Page 6 of The Summer We Started Over

“It’s not physical. It’s…it’s the way I am. I don’t want to be a mother. I would be a terrible mother.” Eddie pulled away from Jeff’s arm. She rose from the bed and hurriedly dressed in the clothes she’d cast off hours before. “I have to go.”

Jeff rose and pulled on his shorts. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m sorry.” Eddie put her hand on the doorknob.

Jeff reached out and clasped her wrist. “Is it the book thing? New York? You don’t want to stay at home with a baby drooling on your shoulder? You want the glitz and speed of the city?”

Eddie hung her head. She closed her eyes. She had told him why she didn’t want to be with him. It was as if he hadn’t heard.

“Yes,” she whispered. “That’s it. That’s the reason. Let me go, Jeff.”

He withdrew his hand. “I’ll drive you back.”

Three days later, a New York contact texted Eddie about a romance writer who needed an assistant. Eddie sent her résumé to Dinah Lavender. She did a long FaceTime interview with the writer. A week later, Eddie left the island and flew to New York and her new life.

—

Standing in Dinah’s Manhattan apartment, Eddie thought of Jeff. They had fallen in love so fast. They’d spent every day and night together as often as they could. They’d been bonded, joined together so completely, as necessary and essential as the shore and the sea. They had wanted to be with each other forever. But Eddie had left, and Jeff knew why. And they both knew she would leave again.

But, Eddie reminded herself, she wasn’t returning to Nantucket because of Jeff. She was going to the island to help her sister.

She had to talk to Dinah.

—

Thais had made a large and complicated dish of chicken pad Thai that evening. Eddie set the table in the small morning room, smoothing out a fresh Irish linen tablecloth, and laying out the Spode Buttercup dinnerware, which seemed to be Dinah’s favorite. She poured white wine into the stemless wineglasses, and set a small pot of yellow primroses in the middle of the table. The room was bright with sun in the morning, but by evening, the light was dimmed, and gentle on the complexion.

Eddie walked down the hall and tapped on the door of Dinah’s study.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Oh, thank God!” Dinah shoved her chair away from her desk so quickly she nearly tipped over. “I’m right where I should be. I know what Ace will be doing tomorrow. Could you research the rarest sports car made in England in the 1960s?”

Eddie walked toward the hall, tapping notes onto her phone as she went.

Dinah wore jeans, sandals, and a Versace shirt with ruffles at the neckline and wrists and gold bangled earrings that swung and shivered with her every move. Her black hair was so thick and heavy that she had to wear three barrettes to hold it up when she wanted it twisted back and out of the way. As she spoke, the ends of the twist waved above her head like black feathers. Sometimes just looking at Dinah could make Eddie motion sick.

Eddie opened the lid on the bowl and ladled the pad Thai onto Dinah’s plate, and then onto hers. As they ate, Eddie asked Dinah about the book she was working on, because Dinah’s mind was always filled with whatever book she was working on. Dinah seemed to believe she was writing a documentary, and she fretted anxiously if a character had to go to jail or give birth to a baby without medical help. Eddie listened, seldom saying a word, but Dinah always thanked her at the end of the meal for helping her sort out some of her characters’ issues.

“Dinah,” Eddie said, after taking her last sip of wine. “I had a call from my sister today. I need to go to Nantucket to help with my father.”

“Is he ill?” Dinah asked, blotting her lips with her linen napkin.

“Not ill, really. He’s depressed. He has been ever since…my mother left.”

“Shame.” Dinah had little interest in the problems of others unlessthey were compelling and explosive enough to give her ideas for her books. “I suppose you could pop up for the weekend.”

“I need to stay longer than that.” Eddie kept her gaze on her employer, an unspoken message that she wasn’t going to back down.

“Oh, dear. How long?”

“At least a month.”

“A month? I can’t do without you for a month!”

“Sure you can, Dinah. We can talk and text and email and I can do everything virtually, the way most things get done these days.”

Dinah’s hands flew to her mouth as if she’d been given a bad medical diagnosis. “But who will I go out to dinner with?”

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