That Summer Jennifer Weiner (life changing books to read TXT) 📖

year, and the Rosen family had downsized. Instead of fancy vacations, at the beach or in the mountains, there were long weekends at the Jersey Shore, with Judy sulking for most of their stay, crying when she thought the kids couldn’t hear her, and asking, “What do you mean, it’s all gone? How could you not have saved anything? How could you have let this happen to us?” Her dad ended the lease on his Porsche early, her mom went from a Cadillac to a Toyota, and they’d put the Montclair house on the market—“It’s too big for just the three of us,” her father had said, and Judy had nodded woodenly, swiping at her red-rimmed eyes. On their last night there, Daisy’s mother had been the one with the Pentax, taking pictures of the bay window in the living room, the walk-in pantry and the custom tiled floors in the kitchen, and the in-ground pool in the backyard, walking through the house like a ghost, with her fur coat draped over her nightgown’s shoulders.

Daisy liked to think that if she’d been a bit older, or if her parents had been a little more forthcoming, she would have behaved better. But she’d been fourteen and clueless, and her last conversation with her father had revolved around her insistence that if she didn’t get the pair of cherry-red patent-leather Doc Marten boots, the very ones she’d seen in a Smashing Pumpkins music video, her life would be over. “Sure, Princess,” her dad had said, sounding a little distracted. Later, Daisy would remember the lines around his eyes, the weary slump of his shoulders, but at the time, her only thoughts had been for those red boots. “I’ll be home for dinner, and I’ll bring you those shoes,” were the last words her father had spoken to her as he’d passed through the kitchen on his way out the door on Monday morning. Daisy would have given a lot—years off her life, the use of her right hand—to have told him that she loved him, instead of saying what she had said, which was, “They’re not shoes, Daddy, they’re boots, and if you get the wrong ones you’ll just have to return them.”

They’d heard the front door closing, the sound of her dad starting his car. Then, an instant later, they’d heard the crash. Her mother ran out of the house. Daisy had gone to the window and seen her father’s car, its rear end crumpled against a car parked across the street, with her father slumped over the wheel. Her mom had screamed “Call 911!” and Daisy had raced across the kitchen for the cordless phone. Too late. Her father had been dead before the ambulance had arrived.

At the house in Montclair, Daisy’s mother had a quarter-acre patch in the backyard where she grew vegetables and flowers. From spring through summer and into the early fall, that was where she spent most of her free time, tilling the soil, planting and weeding and watering, hand-pollinating eggplants with a tiny paintbrush, or sprinkling ground-up bone meal on her roses and zinnias, to keep the ants away. Daisy would help her to put up the vegetables she’d harvested, turning cucumbers into pickles and tomatoes into marinara sauce.

After Jack Rosen died, the house was sold—quickly, and, Daisy gleaned, for not as much money as Judy might have hoped. Daisy and her mom had moved out of Montclair and into the two-bedroom apartment in West Orange. There was no garden, no yard, no outdoor space at all, just a little strip of concrete balcony with a waist-high metal railing. Daisy’s mom had filled every inch of it with pots and hanging baskets. She’d grown what she could, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing had been the same. There wasn’t money to send her back to summer camp, and when she’d started at her new high school, she hadn’t let anyone get too close. She’d worked hard to earn good grades, knowing she’d need assistance for college, and once she’d made it to Rutgers, she’d worked two jobs all year long, while maintaining the GPA that her scholarship required. Then, the summer after her junior year, she’d met Hal, and then Beatrice had come along. And then there’d been Hannah, the one friend she’d made, and kept, until Hannah had died.

Maybe she’d gotten out of the habit of friendship, she thought, as the rhythm of the train’s motion drew her down toward sleep. Maybe this stranger, the other Diana, would be a chance for her to try again.

4 Daisy

On their usual trips to New York City, the Shoemakers stayed at a hotel on Central Park South. One of Hal’s old Emlen classmates was a national manager for the hotel chain that owned it. Usually they got upgraded, and there was always a basket of fruit and a bottle of wine, with a note welcoming them back, waiting in their room when they arrived. Just one of the perks of being an Emlen man, Hal would say, as if Daisy needed to be reminded of how the world’s doors swung open for Emlen men, in ways that were completely legal but still didn’t seem entirely fair. An Emlen man, Hal’s guidance counselor, had written Hal’s letter of recommendation to the Emlen man who ran the admissions department at Dartmouth, and Hal had gotten in. A different Emlen man had recommended Hal to the alumnus who was dean of Yale Law, and Hal had gotten in there, too. While he was at law school, an Emlen man had hired Hal as a summer associate at Lewis, Dommel, and Fenick in Philadelphia. Hal had gone to work there when he’d graduated.

Daisy had her own thoughts about Emlen, few of which she’d shared with Hal. She wasn’t quite sure how she could begin. She could see all the privileges that Hal enjoyed, and why he would want his daughter to be able