Page 80 of Summer Romance

Ethan covers his face with a pillow. “All those books.”

“It’s a lot. But it’s a lot more for them than it would be for us. Let’s give them two hours of help. I’ll set a timer. And we can come right back here.”

I can tellSandy’s a wreck the minute we walk through the door. And that’s before she starts to cry. “All of these photos. And the letters my dad wrote to her after their first summer together. I could do this for months and not be through it all.”

I give her a hug. “We’re going to help. And you can use my garage for the give-away pile.”

Camille comes out of the bedroom carrying stacks of clothing. “Oh, thank God you’re here.”

“Give-away, right? Take that to my garage.”

“And thank God your garage is so close,” she says. “We only have to move a thousand more loads before this place goes on the market.”

Ethan is in the living room, running his hands over the stone fireplace. “She took really good care of this house,” he says.

Sandy nods. “She thought of her life as a fairy tale. This house was part of the romance, even after my dad was gone.”

“I love that,” he says. He opens a corner cabinet full of books and teacups. “Mind if I go upstairs?”

Sandy nods again. “Knock yourself out. And maybe bring the old coats down from the closet at the top of the stairs?”

Camille is back from my garage, and I start putting boxes together for things they may want to keep. “Let’s call this box ‘treasures.’ We’ll put the love letters and the old photos in here and move it immediately into your car. Then we’ll clear out the books. I suggest you each pick ten, and then we can have Mr. Tripodi from the library come take what he wants. Then tomorrow we’ll tackle the kitchen.”

Ethan comes back down with a pile of coats. “Garage?” he asks. I get the door for him and lead him the ten feet across the lawn. He drops the coats and takes my hand. “So you love me?”

I smile. I am not tired of talking about this. “I do.”

“Like for the rest of the summer? Or longer? Like if you had to guess.”

I put my arms around his waist. I have never felt likethis before and I have never wanted forever more in my life. “Longer.”

“Would it spook you if I moved into that house?”

I check his face to see if he is serious. He’s looking down at me with a certainty that I’m getting used to. Ethan is a person who knows exactly what he wants.

“I would love that,” I say. “I would actually love that.” I cannot stop smiling. Ethan is here, right here.

49

By mid-October, the purchase is complete and Ethan has moved into Phyllis’s house. He’s kept some of her furniture but has made it his own. He sleeps in an upstairs bedroom that faces mine, and to be honest, there’s a lot of sneaking around. He goes up to Devon once a week if he needs to be in court and to check in with the kids and the skate park, and when he comes back it’s as if he’s been away for a month.

Ethan’s devised a system for keeping tabs on Devon. Barb now calls her downstairs neighbor for quick emergencies, but she still calls Ethan a few times a week to talk, which may have been the point all along. He’s hired a guy from the YMCA to manage the skate park and Mort keeps an eye on the kids too. He has a ridiculous text thread with the Red Hot Pokers, which amounts to a bunch of old guys telling him he’s whipped. He still does the legal work for Rose at the animal shelter, and we’re all going up for the dog parade. Barb’s making Ferris a monkey costume. I have concerns.

Ethan’s been learning to garden on YouTube, and with what I remember from Phyllis’s routine we have kept things alive pretty well. Soon we’ll wrap the rosebushes in burlap for the winter. I don’t know why we do this, but it’s what we’ve always done. In the spring we will unwrap them, and they’ll thank us by blooming. We buy dozens of tulip bulbs from the local nursery and lie on a blanket under the weeping willow while my kids plant them around the yard and along the bank of the creek. I have never in my life had so much to look forward to.

The five ofus have been trying to keep the feeling of summer alive by having dinner in my backyard most nights, and Ethan brought over a small fire pit to keep off the chill. Tonight I’ve grilled steaks and asparagus, and the heat coming off the grill helps. The creek is raging with water from a recent storm and the gate on the fence between our houses has come unlatched and is banging in the wind.

“Why do we even need that fence?” asks Greer. She’s cut her hair short in an unexpected burst of confidence. Seventh grade seems to be agreeing with her. She made the school’s modified soccer team, which has had the surprise benefit of the company of a totally different group of girls. I noticed when she sat down that she left her phone inside the house again. It’s been a month since Caroline texted her that she missed her so so much (sad emoji, of course) and asked her to come to a sleepover. That text has been sitting on her phone, un-replied-to, for one solid month. I think Greer is starting to understand the nature of power.

“Let’s get rid of it,” says Iris. “We’d have so much space.”

“And we could see all the way down the creek to Phyllis’s tree,” Cliffy says, and climbs into Ethan’s lap. Ethan lets him cut his steak and catches my eye. I don’t remember when this started happening.

“Fine with me,” I say.

“Let’s do it,” says Ethan. “I love the idea of two houses with one yard.” I love the idea of all of us in one house, but it’s too soon for that. Besides, being in this super-close relationship while also having my own space with my kids feels exactly right.

Ethan’s phone rings, and it’s his parents on FaceTime. “Hi, sweetie,” his mom says. Ethan holds the phone up to me and then to Cliffy on his lap.

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