Read Online The Summer of Good Intentions by Wendy Francis - Free Book Online

on the deck (it had taken years to teach them this, as opposed to flinging their wet suits on the floor). While Maggie started on dinner preparations, Jess swept up the fresh trail of sand that snaked across the living room floor. Sophie and Grace lay on the couch swapping rubber bands for their bracelet looms. Lexie’s head was bent over a Harry Potter novel. And Luke and Teddy were sprawled across the floor, engrossed in their electronic games.
    In the kitchen, Jess found Maggie shucking the corn that she and Tim had picked up from a roadside stand on the drive down. “How can I help?” she asked.
    â€œThere’s not much to do.” Maggie pushed a stray hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Mac’s grilling the fish. If you wanted to make the caprese salad, you could. Stuff’s in the fridge.”
    Jess pulled out the items from the crisper and shut the fridge door with her knee. She set the tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil on the counter and glanced over at her sister, who was dropping the husked corn into boiling water. How did Maggie manage to make everything look so effortless? she wondered. Even in shorts and a T-shirt, her sister was radiant, pulled-together looking. Jess’s hair was full-out frizzy, and she looked exactly how she felt: in desperate need of a shower.
    â€œHere,” Maggie said, handing over a paring knife without looking up. Her sister was also possessed with a preternatural gift for anticipating everyone’s needs before they even knew they needed anything. Sometimes Jess thought the two of them must have had a tug-of-war in utero in which Maggie had whipped her butt, stealing all the good genes. As a teenager, Jess had hated the fact that she was the “ugly twin.” Jess’s hair was a fine, medium brown like Arthur’s, while Maggie’s was wavy and blond. People found it difficult to believe that they were twins (unlike Sophie and Lexie, who were identical, save for a delicate brown birthmark on Sophie’s neck). Whenever anyone mentioned the two in tandem, they would mention Maggie first, and it had been that way since Jess could remember. Maggie and Jess . And so, Jess was accustomed to thinking of herself in this manner, as if an invisible cord stretched between them, Maggie leading the way.
    Gradually, Jess had come to understand that she wasn’t ugly, just not as beautiful as her twin. She would never be as dazzling as Maggie. That was okay, though. She was Teddy and Grace’s mom. She was a high school principal. She was successful by her own lights. She was, apparently, still attractive enough to win a man’s heart. And at the thought of Cole, she felt a splash of guilt wash over her. Was it possible, she wondered as she cut into the tomatoes, that it wasn’t all her fault? If Tim were invested in their marriage, even one cent, would she have let another man kiss her? She laid out the mozzarella, sprinkled the basil, and then drizzled olive oil over the salad. Would she have continued to let him kiss her?
    But she’d kissed Cole back, fair and square. She’d been eager for his visits. Hell, she’d encouraged him, running her hands up and down his back, through his hair in her kitchen while the kids slept upstairs. She shivered, remembering. No, she couldn’t absolve herself. The only thing she’d done right in the whole mess was to break it off.
    â€œFish is ready!” Mac called from the deck, an announcement quickly followed by the scampering of the kids’ feet.
    Jess poured herself a glass of ice water as Maggie plucked the steaming corn from the pot. “Can you grab the butter?” she asked before heading outside with the platter of corn. On the deck, the kids were seated at their own small table, a plastic folding table that she and Maggie had discovered during a Christmas Tree Shops outing several summers ago. The adults were gathered at the main picnic table. Jess