Return to Summerhouse

  “I went back to two weeks before the crash,” Zoë said, “and everything was fine. No one hated me. No one paid much attention to me. I was just an ordinary girl in an ordinary town where nothing much happened. I’d graduated from high school but I had no plans to go to college.”

  “With your talent?” Faith asked. “Were you crazy?”

  “That’s the odd thing,” Zoë said. “I was so ordinary that I didn’t know I had any talent. You guys may be too old to remember this, but funding has been cut in schools so much that we don’t have art classes anymore. My teachers used to tell us to draw a farm and we did. No one ever told me to draw the faces of my classmates, so I never tried. And at home I wasn’t exactly surrounded by creative people.”

  She ate a bite of food. “I have to backtrack a bit. When my parents died, I was just thirteen, so I was sent to live with my sister. She was ten years older than me, married and had two kids, so she didn’t exactly welcome me. All she talked about my last year of school was how glad she was going to be when I could get a job and help with the expenses.”

  “Nice woman,” Amy said.

  Zoë said nothing for a while. “Back then, while I was in it, I didn’t see how bad it was. When I went back, knowing what I do now, I saw how truly horrible it was. My sister had been the prettiest girl in the school. She was on the local floats and she won every beauty contest there was. The whole town celebrated when she married her male counterpart, the best-looking guy, captain of the football team, all that.”

  “The golden couple,” Amy said, and looked away. It sounded like her and Stephen. “But the real world is different, isn’t it?”

  “Right,” Zoë said. “She was pregnant when she got married and he got a job selling used cars. It’s amazing how soon that high school glory can disappear. When I went back, my sister looked old and haggard.”

  She looked down at her plate. “Well, maybe she didn’t look too old or too haggard.”

  “What did you do about the car crash?” Faith asked.

  “You once told me that if you had it to do over again, you’d just leave town,” Amy said.

  “That’s what I did,” Zoë said. “I figured that whatever was going to happen would happen whether I was there or not, and I wanted no part of it. I had access to a hundred and fifty dollars, so I took it, a few pieces of clothing, and I left town without saying a word to anyone. I went to New York.”

  “And it’s my guess that you looked up someone you’d found on the Internet,” Amy said softly.

  “I did,” Zoë said, grinning at her.

  “You two are leaving me out,” Faith said. “What man did you find on the Internet?”

  “Who said it was a man?” Zoë asked.

  “Oh, sorry,” Faith said. “I’m sure you found out you had a half sister whom you’d never met, so you looked her up, and she’s the one who’s made you smile like that.”

  Amy looked at Zoë. “You stole my idea, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Zoë said. “I ripped off your idea completely. That night when we came back from the eighteenth century, I looked for Russell Johns on the Internet. I’d read a lot of art history books but I didn’t remember hearing his name. But after we came back here, he was all over the ’Net. You know what for?”

  “His paintings of common people,” Amy said. “In Tristan’s time, he was always sketching us as we pulled bread out of the oven. He loved the washerwomen. Hey! Do you think we’re in any of his pictures?”

  “I don’t know about you two, but I saw several nudes of me,” Zoë said, and the three of them laughed.

  “In the Louvre,” Faith said, and that made them laugh more.

  “So what happened to him?” Amy asked as she buttered a slice of bread. “He was such a talented man.”

  “He married and had some children,” Zoë said softly. “I cried in jealousy when I read that.”

  “But not now,” Amy said as she nodded toward Zoë’s wedding ring.

  Zoë turned the ring on her finger. “No, not anymore. You see, I took Amy’s idea about descendants and I searched until I found Russell’s family tree.”

  “Don’t tell me!” Amy said. “You found out that one of his descendants lives in New York, you memorized the address, and when you left your sister’s you went to him. Is he a painter?”

  Faith and Zoë were looking at her in astonishment.

  “When did you get so good at stories?” Faith asked.

  “I think I’m like Zoë and her art. I think maybe I’ve always been good at stories, but I didn’t know it. So, am I right?”

  “Yeah,” Zoë said, “but he’s not a painter, he’s—”

  “A photographer,” Amy said, then when she looked at their faces, she said, “Okay, I’ll shut up. You tell your story, Zoë.”

  “Thank you. But, yes, he’s a photographer. He does some commercial work but he’s made his name by…” She looked at Amy as though daring her to say a word.

  Amy made a zipper sign over her lips.

  “Russ photographs people in ordinary situations doing ordinary things. He’s won a lot of awards.”

  “Russ?” Faith asked.

  Zoë shrugged. “Last name is Andrews, but the first is the same.”

  “And you are madly in love with him,” Amy said, then looked at them. “Am I allowed to say that?”

  Zoë laughed. “Of course. You want to hear something weird?”

  “I don’t know if I can stand weird,” Faith said. “I shock easily.”

  “When Russell and I were together, back in his time, he asked me a lot of questions about my life. I couldn’t tell him about Oregon because, well, it didn’t exist back then, so I told him as much as I knew about my early family history.”

  She looked at Amy as though challenging her to finish the story. Amy frowned in concentration for a moment, then her face lightened. “You didn’t! He didn’t!”

  “I’m lost,” Faith said.

  Zoë smiled. “It seems that the great painter, Russell Johns, sailed to the American colonies in the fall of 1797. He settled in Williamsburg, and today you can see his portraits of some of our forefathers.”

  “I hope he got Amy’s friend Thomas Jefferson,” Faith said, deadpan.

  “Who told you that?” Amy said. She looked at Zoë. “Who did he marry?”

  “A young woman with the last name of Prentiss.”

  “Your family’s name, I take it,” Amy said.

  Faith frowned for a moment. “If you’re related to Russell’s wife and your husband is descended from their children, does that make you and your husband cousins?”

  “Just like royalty,” Zoë said, and they laughed.

  “Okay, so now tell us what made the town hate you,” Faith said.

  “Ah, that,” Zoë said. “The entire memory of that came to me at what I think was exactly the time that my accident happened. I’d meant to pay attention to the date and take care of myself, but when I got to New York, I went to Russ’s that first day, and we hit it off rather well, so, uh…”

  “You were in bed with him when the wreck was to happen, weren’t you?” Amy said.

  When Zoë nodded, Faith said, “How are you doing this?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s like I can see it in print. I just seem to know. But I’ll stop talking. Zoë, tell us what you remembered.”

  “I don’t like to remember it even if I know it didn’t really happen. At least not my part in it.”

  “What did your sister do to you?” Faith asked, making the others smile.

  “Now you’re the storyteller,” Zoë said. “And you’re completely accurate. It was all my sister’s fault.”

  “I don’t want to hear another word,” Zoë said to her sister, Karen. She put her hands over her ears. She was sitting in Karen’s living room, on the old, worn-out couch, and her sister was pacing.

  “You have to help me. You’re the only one I can trust.” Karen put her hands on Zoë’s wrists and uncovered her sis
ter’s ears.

  “What about Bob?” Zoë asked. “How could you do this to him?”

  “Bob?” Karen said in disgust. “What does he care? The highlight of his life was when he made three touch-downs in one game. It’s been downhill since then. Please, Zoë, this is for my whole life.”

  Zoë looked up at her sister and wondered how she’d been able to pull off an affair with the most important man in town. Alan Johnson was the oldest son of the richest man in town and he’d done nothing in his life that hadn’t flourished. He was on every charity committee. He was married and had two children, a boy and a girl, who were polite and sweet-tempered. His wife was beautiful and spent the time her children were in school volunteering at hospitals and old-age homes.

  “I don’t understand why he was having an affair with you,” Zoë said.

  Karen whirled on her in a flash of rage. “For your information, underneath all of this—” She waved her hand to include the house with its aluminum windows, its stained carpets that were littered with kids’ bright plastic toys, and herself in her often-washed sleeveless dress. “Underneath this I’m a very desirable woman.”

  Zoë was really trying to understand, but she couldn’t see it. Yes, her sister used to be quite pretty, but not in a movie star way. She was more hometown-girl pretty. And the years since she’d married had not been kind to her. The fact that she smoked two packs a day and drank Coke that was half bourbon with dinner didn’t help.

  “He really loves you?” Zoë asked.

  “Do you find that so impossible to believe? Alan does love me, and he’s going to divorce that cold bitch of a wife of his and marry me.”

  Zoë just sat on the old sofa and stared at her sister. Karen was always telling Zoë that she knew nothing about life, but even she knew that this was a story so old that comedians used it in their stand-up acts. But Zoë also knew that she couldn’t reason with her sister. When she was like this, smoking one cigarette after another, and saying she had to do this and had to do that, she was impossible to talk to.

  “I want you to go with me,” Karen said.

  “Where?” Zoë said and hid her crossed fingers. Please don’t let it be to go see Mr. Johnson. One year he’d dressed up as an Easter bunny and had given Zoë the prize for the most eggs found. She didn’t want to have to face him in this ugly affair. And, too, there was Bob, Karen’s husband. Maybe he wasn’t the most exciting man in the world, but he loved their children and he was totally devoted to them. Last year he’d been passed over for a promotion because he’d missed so many days at work when he stayed home with the kids because Karen couldn’t “get herself together.”

  “To see Alan.”

  “Karen,” Zoë said, her voice a whine. “I don’t want to do that. Please don’t make me do that.”

  “After all I’ve done for you!” she started, saying all the things that she’d said a million times before. It seemed that Zoë was to give her life to Karen in eternal gratitude for taking her in when she was orphaned. Never mind that Karen got a free live-in babysitter.

  “I’ll stay with the kids and you go. You should be alone with him,” Zoë said.

  “No. I want Bob to stay with the kids. That’ll keep him from snooping into my life.”

  “He knows about you and Mr. Johnson?” Zoë asked in horror.

  “Will you stop calling him that? You make him sound like a…a pillar of the community and I’m the slutty secretary. It’s demeaning to me.”

  Zoë looked down at her hands and avoided her sister’s eyes.

  “Look, Zoë,” Karen said, her tone changing. “It’s just that I need to see him. I got a weird phone call from him today, and—”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing that would concern you, but if you must know, I think he’s having doubts about us.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “It’s nothing. I told him I might tell his wife, but of course I wouldn’t. Anybody who knows me knows I wouldn’t do something like that. No, Alan is going to have to stand up in front of the entire town and tell them that he loves me and only me.”

  “What about the children?” Zoë asked.

  “Don’t you dare get that holier-than-thou look on your face. You have never been trapped like I am. Do you know that I could have gone to college? I could have had a full scholarship, but I turned it down to marry Bob. I thought he was going places, doing things. What a fool I was.”

  Zoë didn’t dare look up. Her sister had barely kept a C average at school. Who was going to give her a scholarship? For what? And Zoë too well remembered that Bob had tried to break up with her before they graduated. He had been offered a four-year football scholarship at the state university, but when Karen became pregnant and insisted on keeping the baby, he’d given it up to marry her.

  Karen glared at her sister. “I’ve done everything for you and Bob and the kids. Now it’s time for you to do something for me. You’re going to go with me tonight and that’s it. I don’t want to hear anything else about it. Now go get dressed. We’ll leave as soon as Bob gets home.”

  Which means that he has to make dinner for the kids, Zoë thought.

  An hour and a half later, she was in the car with Karen. Her sister was wearing a short, red cocktail dress with a fake diamond necklace.

  “Should you be wearing that?” Zoë asked, looking at her sister as she inhaled deeply on her cigarette. Once again, she’d forgotten to put the window down.

  “I want to look my best,” Karen said. “Someday when you have a real boyfriend, not that geek you pal around with now, you’ll understand a woman’s need to sometimes wear something other than jeans.” She gave a little smile at Zoë’s Levi’s.

  When they got to Mr. Johnson’s house, Karen turned off the headlights at the top of the drive. “This is just one of the little things we’ve had to do,” she said, smiling at Zoë as though they were in a conspiracy together. She maneuvered the car by the landscaping lights along the drive, hiding it way in the back, behind the garbage bins.

  There was only one light on in the house. “That’s his study,” Karen said. “It’s where we meet when we need to be alone.” She gave Zoë a look to let her know what she meant by that.

  “I’m not going in,” Zoë said.

  “Of course you aren’t,” Karen said. “I just needed you to come with me so Bob would have to stay with the kids. I didn’t want him free tonight.”

  Karen pulled the sun visor down and reapplied her lipstick in the little lighted mirror. “Just wait here. I shouldn’t be too long. Well, maybe I’ll be a long time.”

  Zoë knew that if she said anything to that, Karen would blast her, and she didn’t want to hear it. She watched her sister walk into Mr. Johnson’s house, her hips swaying, her high heels tapping on the pavement.

  I have to leave this town, Zoë thought as she sat in the car and waited for her sister. Karen had said Zoë owed her for all the years she’d taken care of her “for free,” but Zoë was now old enough to see that she’d more than carried her weight. It occurred to Zoë that if it weren’t for her taking care of the children, Karen wouldn’t have had time to have an affair.

  When the car door was jerked open, Zoë almost fell out. Karen had a frantic look about her and her eye makeup was running down her cheeks.

  “You have to talk to him,” Karen said. “He’s crazy.”

  “Me? What can I say to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said, “but he won’t listen to me. He keeps talking about money, but what does that have to do with me? He’s bought me a few measly presents, but not much. Zoë, he’s always liked you, so maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  “I can’t—” Zoë said, but Karen grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the car. “I’m not going in there! I can’t.” For once Zoë felt strong. It seemed that all her life she’d been intimidated by her older sister. Karen was the pretty one, the social one, the one who was going to make it in the world. Her parents had never said it, but they thought Zo
ë was “the weird one.” The girl who stayed to herself and rarely talked to anyone. The loner.

  “I’m not going in there,” Zoë said again. “This is your problem, you made it, and I’m not getting involved in it.”

  “It’s not me,” Karen said, and put her hands over her face. “It’s something else. I don’t know what it is, but he’s…” She looked at her sister with pleading eyes. “I think he’s going to kill himself.”

  “Call the police,” Zoë said, and reached inside the car for her cell phone.

  “No!” Karen said. “Listen, Zoë, I’ll do whatever you want if you’ll help me on this. I can’t let the town know about this. I can’t let Bob find out. Or the kids. Did you think about them?”

  “You’re not going to turn this around on me!” Zoë said. “You—”

  “Please?” Karen begged. “Please. Just go talk to him.”

  “If I do this, then I’m going to leave,” Zoë said. “You’re always saying I owe you my whole life, but this will pay it off.”

  “Of course,” Karen said. “I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll help you find an apartment and I’ll help you decorate it. And Bob will get you a car. How about a nice BMW convertible? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  Zoë wasn’t so naïve that she thought Karen would actually help her, and when she said “leave” she hadn’t meant an apartment two miles away from Karen. No, helping her sister in this crisis would get rid of the burden of gratitude that Zoë lived under.

  Karen stepped aside so Zoë could go into the house. Her heart was beating hard as she went inside. She left the door open in case she wanted to run out. The house was dark except for a light shining around a half-closed door to her left, and it seemed eerily quiet.

  “Mr. Johnson?” she called out, but he didn’t answer. She went to the door and pushed it open. The room was his study, with bookshelves around two walls and big glass doors leading out to a patio. There was a blond oak desk and behind it sat Mr. Johnson. He was holding a gun to his head.

  “Please,” Zoë said. “Mr. Johnson, please don’t do this.”