Read Online Summer People by Elin Hilderbrand - Free Book Online Page A

into his van: it was messy with clipboards and newspapers and a couple of wadded-up bags from Henry’s. He was listening to NPR. Then Beth caught sight of something on the dashboard—a yellow stick-’em on which a single word was written “Beth.” Her name was stuck to his dashboard right where he could see it. Her name.
    “Rosie’s not coming to dinner,” David said.
    As Beth suspected. A host of indignations rose in her chest: Rosie was being childish, jealous, unreasonable. But she said, simply, “Oh?”
    David turned down the radio and squinted out the windshield. His sunglasses hung around his neck on a Croakie. He wore a blue chambray shirt and navy blue shorts, the same black flip-flops. Beth was amazed at how clean he looked even though he was in the painting business. He was the owner, of course; Beth was pretty sure he didn’t go near any actual paint.
    “Rosie left,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Rosie left. She left me and the girls.”
    Beth pushed the lock button of David’s door down, then pulled it back up again. She heard an approaching engine and saw a car coming toward them.
    “Oh, shit,” she said.
    The other car slowed to a stop, waiting for Beth to move, but she could do nothing more than grind the soles of her Nikes into the dirt and will the road to swallow her up. She should never have asked David for dinner. She should have let him go on his merry way and forgotten all about him. She should have kept him safely in her past where he belonged—yet now, here he was, most definitely occupying her present. Right now—and tonight, without a wife.
    “Shit,” Beth said again. The driver of the other car hit his horn then shrugged at Beth as if to say,
What, exactly, would you like me to do?
    “Will you get in?” David said. “Please? So we can talk?”
    “Get into your van?” She tried to swallow but the inside of her mouth was like crumbling plaster. “Don’t you have work?”
    “Work can wait. Hop in.”
    Beth saw she had no choice. She ran around and climbed in the passenger side. She discovered a bottle of water hidden underneath
The Inquirer & Mirror.
This was a very small positive.
    “Mind if I have a swig?” she asked. “I’m dying of thirst.” “Help yourself.” David said. “Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.” He started to drive. “Shall we go to your house?”
    “No,” Beth said. “No, no. Let’s … well, let’s drive around or park somewhere.” She was sorry as soon as she said “park somewhere,” because it brought back memories of when she and David had parked at the beach right up the road and made love in the sand. “Let’s drive around.”
    He stepped on the gas and Beth appreciated the cool wind through her window. She finished the entire bottle of water, trying not to panic. Trying not to think of Garrett. Trying not to bombard David with questions, the most obvious being,
Why didn’t you just tell me at the store?
    “So,” David said.
    “So,” Beth said. “So Rosie left. Are you going to tell me what happened?”
    “She moved to the Cape after Christmas. She said the island was suffocating her. It was too small, too limited, and suddenly after eighteen years of living here, not at all what she wanted. And she said I was emotionally cruel.”
    “Emotionally cruel?”
    “That’s what she said.”
    “What about the girls?”
    “Rosie didn’t want to take the girls. She said they were happy in school and that she could be an equally effective mother from the Cape. If not more so.” David spoke the words like a robot, like he’d committed them to memory then spoken them on a hundred separate occasions. “She rented a house in Wellfleet, which is to say,
I
rented a house, and she started a catering company, which is to say,
I
started the catering company, and I fly the girls over whenever their hearts desire. The three of them have a fine time, shopping and going to movies and spending my money in any other way they can