The Summerhouse

  “Yes!” Leslie and Ellie again said in unison.

  “He called me in New York not long after I got there and told me that he’d been seriously injured by a car running over him. He was a mess, both mentally and physically. He told me he needed me and he begged me to return home to help him. He said that since I’d nursed my mother, I knew all that I needed to know, and that I was the only one on earth who could help him.”

  “And what did you say?” Leslie asked.

  When Madison looked up, there was a bit of a grimace on her face. “You know, to this day, I still feel a bit guilty about what I did to him. Now that I’m older I realize how much pain he must have been in, but at the time, all I could think of was the way he’d dumped me after all I’d done for him. I’m afraid that I wasn’t very sympathetic to his plight. I told him . . .”

  Madison had a guilty look on her face. “I told him that his family could afford to hire the best and that I wasn’t going to be his free nurse. Pretty callous of me, wasn’t it?”

  When Madison saw the way that Leslie and Ellie looked at each other, and saw the joy that lit up their faces, she glared at them. “If you two start dancing again, I swear I’ll walk out of here. One time was interesting, but two would be embarrassing.”

  “We’ll restrain ourselves,” Leslie said.

  Smiling, Ellie said, “So what happened to good ol’ Roger?”

  “Mmmm,” Madison said. “That’s where I do feel guilty. He didn’t get the care that he needed after the accident. But, worse, he had been misdiagnosed. Right after the accident, he was told that he would never walk again, and it seems that no one questioned that diagnosis.”

  “You mean that today he’s still in a wheelchair?” Ellie asked.

  “Yes. It was awful, really. His parents always were the coldest people in the world, and I think that they were embarrassed by their imperfect son, so they put him on the second floor of their house and left him there. He had a male nurse to tend to his basic needs, but no one ever questioned the original diagnosis. And no one ever gave him a MRI after his injuries had healed enough to see that the lesion had not been complete, as they’d originally thought.”

  Madison paused for a moment. “As I told you, for a while after his call, Roger and I exchanged a few letters, but I think his parents discouraged the correspondence, as they always did think I was of a lower class than their son. Anyway, Roger never recovered from his injuries. His parents died in a boating accident years ago, and Roger inherited their house and lots of money. But it hasn’t made him happy. He’s been married three or four times—I don’t remember which—and each divorce has made him a great deal poorer.

  “I know so much about him because three times a week he travels the distance to our clinic. I was the one who saw that his spinal cord had not been severed, as he’d been told. We’ve worked hard on his rehabilitation, but . . .”

  Madison raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “The truth is that Roger’s heart isn’t into the work that it would take to make him walk again. He needs someone to push him and beg him and . . . I guess he needs someone to make him believe that he’s once again the captain of the football team and the most popular boy in school. But no one can give that to him. It’s too late.”

  For a moment, Madison looked angry. “Truthfully, it’s all such a shame! And such a waste. If his parents hadn’t been so cheap years ago and had shelled out for proper therapy, Roger might have recovered. And who knows what he could have been?”

  At that Leslie and Ellie looked at each other.

  “Yeah, who knows?” Ellie said. “Roger was such a nice guy, wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t think you should judge him just by what he did to me,” Madison said. “Sometimes I’ve wondered what would have happened to me if I’d returned to him that time when he called and—”

  “No!” Ellie half shouted, then looked at the table next to them and lowered her voice. “You did the right thing by not going back to him.”

  “Of course I did,” Madison said, frowning. “But I still feel that I owe him. If he hadn’t dumped me, the town wouldn’t have sent me to New York. And if it hadn’t been for Roger’s letters, I wouldn’t have applied at Columbia. And even after I was introduced to Thomas by Dorothy, if it hadn’t been for his brother knowing Roger, Thomas and I might not have come to know each other because . . .” Madison smiled. “Well, Thomas is from a rich family, and let’s just say that he’s a bit leery of pretty girls who are friendly to him. Thomas can be a bit intimidating.”

  “But not to you,” Leslie said softly.

  “No, not to me. I seemed to understand Thomas from the moment I met him. He and I—” Madison broke off because she could tell her story but she didn’t want anyone to see how deeply she felt about her husband, her children, her work, and about her life in general.

  “You know something,” Madison said softly. “I’m happy. I know it’s an old-fashioned way of thinking, but I’m happy. I have family and friends, and I have my work. My life isn’t exciting; in fact, it’s very ordinary. We have hot dogs on the Fourth of July and I go out trick-or-treating with my children, but I enjoy it. Sometimes people see photos of me, especially the one with the snake, and they can’t believe that I gave up a chance to be a ‘supermodel’ and lead a life of flying to Rome for the weekend for running a clinic in tiny, boring Erskine. But . . .”

  Emotion seemed to overcome her, and for a moment she looked away to calm herself. “What about you two?” she asked when she turned back.

  “Very happy,” Ellie said, as her mind was beginning to clear.

  Both women looked at Leslie in question.

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I have some things to do with my life, and since I haven’t yet done them, I don’t know how they’re going to work. Ask me in six months.”

  “What about—” Ellie began, wanting to hear everything that Leslie had to say.

  But Leslie cut her off as she stood up. “I don’t know about you two but I am suddenly very tired. I think I’d like to go back to the house and take a nap.”

  “Sounds great to me,” Madison said.

  “Me too,” Ellie added, but as she said it, she thought, We’re all lying. We have things we want to do in private. As for her, she wanted to get to the nearest stationer’s store and buy a pen and paper because Madison’s story had given her an idea for a book. She wanted to write something about how we all touch each other’s lives, about—

  “Ready?” Leslie said, and Ellie realized that she’d been standing at the table, lost in a daydream.

  Madison walked out first, and Leslie caught up to Ellie. “I want to hear what happened between you and your ex-husband,” Leslie said quietly. “What happened in the courtroom?”

  “Would it make sense if I said that I need to sit down and remember it?”

  “Perfectly,” Leslie said. “I have to think about what happened to me too.”

  Ellie looked at Leslie in question. “You went back, but you decided to change nothing. Did your almost-president turn out to be a jerk? Tell me so when he comes up for election, I won’t vote for him.”

  She’d meant her words as a joke, but Leslie didn’t smile. “Actually, he was lovely. I think he is probably nicer than my husband is, maybe smarter, definitely more considerate, and certainly kinder.”

  “Yeow!” Ellie said. “And you left him behind?”

  Leslie took her time in answering. “Would you understand if I said that I love my family very much, but at the same time I am fed up with them?”

  “Yes, I do understand. So what do you plan to do about it?”

  Leslie smiled. “I have no idea at all. None.”

  Ellie laughed. “Okay, so now we’re all going to pretend to take naps, but instead we’re all going to do things in private. Madison is going to call her family and gush to them about how much she loves and misses them, and you’re going to—?”

  “I’m going to take a long walk an
d see if I can figure out what to do with my life as it is. No more withdrawing into a fantasy about a boy from college and what-could-have-been. From now on I live in the present.” Leslie smiled. “And you are . . . let me guess . . .” In an exaggerated gesture, Leslie put her fingertips to her temple as though she were thinking. “You’re going to write down all the things you thought about while Madison was talking, and you’re going to try to put her story into a book—without getting yourself sued, that is.”

  Ellie laughed. “I’m that transparent, am I?”

  “Yes and no,” Leslie said seriously. “I think I’ve finally learned how important self is to a person, and with you, those stories inside your head are what makes you you. Take them away and you have—”

  “One fat, depressed woman,” Ellie said.

  “Right,” Leslie answered. “Speaking of which, isn’t that a nice little clothing store on the corner? Before you leave, I think you should pay them a visit. You don’t want to go home to Jessie and Nate wearing clothes twice as big as you need, do you?”

  At the thought of having her own body back, Ellie had to turn away for a moment. But it wasn’t just having her body back. Thanks to Jessie, she now had her self-esteem back.

  When they reached the house, Madison ran inside, obviously eager to get to a telephone. But neither Leslie nor Ellie went inside. Turning back toward town, Ellie went in search of a stationer’s store, and Leslie kept walking down the road, her mind already faraway.

  Thirty

  Ellie leaned back against the headrest of the plane’s seat and smiled to herself. She was back where she’d started, but this time her life was, oh, so very different. It was nearly two days since she’d returned from . . . What? She still didn’t know what to call it. Time travel? A sort of mega-sized makeover?

  Whatever it was, it had certainly changed her life. She still remembered what she’d been put through the first time with her divorce from Martin, but now that time seemed like a story that she’d read—an impossible story that no one would believe, but certainly not reality.

  Now, closing her eyes, she again replayed the story as it had happened the second time around. Last night she and Leslie had stayed up late, and Ellie had told Leslie all of it.

  “It was Jessie who figured everything out,” Ellie said, smiling in memory. “Before I could love Jessie, I had to let go of my anger and my desperate need for what I thought of as ‘justice.’ Once I did that, I could answer the questions that Jessie asked me. And he . . .”

  “What?” Leslie asked.

  “I didn’t realize it until later, but no one had ever looked at my story of the divorce with any logic. I think maybe my self-pity came through so strongly that no one could see anything but what I saw. And what I saw wasn’t the truth.”

  “So what happened this time?” Leslie asked softly as she glanced toward Madison’s closed door. They had been careful not to say anything that would make Madison ask what they were talking about. They didn’t want Madison to be told anything about her previous life.

  “Jessie,” Ellie said simply. “I helped him and he helped me.”

  “Don’t tell me you solved a murder mystery?” Leslie asked in horror. “You didn’t endanger your life, did you?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I think I . . . we . . . did. Jessie said that we could do things that the police couldn’t, such as put a tap on Sharon’s telephone. Actually, it turned out that only I could do that because Jessie is a lawyer.”

  “I thought . . .” Leslie said, then trailed off.

  “That he lived off his billionaire brother?” Ellie asked, smiling. “Me too. But I found out that Jessie had left a lucrative practice in L.A. to work for his brother, and, well . . .” Ellie looked down at her shoe for a moment, then back at Leslie. “Let’s just say that Jessie may not be a billionaire, but he’s not poor, either. And I certainly don’t have to worry that he’s after the paltry bit of money that I earn.”

  At that, Leslie squeezed Ellie’s hand and smiled at her. “I’m glad for you. So you illegally bugged a woman’s telephone, then what?”

  “We found out that she had a lover and that all Lew’s money was inherited from his father, which meant that if they’d divorced, it would have been his sole property, not community property.”

  “And she wouldn’t have received any of it,” Leslie said.

  “Right. But she was his heir, so if Lew died, Sharon got everything. That was her motive, but we had to look for proof that she’d done it.” For a moment Ellie’s mouth twisted in disgust. “I didn’t like what Jessie did, but it worked, so everything turned out all right.”

  Watching her, Leslie thought for a moment. “He made a play for her. She probably knew that Jessie was rich, so if she’d kill for money, she’d certainly marry for it.”

  “Exactly,” Ellie said. “Jessie wanted to stage something like out of an Agatha Christie novel, where he gets her to confess while the police are hiding in the next room. I told him that that wasn’t very original, but he said that he wasn’t writing a book and trying to get good reviews, that he was just trying to catch a killer.”

  “Seems he already knows you,” Leslie said, smiling.

  “Not as well as he thinks,” Ellie answered. “Anyway, it worked. Two policemen and I hid behind a door while Jessie enticed Sharon into his house with a bottle of champagne for her and scotch for him; then he came on to her hard. However, the scotch he was drinking was actually tea. When she was getting tipsy, he shocked me by telling her how much he hated his rich brother. Within minutes, Sharon started planning ways for Jessie to murder Woody. She said it was easy and that the local police were too stupid to be able to tell a murder from a suicide. A few more glasses of champagne and she was bragging to Jessie how she’d sneaked up behind Lew and started kissing him. She said that he was so glad that she was no longer angry at him that he paid no attention when she wrapped his fingers around the handle of a forty-five.”

  “I can believe that,” Leslie said. “When it comes to sex, men seem to have a one-track mind.”

  “Poor Lew did. She shot him, then placed the blame on Bowie, who she knew was always skulking around outside their house. But Sharon confided to Jessie that she’d encouraged Bowie by undressing in front of an open window every night at the same time so Bowie would know when to appear to see the show.”

  “Wow! So you and Jessie solved the murder. But what about your divorce?”

  Ellie took a deep breath. “Through all of this I knew that the court date was fast approaching, but there was no way that I was going to leave Jessie alone.”

  “Certainly not! After all, didn’t you say that Sharon was beautiful?”

  “With five pounds of makeup on, she looked all right, but she was no Madison, that’s for sure.” Ellie’s words were laced with venom.

  Looking down, Leslie smiled. “So did you miss the court date?”

  “I hadn’t realized it, but all through the days we spent trying to sort out Lew’s death, Jessie had been asking me questions about the divorce. I had to fudge a bit about times and such because the things I knew about hadn’t really happened yet. I did not want to get into telling him about Madame Zoya.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Leslie said. “But, in the end, you told him everything?”

  “Pretty much. He was a good listener, and I was hungry to talk to someone, especially a lawyer. I know that what was done to me was morally wrong, but I’ve always felt that, legally, it was also wrong.”

  Pausing, Ellie smiled. “Sharon was carted off to jail the night before I was to appear in court, and the next morning Jessie flew me down to L.A.—in his own plane, I might add—but we didn’t go into the courtroom. You see, I’d been looking at everything wrong. I thought that everyone had believed Martin and that’s why he was to be given everything. What has plagued me for these years is that my character was so maligned. But Jessie figured out the truth.”

  “Tell me,” Leslie said breathlessly. r />
  “You remember that I told you Martin had taken a lot of money from me over the years?”

  “Yes,” Leslie said. “Did you find the money?”

  “Yes.” Ellie paused to run her hand across her face. “When I look back on it all, I still can’t believe that I was so naive about everything. Me! Who writes murder mysteries!

  “So, anyway, what Jessie surmised and later proved was that Martin, on his attorney’s advice, gave that money to a friend of his to hold for him. I told you that it wasn’t illegal for him to take that money from me, as, by law, it was considered as much his as mine. But, during the divorce, Martin had to sign a document swearing that he had no hidden money, so his attorney told him to hand the money over to someone else before he signed the paper.

  “But even though Martin didn’t have this money in his possession, he still had control of it and he used a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of it to bribe the judge.

  “What?” Leslie said, eyes wide. “Martin bribed the judge?”

  “Yes and no,” Ellie said. “It was Jessie who figured it out. He was puzzled by what I told him. He said that no one believed anyone in a courtroom and no one cared whether or not my ex had been the so-called manager of my career. Jessie asked me hundreds of questions, and I can tell you that it was difficult for him to get answers out of me because I could never get past the idea that the judge believed Martin.”

  “But it was only money,” Leslie said.

  “Yes. It was only money. After I went back to court, this time with Jessie, he told me what had happened. Martin had gone into private chambers with the judge and a court stenographer, and told the judge that he was going to give a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to his reelection fund. After Martin made this offer, the judge told Martin that he was sure that Martin had been the man behind my career and the judge didn’t see why a man of Martin’s obvious talents shouldn’t be allowed to continue to control my books forever. After all, the judge said that he wasn’t at all sure that I was a sane woman.”