Summer People by Elin Hilderbrand

even showed her face,” Beth said.
    “I’d like to meet her sometime,” David said. “Is she beautiful like her mother?”
    “She’s beautiful like Winnie,” Beth said. “But she’s very sad. I don’t know what to do to help her.”
    “She needs time,” David said. He lowered his voice. “What’s the deal with Marcus? I asked him if he was a friend of the kids’ from school, and he said no.”
    Beth dropped her head into her hands. “It’s a long story. I don’t want to get into it.”
    David stood up. “Come on. Let’s go out onto the deck.”
    “I don’t think we should.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because,” Beth said. Her voice was louder than she meant it to be, and she noticed a snag in Peyton’s breathing, but then the gentle snoring resumed. “Because,” Beth said again, “I’m drunk and I can’t help the things I’m thinking.”
    “Such as?”
    “Such as, what are you
doing
here?”
    “Aside from drinking myself silly?”
    “Why did I bump into you at the grocery store my first day here? Why did I ask you to dinner? Why did you have my name stuck to your dashboard?”
    David extended his hand. “Let’s go out to the deck. Your grandfather built that deck for nights like this one.”
    Beth rose but she didn’t take David’s hand. Instead she carried her wineglass forward carefully, solemnly, like a chalice. Out onto the deck they went.
    The beach was dark below them. “Should we be worried about the kids?” Beth asked.
    “Garrett seemed trustworthy.”
    “Is Piper trustworthy?”
    “With everyone but me.”
    “She’s a lot angrier about you and Rosie splitting up than you realize.”
    “She’s not angry about us splitting. She’s angry at me, alone, because I won’t give Rosie my blessing.”
    Beth lay back in the chaise lounge and David pulled a chair up next to her. Beth closed her eyes. Six summers she’d spent with this man—from ages sixteen to twenty-one. That last summer was the most magical summer of her life, until it ended. Ended with Beth’s father throwing David out of this house, and Beth watching the whole scene from up in her room, like a princess locked in a tower. She was twenty-one, an adult, with only a year left at Sarah Lawrence; she could have defied her father. That was what David wrote later in the letters that arrived at her college post office box.
You could have defied your father. You could have honored our commitment.
    Beth thought fleetingly of the purple cosmos.
    “I never told my kids about us,” she said. She took a deep breath. “And I never told Arch.”
    “You never told Arch?” David asked.
    “No,” she said, the guilt souring the back of her throat. On top of everything else, the guilt. “I decided to keep that part of my past private. What about your girls?”
    “I’m not sure how much they know. Rosie might have said something. She was always jealous of you, because you were first.”
    “Arch wasn’t jealous of anyone,” Beth said. “He wouldn’t have been jealous of you, even if I had told him the truth. Arch was a man who was perfectly confident in who he was and content with all he’d been given. He never looked sideways, only forward.” Just speaking this way about Arch revived Beth. She sat up. “I’m glad you came tonight, David Ronan,” she said. “It was good to see you. And to meet your girls. They’re beautiful.”
    “Why does it feel like I’m getting thrown out?” David said. He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “The reason why your name was on my dashboard was because I wanted it there.”
    It was chilly out, but Beth flushed. Heat bloomed in her chest. He wanted her name there.
    “Where I could see it.” He let his hand fall onto her thigh, as lightly as a leaf.
    “This is not okay,” she said, lifting his hand. “I’m not yours to touch.”
    “But you were.”
    “Yes, I was. Twenty-five years ago. In the interim, though, I married Arch and had two children and lived a very