online

  “I want a divorce,” she said, then looked at him in shock. Where had those words come from? Where had the thought come from?

  Alan said nothing, just stared at her in disbelief.

  When Leslie spoke again, she was calm. “I can’t take any more of this. I’m sorry that I jilted you, but I should have been forgiven years ago. I’ve certainly tried to make it up to you over the years. But I can’t take this humiliation any longer. If you want her, you can have her.”

  “Have who?” Alan asked quietly, and she could see that for the first time in many years, she had his full and undivided attention.

  “Bambi!” Leslie spat out the name with all the venom she felt.

  “Bambi?” Alan asked. “You think I’m interested in Bambi?”

  “The entire town knows about you two, so you—”

  She broke off because Alan had smiled—then he began to laugh.

  “Me and Bambi? Is that what you think? Is that why you’ve been so cold to me these last months? Is she the reason you move away from me every time I get near you?”

  She wanted to defend herself, but she knew that she had been cold to him. Every time he’d put out his hand to touch her, she’d thought, How long ago was he touching her?

  Alan sat down on the sofa and a cloud of dust encircled him. Ignoring it, he looked up at Leslie. “I thought maybe you had another man,” he said softly.

  “Me?” she asked in disbelief. “I’m a middle-aged—”

  “You’re as beautiful as the day I married you,” Alan said. “And I hired Bambi to make you jealous. Has it worked?”

  It took Leslie several minutes to realize what he’d just said. “To make me jealous?”

  “There’s always been part of you that I could never reach. You’ve always been so independent. Other wives call their husbands if a mouse runs across the floor, but not my wife. No, my Leslie can handle anything. Look at this place. It was you who rebuilt it. Do you know how I felt seeing you using a power hand saw when I don’t know a blade from a bit? All these years I’ve wanted to make you need me, but I’ve never succeeded. There isn’t anything you can’t do and do perfectly.”

  If she’d thought for a thousand years, she would never had thought that these were problems that Alan had. She sat down on the couch beside him, then waited for the dust to settle. “You weren’t angry that I ran off and left you just days before our wedding?”

  “Hell, no. I mean, yes, I was, but . . .” He turned to look at her. “It made you worth having. If you hadn’t come back to me, I would have been angry, maybe forever, but you did return. And all these years I’ve secretly enjoyed the ribbing about having a wife who was a New York dancer.”

  “I failed at being a dancer. That’s why I returned.”

  Alan took her hand in his. “You’ve never failed at anything in your life. If you think you weren’t as good as the other dancers, it’s because you missed me so much that you wanted to fail so you could come home to me.”

  Leslie knew that there was a ring of truth in his words. Madison had been so homesick that she’d run back to a man who she knew was bad. Had Leslie done the same thing? Had she, too, found an excuse to run back home?

  After she’d left Hal’s family’s estate, she’d gone back to college and she’d danced. And there was part of her mind that had wondered how good the girls in New York were if she was considered not as good.

  And Leslie had spent two weeks with Alan, a much younger Alan than this one, but the same man. And she had felt the same overwhelming love for him that had been in her heart since she’d met him on the playground in the first grade.

  “Alan,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I can paint.”

  “You can do anything.”

  “No. I mean, on paper. Scenes. Actually, I’m good at people. Watercolors, although I’m going to explore some other media.”

  He couldn’t seem to comprehend what she was telling him. “Do you still want a . . . you know?”

  “Do you?”

  “Me?” he asked, shocked. “I never wanted a divorce. I just wanted you back.”

  That’s the way Leslie felt also, that she had been missing for a long time.

  When Alan pulled her into his arms, she began to cry.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “And I love you so much. I always have. Remember? I told you that I would always love you.”

  Yes, she remembered. He’d told her on that first day when they were in the first grade, that he would love her “forever.” She’d just stood there by the swings and stared at that boy she’d never seen before, unable to say anything.

  The memory made her cry harder, and he held her closer; then he was kissing her neck, and his hands were unbuttoning her clothes. And when Joe opened the door, Alan shouted at him to get out.

  It was later, after they’d made love on the floor of the summerhouse, that Leslie said, “Alan, fire Bambi.”

  “Done,” he said; then he began to kiss her neck again.

  Epilogue

  Thirty-two

  THREE YEARS LATER

  MAINE

  Ellie had left Jessie and her son in Bangor as she drove up the coast alone. Jessie hadn’t asked too many questions, but she could tell that he wanted to know why she felt compelled to go back to the place where she’d spent just a weekend years before. “It’s something I need to do,” was all she’d tell him. Something she felt driven to do, she thought, but she didn’t want to go into that.

  She had kissed them both good-bye, then had driven to that town where her life had changed so drastically. But now she’d been in town for three hours and she still hadn’t found the Victorian house of Madame Zoya. She’d asked a waitress who said she’d grown up in the little town, but the girl had only laughed at the idea of a psychic setting up business in town.

  “You mean a palm reader?” the girl had said.

  “She was a bit more than that,” Ellie had answered defensively, but she couldn’t tell this girl what had happened to her any more than she could tell anyone else what had happened. A couple of times in the last years she’d tried to tell Jessie, but she could see that he wasn’t going to believe her, so she’d stopped.

  But in the last six months Ellie had felt an overwhelming urge to return to Maine and see the psychic again. It had taken a while to persuade Jessie and to arrange the trip, but she’d managed it.

  Ellie left the restaurant and tried to remember how she and Leslie and Madison had found the street and the house the first time. Before she’d left home, she’d searched everywhere for Madame Zoya’s card, but she couldn’t find it. She’d e-mailed both Leslie and Madison, but they couldn’t find theirs either. Somehow, Ellie wasn’t surprised.

  She wandered down the main street yet again, looking at all the street signs that branched off, not that there were many, but there was no Everlasting Street. Then, she turned, and there it was.

  Smiling, she turned down the street and the house was at the end, just as it had been before, and the house was still as perfect as it had been the first time she’d seen it. She told herself that she was being ridiculous, but her heart was pounding as she knocked on the door.

  A small, gray-haired lady answered her knock. She was pleasant-looking, but she wasn’t Madame Zoya.

  “You must be wanting to see the house,” the woman said. “We get so many tourists here, and many of them are kind enough to want to tell me how much they admire my house.”

  “No, actually,” Ellie said, “I was hoping to see Madame Zoya.”

  “Oh, my,” the woman said. “That’s a new one on me. Madame what?”

  “Zoya,” Ellie said.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t heard of her.”

  “Have you lived in this house long?”

  The woman smiled. “My father built this house as a wedding present for my mother. I’ve lived in it all my life.”

  “Oh,” Ellie said, feeling deflated. But what had she expected? If a woman who could