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

spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say. You’re too good to me. I don’t deserve this.”

He’d shrugged, still smiling. His beard was completely white by then, but his skin was still the same smooth golden-brown, with his gold glasses twinkling against it. “Stop your sobbing.” He’d reached for the box of Kleenex on his desk, the one he kept there for servers who’d come in crying about bad breakups or families who didn’t want them, and handed it to Diana. “Go home, talk it over with that man of yours, and give me an answer in the morning.”

She promised she would, knowing, of course, that the answer would be yes. And so, after all her years waitressing, Diana found herself the owner of a restaurant.

Sometimes, over the years, Diana would wake up, her nightgown soaked in sweat, her heart galloping, the cloying taste of peaches in her mouth and, in her ears, the sound of her hair swishing against the sand. Sometimes she’d turn away from Michael when they were in bed together. Sometimes, when they were making love, some sound or gesture would take her outside of herself. She’d find herself floating in the air, looking down, like she was watching a stranger moving on the bed. Sometimes, the sorrow of the road not taken would overwhelm her. Her sisters would visit with their children, or she’d talk with her nieces on the phone—about friends, about music, about picking a college or breaking up with a boyfriend—and Diana would think of the babies that she’d never have, or she’d glimpse a mother and daughter, in the supermarket or on the beach, sometimes squabbling, sometimes just sitting on the sand together, and the sadness would descend like a crushing weight until she could barely breathe.

When that happened, she would go to Michael, and let him hold her, letting his love, and his body, anchor her and keep her in place as she tried to concentrate on something real: the feeling of the sheets against her bare feet. The smell of the cottage: woodsmoke and salt air. The sound of Pedro, on his dog bed in the corner, licking sand from his paws after a walk on the beach.

Those instances became less frequent as the years went by, and they didn’t hurt as much. Diana could have spent the rest of her life content, with just those episodes, and those questions, to remind her of what she’d survived and what she’d done. She could have lived like Eve in the garden, ignoring the snake, avoiding the apple tree. And then, one day, the apple tree found her.

She supposed, looking back, it had been building all spring and summer, the months of #MeToo, as more and more men, increasingly prominent, were accused of crimes against women. A movie producer was said to have forced actresses to perform sexual acts. A newscaster was accused of rape, and another one of exposing himself to young female colleagues, calling them to his house and then greeting them naked. Editors and authors, musicians and politicians, the great and the good, one after another after another as the months went on. Diana watched it all, wondering if the boys who’d harmed her—men now—were watching, if they felt guilt or complicity, if they even recognized that they’d done anything wrong.

And then came a bright October Saturday. Michael was closing up clients’ houses for the winter, and Diana, dressed in a pair of paint-spattered overalls and a boiled-wool jacket, had tagged along. She wandered through the kitchens and the living rooms and powder rooms of the Springer house and the Killian house, until they arrived at Michael’s last stop, a house where Diana had never been, a modern, boxy, cedar-shingled place on the top of a dune. Michael was in the master bedroom, making sure that all the sliding doors were locked. Diana went across the hall, to a guest room decorated in a nautical theme. The two twin beds were covered in duvets with a sailboat print; a framed woodcut of a blue whale hung on the wall. Beneath it was a bookcase full of John Grisham paperbacks and collections of crossword puzzles. On top of it was a framed photograph, a middle-aged man squinting into the sunshine, with one arm around a woman’s waist and the other slung over a young girl’s shoulders.

Diana glanced at the picture, turned away, then turned back and felt her heart stop beating. She picked it up and looked more closely, ignoring the girl and the woman, her eyes only on the man. His brown hair was graying, but it was still curly. The shape of his nose and his jaw were all familiar. She recognized his smile, as he grinned into the sun, a man without a care in the world.

Diana felt like she’d been dropped from a great height. She collapsed backward onto the bed like a pricked balloon, holding the picture facedown in her lap. She was still sitting there when Michael found her.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Didn’t you hear me?”

She looked up at him wordlessly and handed him the picture. “This guy,” she said, in a toneless voice that didn’t sound like her own.

“What? What about him?”

Diana got to her feet. “That’s Poe,” she said. “That’s the guy from that summer. The guy who raped me.”

Michael stared at her, face slack and startled, hands hanging by his sides. “That’s him!” Diana screamed. She jumped to her feet, stalking toward her husband. “Whose house is this? Do you know his name? Did you know that he’s been here this whole entire time?”

She felt Michael’s hands on her shoulders; heard his voice coming from what sounded like very far away. When he tried to pull her against him, Diana shoved him back, hard.

“What’s his name?” she asked again.

Michael pulled off his baseball cap and raked his hands through his hair. “The man who owns the house is Vernon Shoemaker,” he said. His voice was low, and steady, maddeningly